Squid Squirts

The parrot did it.

2012-01-04T04:27:00.000-08:00

Henry kicked at the kerb. He wasn’t happy. There was another bill in the letterbox this morning, and it had come with a lawyer’s letter threatening action.

A parrot was in the tree opposite, plucking at a cord of string which had lashed a poster of a missing child to the rotting trunk. “Missing!” The poster had proclaimed. Eventually the cardboard had perished under the stress of wind, rain and sun, but no replacement had ever declared “Found!” so Henry had no idea if the child was safe with her family, or deep under the red soil somewhere.

The parrot eyed him with one round eye as it tugged and twisted at the string. It was a tired-looking bird, with feathers missing from its neck and a dull, chipped bill.

Bills. There it was again.

He’d had to go down to the office three times now, sit waiting on the cracked vinyl chairs for the man with the grey suit and the sweat-stained shirt to come out and hand him still more piles of paper listing demands, dates and threats of consequences. He wasn’t a sympathetic man.

In the corner of sweaty-man’s office was a shrine of framed photographs. They showed him in holiday mode, posing next to various animals and birds. Even the animals appeared to be leaning away from his acrid smell in the pictures. He didn’t look as relaxed as you’d expect in the holiday snaps, but a little ill at ease, as if he wasn’t sure how to act. Perhaps if he’d been threatening the animals with community service or prison time he’d have felt more at home.

As Henry turned back to the house, he heard a voice. “Henry”, it called. “Henry, Henry”.

He looked both ways up the street, but the kids at one end were engrossed in trying to set fire to something- probably an ant’s nest, and the only other person around was an older woman who appeared to be leaning on her front gate, framed by honeysuckle plants, although he suspected her back was bent with the weight of seventy years and advanced osteoporosis.

That only left the bird.

“Henry”, it called.

He turned and crossed the street, wondering if perhaps the extra whisky he’d had last night had not been soaked up by the boiled eggs he’s choked down with toast, despite the post-binge gagging he’d felt.

The bird cocked its head and stuck out its tongue. Lifted its wings like an angelic chameleon.

It flew a few metres and rested on a fence. He followed.

It flew again, this time settling on the grille of the storm drain. The heavy rains had lifted it from its frame slightly, and a torrent surged below, a churning mass of filthy brown water. Foam gathered on the bars.

It was a river of, of, of BEER! Henry laughed to himself, as he pushed the parrot to one side. Stripping down to his underwear, he lifted the grille.

The parrot seemed to grin at him as it nodded, happily. “Bye, Henry!” it said.

Henry eased himself into the foaming mess and drank deeply. The current caught him, and he let himself disappear under the road. As the daylight fizzed into darkness, he thought he saw a little girl looking down at him and laughing. He could almost hear her, and he was happy, as her laughter drowned out the mantra of bills, bills, bills which he’d had playing through his mind for what seemed like... forever.

The Pigeons Return to Death Hotel

2011-12-28T00:48:00.000-08:00

There’s the hotel full of crazies. The manager is finding it hard to keep everything running smoothly, and, when no one is looking, he likes to slip into his office and slide open the middle drawer of the desk. Inside, where the catering bills are starting to collect, he hides a bottle with just enough in it to keep the edges smooth.

He has to keep an eye on all corners of the hotel, and, even though he shouldn’t go there, explore all of the personalities he’s hired so that he can coax them into productivity.

There’s the cleaning team. They have to make sure that things don’t pile up and become offensive. They must be trusted, as they methodically enter each room and rearrange it the way it would appear on the website. They can’t mess with the guest’s belongings, so there’s faith involved.

Without them, the hotel would, in all probability, collapse.

There are the guides: The bellhops who move things around, from the entrance to the top floor. They like tips, but they’re also proud of the way they can “fix” things. Someone has to know which corners can be cut, and what the fastest and most cost-effective ways are for getting from A to Z.

The guests? They aren’t meant to be around permanently. There’s a rhythm to their arrival and departure, and a certain amount of predictability in their activities. Every now and then, a rock band will blow in like a tornado and leave a trail of broken furniture to replace, and, occasionally, there will be someone who arrives depressed, drinks too much from the mini-bar and needs to be coaxed back from a window ledge, but, for the most part, there is order.

Business people breeze in with a lack of interest in the surroundings. Just looking for a place to recharge themselves and their gadgets.

Lovers leave a tangible haze in their wake- a cloud of perfumes and the smells of lovemaking- the drooping heads of red roses nodding over emptied champagne buckets.

Occasionally, a disgraced husband will arrive, his red eyes and thousand-yard stare gazing into a future of weekend-parenting and mounting lawyer’s bills.

There are conventions. Industrial equipment salesmen and their clients. Book publishers and their newest titles, billed as best-sellers before they’ve even hit the shelves. Once, the manager even accepted a group of people, mostly in their twenties, who swore that the science fiction novels of a particular author formed sufficient foundation for a lifestyle. The lifestyle appeared to encourage long black coats and poorly-managed facial hair growth.

The manager doesn’t mind. He likes to have something new going on all the time. He enjoys that he directs life here; that he has harnessed the predictability of hotel life.

His biggest fear is the lifts. They're designed to keep everything moving. The music he has piped into them is unbearable for anything more than the two minute’s duration of the trip, and that’s what he expects. In. Out. Up. Down. Nobody on earth wants to be stuck in a lift for even a few minutes. He makes sure to have them regularly maintained.

In one of the rooms there is a stain. A stain so deeply ingrained that he’d had to order a kilim from one of the passing salesmen to cover it up. A stain which tells a story of bad decisions and worse consequences. Fortunately, though, few people ask for that room, as it looks out over the local bar, and the unrelenting neon advertisements and driving rock music make potential guests ask for a different suite almost immediately.

He’d had babies born there, brides deflowered and even one or two deaths. Unanswered knocks on the door leading to the disappointing discovery of the ends of lives. One, a sleeping pill overdose, another, a man who had enjoyed sleeping so much, that he’d chosen it for eternity. Death wasn’t as terrible as it seemed. Discreet paramedics slipped the bodies into the servant’s elevator, and then the cleaning teams simply changed the mattress and sheets.

The manager prided himself on his decisiveness: He couldn’t afford to dither over minor details, and yet, his decision-making miraculously seemed to pay attention even to these.

Sometimes, when he is hiding in his office, the grating lid of the bottle twisting in his hand, he liked to read his own motto that he’d made into a sign. He’d printed it out, laminated it, and stuck it behind his own desk:

“If you’re just sitting on the fence, stand up. You’re bound to fall one way or the other.”

Then he’d laugh a little to himself, as he imagined teetering and toppling into the unknown. As if that would ever happen to him.

* * *

And so it went on, year after year. On the roof, the pigeons nested, cooing as they strutted about the concrete. Their droppings built up over the top of the lift shaft, paste and then dust, slowly eroding the aging rivets. No one could see them up there, but their presence would, in the end, inspire a spectacular end to the manager, the hotel, and several of the guests.

The call of the oven

2011-12-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

You’re close. Just on the edge, in fact. The wrong word, a song on the radio- hell, a TV ad, even, can send you over into freefall.

That’s not all. If it’s bad, a phone call can have you striking at walls, shouting.

A balloon filled to its limits, a tooth, hanging by the thinnest sliver of gum.

The blood rushes through your neck, and collects somewhere near the top of your head.

A balcony is a threat, an oncoming train, a whispered invitation.

There it is: The inverted white casket in the kitchen, calling out.

Ugliness and shame is unveiled at every step. Love songs, played backwards.

Munch caught it.

Ingrid Jonker heard it, just beyond the breakers.

Van Gogh flicked his brush in its direction, but was caught by the old adage, “always check your weapon”, before slumping over in the wheatfield.

Too many naked roasts with their bland whiteness dripping blood came out of the same oven which told Plath its jokes.

Then, an earsplitting sunrise, with the call of nesting birds and the energetic racing of motors outside the window: Everyone’s going somewhere.

The oven’s just for cooking.

The oven’s just for cooking

Paisley Curtains

2011-09-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

The gentle curls became sinister shadows in the dark. Scott sat with his action man against the wall on the side of the room farthest from the window. The toy was anything but active, though; it just sat with its lightning blue eyes glaring into the gloom.

The sounds were bad. The wind hissed in breathy drafts which lifted the skirts of the curtains and the dressing gown on the back of the door. It could have been a cat, Scott thought, that he heard padding across the roof. Yes, he decided, it must have been a cat.

But it was the curtains which terrified him most. The paisley fabric turned into thousands of eyes, watching, and mouths with razor-sharp teeth which seemed… hungry.

Scott tried to burrow even deeper under his duvet, but he recalled the warnings. Donald’s mum had insisted that they’d be smothered if they put their heads under their duvets whenever he slept over, and he knew the panic of pushing the boundaries- feeling the air grow moist and warm as he converted it to carbon dioxide.

He made a tube, a breathing hole so that he’d make it. Felt a little like that explorer he’d seen on television- the one who had gone in search of Tarzan, and slipped, instead, into a pool of quicksand. The reed he’d used as a straw to breathe through was left on the surface next to a pith helmet.

He could hear his little brother sleeping on the lower bunk, and the tick, tick, tick of his Hong Kong Phooey watch on the chest of drawers.

Downstairs, the house was silent, but the fridge shuddered every now and then, as if shivering from the cold it generated.

The streetlamp was lukewarm amber, and couldn’t penetrate the gloom. He listened more carefully. Somewhere in the house, he was almost certain he could hear crying.

A daddy-long-legs brushed across his face, and Scott whimpered. How would things be, when they moved to another country? Would there be quicksand in Africa? Would he have to sleep in a hammock, with the calls of jungle cats echoing in the distance? Would the curtains and fridge- the objects of fear for him now- even be there to comfort him when they climbed off the aeroplane?

The Action Man was ready. He sat in his World War II Arctic Fatigues, and prepared his rifle, the one which shot matches. He’d protect Scott. It was his pledge.

#FlashFiction

A Day in the Life

2011-08-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

Ever heard The Beatles song, A Day in the Life? Well, from the gentle sliding opening bars, to the tumultuous final, drawn out E-chord, it’s a chilling snapshot of the news.

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

There’s a promising young man who is killed in his car, strange potholes appearing all over Lancashire, and general confusion as the newsreader stumbles through life with his alarm clock hounding him.

“And though the news was rather sad…”

This past week has been an apocalyptic mess of news. Perhaps the past month. From every angle, the “stories” have been churned out by journalists, with sub-editors vying for the most clever or succinct headlines. Here’s my own “Day in the Life”:

A tyrant was said to be cowering in a bunker as rebel forces pounded his compound with heavy artillery. He wasn’t cowering, but appeared later on to call on his supporters to “kill the rebels like rats”. He’s a mass murderer, but news commentators discussed his penchant for silk robes and his choice in headgear. Gaddafi remains free.

Some rhinos were savaged by poachers, who cut off their horns, cut them brutally, and left them for dead, only they weren’t. Vets and animal enthusiasts wept, and wondered, why?

A bus overloaded with children slipped into a river near Knysna, killing many. They’d had nothing on their minds except playing soccer at break, exchanging sandwiches, or maybe blushing at the first exchanges of loving glances between naïve boys and girls. Children are curiously fearless and yet inordinately fearful. Who knows what they thought, as they slipped away.

On the horn of Africa, millions are starving, children are dying at a (measured) rate of ten a day. The figures are likely far higher. They totter in from the barren wastelands, their bow-legs struggling to keep them from toppling into the dust. The safety camps are sometimes just grotesque hospices, where the childrens’ eyes sink deeper into their fly-specked faces, and their mothers wail, or just sit, silently. These emaciated ones just fall asleep, never having known couches, television sets or restaurants, and are ticked off on lists by grim volunteer medics as they die.

“And I just had to laugh…’

And in my community newspaper?

Well, there were some commentaries on horse riders losing their favourite riding grounds. A letter complaining about telemarketers. Another, about a family facing eviction from a council house, and still another about children born in prison, whose mothers are finally allowed to provide entertainment, toys and education to them. My community newspaper finished off with an incitement to go and see a visiting Dutch reed quartet, and some advertisements telling me to hire people to help me rid my garden of moles.

It just wasn’t funny, this week.

“I saw the photograph…”

*Read more about the Beatle’s song, A Day in the Life, here.

Lyrics | Beatles lyrics - A Day In The Life lyrics

The Monstrous Truth

2011-08-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Don’t worry, I lied. There’re no such things as monsters. The things I’ve told my children when they’ve come to me with questions.

If you visit the source of a river, it’s usually unrecognizable. It may look a little like a mossy drinking fountain, burping up a steady curved stream from the earth. It’s hard, looking at that, to reconcile it with a mass of water alongside a city, straddled with bridges. That’s why it’s scary when the children come to me as if I’m a source of information. My trickle is sometimes polluted with a lifetime of experience.

Well, kids, I’d better put the matter right: There are monsters, lots of them. The truth is, you’re better off recognizing them, before they recognize you…

Vampires and other bloodsuckers: They’re the ones who come, not in a cape or covered in glitter, but in the guise of sly deception. They’ll feed of you until you’re dry and they’re sated, and move on, abandoning your desiccated emotions or finances. Watch out for them. They’re hard to spot.
Werewolves: Don’t be afraid of all dogs, or men with beards, for that matter, but if someone ever touches you in a way that makes you feel bad, or dirty, or you think it’s just not… right, then tell me. Don’t let anyone touch you on your private parts. A silver bullet won’t kill them- that’s another myth. Unfortunately, they’ll slip into the night, and target some other kid.
Axe murderers: They’re out there. People who react with violence to almost every situation- people who enjoy it. They’ll try and hurt you, maybe even kill you by accident, unless you step away from fights and escalating arguments. Walk away. Keep walking. An axe can be a fist, or a boot, or a brick or a gun.
Zombies: Dead people don’t really walk around, searching for braaaaainnnsss, do they? Yes, child, they do. They’re called “drug addicts”. They’ll seek you out, haul you away into an eternal night of mindless celebration, until your brain is eaten away. Your weapon? They’re dead, so all you have to do is use the magic word: No. Then run for your life.
Witches and warlocks: I won’t tell you how to think- you have the privilege of learning about all sorts of people, but I do hope you temper your intellect with common sense. There are some crazy ideas out there, and I hope that the “magic” of creativity you get to experience is based on reality, and not superstition.
Trolls: Sure, they exist. They’ll hate, and hate, and hate. You can be tricked into being one by forgetting compassion and empathy, and respect for others. Be kind, my child, and you’ll be safe.

There are other monsters out there, but I’m sure you’ll find that out. The rule-of-thumb is that you treat people well, and keep yourself from getting into the places where monsters lurk. I’ll always be there to help you, I hope, but you guys can also help each other, too. Stand up for what’s right, and stick to the truth.

I’ll try not to hurt you by shielding you from the truth too much.

And don’t, whatever you do, look under the bed: It’s horribly dusty, for a start.

Ace of Spades

2011-08-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Grace double-checked that all the addresses were right. Email wasn’t at all like the post- twenty years ago she’d kept a worn notebook with the street addresses for friends and family, made her lists from it when it was time to draw up the Christmas cards, each one personalized. No, email, she thought, was impossibly fast. People changed jobs, switched accounts, or just didn’t bother to check them. So much for the online address book. Still, it would suit her purposes today- she couldn’t wait two weeks. It had to happen by tomorrow.

It had been quite a pleasant morning. Not too bad for the last one she’d see. First, she dealt with the necessities: bleached the grouting around the bathroom tiles, rinsed out the bucket with more bleach, and checked that the fireplace was empty of ash. Then, she’d wiped all the other surfaces in the house. Three hours, all told. Plenty of experience, she thought, bitterly.

She tried not to think of the cellar, where the cement had finally set. All those awful months digging in the gloom, with the spiders and mice twitching in the shadows. Grace was glad that was out of the way. The cellar door had taken ages to board up and cover with carpet, too. Her fingers ached a little. Although just 45, she had felt her joints protest at the extra work.

The cat eyed her from the windowsill. Grace smiled. The poor thing was so dependent on her. It’d be hard for the authorities to find a place to keep a middle-aged cat, although, to Grace, Cleo would always be the kitten she’d found her as, teetering on legs no bigger than stubby crayons.

A noise made her think that the television was on, but that had ended abruptly two weeks ago, and she was actually thrilled not to have to listen to Don correcting it all the time. Disagreeing with the weatherman, mocking the talking heads during the news reports. She was quite happy not to hear Don, ever again, in fact.

The noise was just a roll of thunder in the distance. At the next blue flash, she counted: One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, she counted until the thunder groaned again; it turned out that the storm was at least eight miles away.

She put on the skirt she liked. It showed off her knees, and she was proud of them. Knee-pride suddenly felt… silly. She chuckled to herself. A soft satin blouse made her feel warm, and showed just enough of her breasts to be both decent and a little daring at the same time. Grace was sad that the stilettos would have to wait for the next time she did this, but then she wouldn’t be around to see them.

Checking that the lights were off, except the one in the study, she thought again of the cellar. How easy it had been. Nobody had noticed Don’s absence. She had excuses and a fake sympathetic expression all prepared in case anyone had asked where he was, but no-one had. Oh, he’s gone to visit his aunt, she would have said. Very old lady that, it won’t be long now. She suddenly remembered, as she saw the glow of the screen in the corner that she needed to finish up.

Grace pressed “send”.

Grace was happy. Happy that he’d be blamed for everything. How many years of trays of food, expressionless lovemaking and then, towards the end, expressionless everything. He deserved what he’d get.

Going outside, she shivered. Not that cold was important right now, but it was taking the pleasure away from her.

She sat down on the side of the hole she’d dug over the past few nights, in the dark. It was a comfy fit. Launching herself into the damp earth, she looked up. Without all the other light, she could see the stars. None of them were shooting. They just twinkled, much as they had when she’d been born 45 years ago.

She grinned as she began pulling the dirt in on herself. Of how she’d made sure Don’s passport was gone, and how she’d asked a teenager to get the ticket in his name to somewhere tropical. Don! Don in the tropics! That was a laugh. He’d have moaned about the smell of suntan lotion, or the big ants, or something. Anything. That’s what he liked to do. Moan.

Taking her last few breaths, she looked up to see the cat, looking at her. The moon formed a halo against Cleo’s pointed ears. My angel, thought Grace. The last few chunks of earth slipped against her cheeks, and she thought that it was a little ironic: She’d struggled to get all Don’s angles completely secured in the cement, but she wanted at least her hand to be left for people to see.

The night disappeared as the soil toppled into the gaps.

Amanda’s computer made that alert signal she liked. It was the first notes of Fur Elise. She got up and walked over. New mail, it said. From Grace.

Hi, Amanda, I don’t have much time. Don’s been acting very oddly these last few weeks. I think he may be drinking again. He’s looking at me in a funny way, but I can’t describe it. I think he wants to hurt me. Please come and visit as soon as you can. Love, Grace.

#Flashfriday

Parkour in Parkas in the Park

2011-08-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

One of the first rules of storytelling is: If you introduce a talking kangaroo into the story in the first chapter, you’d better have made sure he was used by the third.

Fortunately, this isn’t a story, so the rules don’t apply.

And it may be that the rule applies to a loaded firearm, not a talking kangaroo, but I think any old writer can find something explosive to do with a loaded weapon.

It was sunny down at the park. Hannah stood on a tree stump, twirling the pink propeller toy in her hands and letting it go, to spin evenly out over the footpath where the owners were being led in crooked strolls by their dogs.

James took his skateboard, in his head he was defying gravity and hearing sonic booms as he scraped across the concrete skateboard track. When he tired of that, he and I explored an owl pellet. It looked like a dust bunny, with only the gleaming white jaw and hip bones betraying its origin. Probably a mouse.

Jonah? He was sitting with his knees braced on the rug, shielding his sandwiches from the dogs which trotted damply up from the stream now and then to explore.

Karen was happy to referee, keeping them moving through the long grass where small yellow flowers broke up the green expanse occasionally. I watched for the brown mounds which could end up stuck on shoes and transferred to the floor mats in the car, but the squirrels had devastated the pinecones in the park, leaving the husks scattered, confusing my eyes in the bright winter sun.

There were families and cyclists, runners and walkers. Sandwiches were rejected in favour of chips and juice, and an old woman stopped near us to straighten the tartan jacket on her poodle.

Two pied crows circled overhead, waiting for the activity to slow down so they could swoop on scraps and dead things.

Other families navigated their way around us the skatepark, the fathers encouraging their children and making sure that everyone got a turn. They kept half an eye on the one or two homeless people who had colonized benches, but generally everyone kept a polite distance.

That night, I dreamed I was living stranded on a rooftop. A neon blue kangaroo came to me, speaking deep words of wisdom. I don’t recall what he said.

The Magic Hamburger

2011-07-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

The young man tapped his foot against the railing in front of the counter. How long would it take to flip a coupla patties and stick em in a roll, he wondered.

The woman behind the counter eyed him warily. She hadn’t said anything to him yet, just nodded at his order. It was a long way from her native Latvia, and she was still nervous about her thick accent. Once, she’d said “Vont fry wid dot?” to a customer, and he had laughed at her. Brayed, actually, like a donkey.

Then the teenager had called his friends over and had told her to repeat herself. She had done so, blushing, and they’d slapped each other’s backs. One had mimicked her, and displayed his canine teeth in the way she’d seen TV vampires grin. “Bride of Dracula!” he’d quipped.

She reached into the pocket of the red overall and clasped the beads her grandmother had given her when she’d left. Smooth, round. Comforting. When she felt stressed, she could almost feel them heating up and calming her down.

Boba. Now there was a woman. She’d lived in the damp caravan most of her life, but was tougher than any of these city people. She was handy with an axe when it came to both wood and chickens, and was said to have the Eye.

The Eye wasn’t discussed over a bowl of beetroot soup, or chatted about during the bitter tea times they shared in the cold wintery mornings. The Eye was a whispered legend.

“Hey, how about getting a move on.”

The young man at the counter continued to jiggle his left leg and appeared to be sweating a little, the counter damp where he slapped his palm.

“Yes, Sor”.

She turned to the kitchen, but the cooks were laughing about something. One was digging in his ear.

She turned and smiled at the customer, who was slack-jawing at his phone, tapping the keys and mumbling to himself.

“Fat Cow”. She heard him say.

The beads boiled.

Smiling, she thought again of Boba: Boba with her sheath of herbs and her grey stockings which sagged off her knees. Boba whose body had aged, but had never lost that glint in her eyes. The look a young woman in love could melt the heart of a suitor with; the stare of a man going into battle with daydreams of heroism. Boba had that strange light that burned in the back of her black eyes.

The package came through the open window from the kitchen. She picked it up to hand to him, and was going to say “Thank you”, but the man snatched it and left, spitting in the bin as he got outside.

She panicked as she felt her apron burning, then, and patted it with her hands.

She imagined for a moment that she was Boba. Proud. Full of the mystique that centuries of tradition had laid upon her. Powerful. Dangerous. She muttered words that sounded rich and pregnant with meaning.

In her head, she saw the young man returning to the accountant’s office where he worked, filling in ledgers and flirting with secretaries. She pictured him polishing off the tasteless burger and feeling a little strange. Oh, how she laughed inside as she heard him say to his colleagues: “Moooo”.

He’d try and try again to bleat about the discomfort he was feeling, but all he could say was “Moo. Moo.”

The waitress spent the rest of the day grinning to herself, at the power she withheld. She forgot, just for an afternoon, how miserable she’d felt.

The young man went back to the office, and ate his food. He felt peculiar. One of the pretty secretaries noticed his face and asked him what was wrong. Nothing, he said. He didn’t see her turn the corner and laugh into her hand. She could hardly wait to mock him when she and the girls went outside for a smoke. What a jerk, they all thought. And they were right.

#FridayFlash

Lightbulb Moment

2011-07-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

A withered teenager. He holds his daughter awkwardly, the frayed cuffs of his tracksuit brushing against the dirty pink of the donated blanket. His milk-dust moustache is an ambition, really; a glimpse of fake adulthood. His girlfriend squats, her glassy eyes not quite focused, her jeans-now too small- exposing the small of her back where the mountain range in miniature is laid out across her vertebrae.

The couple shift the tiny human back and forth, back and forth- a game of pass the parcel- as musical promises of lovin’, sex, and parties stream out of the radio. The boy scratches his elbows raw, and the girl plucks incessantly at her bra straps: They’re too loose. He cursed his mother quietly for being so damn poor- the toaster had only fetched twenty rands at the pawn shop on the corner. Nooo, the man had said, ignoring that the silver machine was almost new, I can’t sell this junk. Still. The note from Cash4Goods had sorted them out for today.

The girl elbows him. Hard. Come on, man, come on. She watches with the eyes of a wary bird, then, as he slips the small paper envelope out of his pocket. His fingernails are dirty and chipped, except for the ones on his pinky fingers, which he liked to keep long, for show. Couldn’t remember any more why that was supposed to be cool, and didn’t care. In another pocket he found the tiny globe he'd slipped out of the taillight of a Mercedes last night, the amber casing shattered with a paving stone.

A little blood appears as he snaps the head off it, the ball of his thumb dripping, but the floor is already filthy, so he doesn’t notice the scarlet orbs spiraling to the concrete.

In an instant he’s a chemist, a scientist- an honour-roll student showing off a technology project- as he slides the powdery crystals into the glass. A lighter and a tube appear in his girlfriend’s hands. Somewhere, the baby gurgles.

As they lay back and inhale, sharing the vapours the way the victims of a plane-crash in the Sahara would do water, they look in each other’s eyes and giggle. The laughter is like the hollow part of an echo, lost from its source, and full of…. Nothing.

In another house, not too far away, a boy looked around nervously. She’d definitely catch him this time, he thought. His hands wrapped around the warm ebony of his mother’s bedside table, and pulled the drawer open

In the drawer she kept all sorts of things: coins from foreign countries, postcards from relatives, a wooden owl her father had once carved as a child, and her cigarettes.

She didn’t smoke much- just when the boy had finished reading and turned off his light, maybe- a long slow ceremony on the balcony with a glass of the bitter wine that seemed to help her end the day.

Still, the boy felt it his obligation to try, at least once. He slipped one out of the box. It had gold rings around the filter, and an oddly manly smell. It hinted of grownups and parties, and of celebrations past.

Then, from nowhere, came the thoughts again. He remembered the pungent reek of disinfectant in the hospital corridor, and the broken, empty expression in his mother’s face as she had tried her best to comfort him, although words had failed her.

He opened the drawer and put the cigarette box back. No. Not today. Perhaps not ever.

Mists

2011-07-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

The sheep bleated. It was midnight, and the moon lit up the pen. Far away in the fields, baby rabbits shuddered and huddled close to their mother for warmth. An owl refused to call, and a shadow crossed the path in front of the stone farmhouse.

The shadow seemed to be no more substance than that- perhaps a grey cloud, or the emptiness which fills the hole where the rotten roots of a storm-plucked tree used to be.

The shadow stopped moving, turned towards the window, and swayed. A rat skittered around the corner of the house, reconsidered and fled into the darkness.

The earthy smell in the air was overpowering, the freshness of it reeking of a newly prepared grave rather than the promise of a ploughed field.

The wood smoke curling out of the chimney thinned as the shadow watched, and the family dog sniffed and sneezed in its sleep.

Of course, there was no longer a family, just the old man and his photo albums. A runaway horse, a fire in the barn and an outbreak of smallpox had left him alone and haunted by memories.

The old man was curled uncomfortably into a chair, his chin resting on his jutting collarbones. Not asleep- it seemed as though he never really slept anymore, but waiting. He turned the scythe over in his hands, the blade curved and wicked-looking, but entirely blunt.

The old man rose and opened the door. Peering into the darkness, he let his eyes adjust and noted the presence of the shadow. Smiling, he moved forward, but was held back- pinned to the warm wooden frame by an odd sensation he couldn’t explain.

He thought then of dark things. Marmite. The pulpy hole in a mouth where a milk tooth used to be. The inside of a poor man’s pocket and the black wine gum.

He knew then who the shadow was, and why he’d come. As his knees gave way, and he tumbled down the steps where, a lifetime ago, he’d lifted his bride and then his children. The shadow drew closer, and gathered substance in the dim light which seeped out of the house.

As the old man lay, gasping, his mouth opening and closing in the manner of a surprised fish on a boat, he noticed something peculiar. The shadow appeared to have a logo on its shoes. Not hobnail boots, either, these were running shoes.

The thick cloak drifted apart, and a face smiled out at him. It was his wife. No, that was wrong. Perhaps his daughter, an adult the way an early death had meant she’d never be. And then, just as strangely, it was his son- no signs of the burns which had seared him out of the barn and his life.

The family-being took his hand and lifted him, steered him back onto his feet. He was unsure, then. It was the milkman, the postman. He couldn’t remember the word anymore. A… a… bark-bark. There were flashes of things he couldn’t name, and the deep fear that something was missing.

Come on, Grandpa, a voice said. Let’s get you back inside. It’s cold out tonight.

#FlashFriday

For a Friend on His Birthday

2011-07-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

There’s the kid with the wild hair, running in the meadow. He’s just escaped a family portrait where he was forced to wear a restrictive pale blue and white checked shirt.

The family had posed for nearly half an hour before the photographer had released them, which was just as well, as he’d noticed the frown marks betraying the mother’s discomfort at having to sit still, when there were potatoes to be peeled and the porridge pot from this morning to be scoured.

The kid had jostled with his brothers, elbows jutting and hands slipping up behind their heads to show fingers to the patient cameraman and ruffle their still-damp parted hair. They were younger than he was, and drifted frustratingly between over-excitement and swift bouts of tears- no good as playmates.

He preferred the grass.

The green blades whipped at his shins even as his socks slid from their foothold on his calf muscles. He was wiry from endless forays into the hills, the exuberance he felt when he was breathing the fragrance of the wilds causing him to forget that he hadn’t eaten. Not that it mattered. He held a deep affiliation for the plants which hid amongst the boulders or waved their berries like sports fans from the hilltops, and could always find something to nibble on exploratively.

The sun was shifting behind the clouds sending down what his father called the “fingers of God”- beams which seemed to him more like spotlights as he crossed the green stage.

The photograph had been organized by his mother as an annual family boast to distant relatives. They’d comment each year on how the boys were starting to stretch- as if they were growing nodes and extra branches.

The kid settled in a clearing in the meadow, close to a huge oak tree. How the giant had come to be here in the middle of this African landscape puzzled the boy, and his eyes glazed over as he pictured men is strange outfits from centuries past kneeling in the dirt, their swine penned as they traversed the land, looking for somewhere to settle. An acorn dropped from one of the men’s pockets as he rested, the smooth nutty shell a comfort to him as he travelled.

A heavy boot crunched past, thrusting the acorn into the soil, and, with the drifting curtains of rain, it put down roots.

So lost was he in this daydream, that he was startled to see a white streak shimmer across the veld and into the oak. Blinking back his imagination, he saw that it was a squirrel. An albino marvel out here where snakes lurked on the open paths and the eagles drifted in endless circles up above.

The kid relished the stolen moments, and found the reward his father had slipped to him for staying almost quiet during the camera’s flash and the too-many calls of “cheese!” It was a box of smarties, and he lay back, letting them melt, one by one, over his tongue- lost in the reduction of the bright colours to the thin white shells before the cracks exposed the chocolate.

The smarties were deep brown inside, and the kid smiled as he imagined the albino squirrel dashing through the coming rains, his white fur being soaked away to reveal his true colour underneath.

A breeze made its whispering slalom through the blades and crowned stalks of the grass, and obscured the calls of his parents as they searched for him in the cool darkness of the house.

Scars, Marks and Happy Indentations

2011-07-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

There’s the corner of the couch with the thicker wefts visible; slightly lighter in colour in two distinct ovals- a faint comfort-shadow of the time your backside has spent curled up- lost in a book, or flicking through a magazine.

The table with the scratches where you wrote love letters and doodled while on the phone to your lover, lighter circles are spectres of coffee mugs holding warmth and energy.

The dark and light patches on your keyboard, some keys having been worn smooth by dancing fingertips, the others faintly dusty. The “F” keys.

The carpet is fuzzier closer to the wall, and the tiles are lighter where your footsteps have walked.

Dust hasn’t settled on that one windowsill where you lean, looking up into the clouds or bursts of blue sky and sunlight most days.

There’s the soft toy with the balding ears, sucked until furless by a toddler’s puckered mouth.

The jeans with the knees with their Shroud of Turin negative kneecaps.

The shoes you wore too often, vanished wedges where your heels dragged most.

The dip in the mattress where you lay, dreaming, or overthinking things deep into the darkness.

The favourite novel, dog-eared from the many times you pressed it into the hands of friends, hoping that they’d love it too.

The scarred fireplace with the grey ash landscape.

The white space on the wall where a cherished photograph used to be.

But then, there’s the thrill of feeling the warm comfort of love, present and alive, perhaps even with a life of its own. It’s a feeling which will create memories- visible marks on the inside of your head. Sometimes marks of comfort, sometimes faint scars. That you love at all is a miracle, and you shouldn’t fear the shaping that comes with it.

Revenge at a Party

2011-06-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

He hovered at the back of the room. Nervous. Not afraid- not anymore. He’d been at too many of these events to worry that he’d be next- watched as the father had laughed and snapped his brothers back and forth, before inflating them, strictly to the limits of what was advised on the packet.

They’d grown to immense sizes before the father had twisted their necks and hung them with string about the room; a collection of medieval gibbets.

The festivities had barely begun when a skinny kid took advantage of the way the larger kids were drooling over the snack table, and slipped a drawing pin into one of his kin. The tension had been unbearable, but, as always, there came the predictable BAM and the delighted shrieks of children as they coughed up chunks of cake onto the carpet.

The balloon wept a little- tears of moisture which dripped inside his translucent body.

The children had stormed off to play computer games, ignoring the magician who had been hired for the occasion. The man, dressed in his scuffed suit had consoled himself by folding what seemed to be strange relatives of the balloon’s into wonderful shapes- an amusing dog with a floppy nose, a man on a bicycle.

Knowing that his time was short, he decided immediately to get his revenge. Using a breeze, he drifted over to the magician, and settled near his ear. He puffed himself up, and began to whisper- a thin high voice that seemed as gentle as a leak.

The magician was good at keeping a straight face, and he didn’t let on, but the balloon could tell he was pleased.

The children returned, pushing each other and laughing. One was crying because his toy gun had been broken, but he’d been using it to shoot down some of the balloons bobbing, hanged, near the ceiling, so the balloon felt little sympathy.

The father came into the room, and the magician called him over, spoke to him quietly. Daddy nodded and laughed, amused at the tricks the magician was suggesting.

The magician didn’t say a word, but simply drew a gloved hand across his own face, and the children stopped talking. They sat as if he’d actually asked them to do so, still and patient.

The gloved hand gestured to the father- who pretended to be surprised, and mugged for the mother, who was taking pictures. Me? Ha Ha!

The balloon drifted nearer the open window, and wrapped the end of his string around something.

The magician suddenly grabbed the father and pulled his arm. The arm seemed to stretch. The father laughed uncertainly, and then squeaked as his arm was stretched a little more. The kids roared with laughter. Still more his arm was stretched until it was almost double its usual length. The father’s face was frozen- a huge grin stuck there, but a frown creasing his brow.

The magician tore at the father’s other arm, quickly doubling its length too. The father’s face seemed to bloat, then- he pursed up his lips and squealed as if in pain.

The legs followed rapidly, and he was left lying misshapen on the floor. The magician waved at the children. One or two of them had started to cry. He picked up the father as if he was weightless, and pretended to blow in his ear. As he did so, he tied the flexible limbs in a pretzel shape, and moved towards the door. The mother stood frozen, tea cups rattling on her tray.

The door opened, and, with a magnificent gesture, the magician hurled the father into the breeze. He bobbed twice, and lifted into the sky, quickly topping the house, and then the trees.

The balloon had nudged the window open, and leapt onto the currents of the wind, and was swept after the father.

A few moments, and the lighter balloon had caught up. Angling the end of his string carefully, he swung it into the father. The pin tied in the end glistened in the sunlight.

He managed to snag the father’s nose, and a hole appeared. Not enough for a huge blast, but there was a gushing sound, the flatulent burp of air escaping.

As if rocket powered, the father shot into the air, looped twice, and came to rest, flattened and deflated on the garden path.

The balloon nodded in the breeze, waved his string at the departing coattails of the magician, and headed towards the sun, feeling both the warmth of its heat, and the satisfaction of justice.

How to Find an Answer to Everything

2011-06-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

Why do you stand there, staring in your fridge? Nothing has changed since the last time you looked. That same foil-wrapped package is staring you down, next to the yoghurt carton with the eternally smudged sell-by date. You bought them, you should know.

There’s the half onion, the desiccating remnants of a proper meal, cooked two.. three weeks ago. It’s almost smiling at you, but its grin doesn’t match that of the orange, looking almost red as it flushes in the cold. See? No surprises. The juice looks at you hopefully, but is rejected in favour of the cheap wine, over and over.

Don’t move the margarine. There’s something ominous in the back there. It’s the Tupperware package that time forgot. Open that box only if you feel the need to release the spores of a million green molds. Heck, some of those can kill a grown man. Biohazard.

There’s the cheese and milk- all anyone really needs to get by, really. Sidekicks.

Why do you sit there, staring at the Google home page? Wondering if it’s going to transform into something other than what it is? Everything has changed since the last time you looked, but it’s curiously predictable.

Want a job? Need to find out more about that slight inflammation on your wrist? Want to track down that old girlfriend/colleague/schoolmate? They’re all there, somewhere. Need to explore a country or a school of thought, track down a good joke for a presentation? They’re all in there too.

You get answers from Google. Answers leading to questions and then still more answers. A mirror held up to a mirror, it sends a cascading flight of answers which help you to explore every possible thought you could have.

A fridge? Doesn’t change, unless you count those mad empty-stomach forays to the supermarket when you buy a host of groceries which begin to spoil as they get folded into your shopping trolley. It may be full or nearly empty, but it’s more or less the same.

Which is more life-stopping? An answer that comes as you feed in keywords into a machine, or an epiphany that shivers through your spinal cord as your unfocused eyes bore into that smooth ice sculpture in the back of the fridge?

Answers. Depends on how you look for them, I guess.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cow

2011-06-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

Back when canvases and art supplies were expensive, even some of the guys now termed “Old Masters” were in the habit of picking up paintings one way or another- perhaps from a dead relative with a collection of ugly still-lifes of fruit, or a neighbour who had just needed to swap something for a meal- and used these as the backgrounds to new paintings.

Rather than compromise the surface underneath, a new artwork would be smeared on with sable brushes and paint-stained thumbs, until the un-blank canvas would come alive with a vision made real.

Sometimes it would happen in reverse- a struggling painter would hand over a painting he’d never quite convinced himself was worth hanging onto in exchange for some gin, or wine, or a place to sleep when the wine was all gone. And the new owner would pass the painting on until it fell into the hands of an eager artist needing somewhere to splash his paintworld.

And so it would continue, until centuries after the artist had slipped into either obscurity or comfortable retirement, and an art enthusiast would, by virtue of the painting’s age alone, decide to have it restored. Maybe he needed to inflate his insurance, or impress a relative who was drawing up a will.

The art restorer would bring the old painting to life, attempting to recreate the vibrant colours and moody shadows of the original. A slip of his fingers, or perhaps a keen eye which spent so much time staring at a surface would reveal that there was an another artwork underneath. The excitement which this could prompt was palpable- what if an undiscovered masterpiece lay beneath?

Difficult decisions had to be made: Sacrifice the new in favour of the old, when in fact, the older painting may be nothing at all, or simply carry on adding as much value as he could to a rather plain, but antique artwork.

Just a thought, really.

Do we scrape away at the new to get to the old, suspecting that there’s value in the past? Surely we’d have to scrape right down to a time of innocence again- when all the layers of hurt, learning and struggle had been pared away, and we were once again children?

And, having scraped away, would there be nothing left of value anyway?

Or, do we look at what we are at face value, take a deep breath, and take up a newer, brighter palette, and bravely add an entirely new dimension on top of a flawed substrate?

Or, more confusingly, do all the layers of each period of our lives all add up to the uppermost layer, and will attempting to remove them destroy the integrity of what we are?

I’ll go with a combination. Not forget the past, which is full of lessons and value, but never settle for the last layer. There’s always a new angle, fresh idea or creative movement. Use what has gone before to inform the future. Yesterday’s masterpieces are tomorrow's strangely shaped cows, in the world of art.

It Could Happen To You

2011-06-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

It was an ordinary garden wall, set back from the house across a sometimes neat lawn, and behind a strip of dirt that held the remnants of failed attempts at gardening. Cuttings and seeds and even whole bushes had been dug into the soil there, in spring and then in summer, but the light was wrong. Roses had lost their blooms to the sun and their leaves to aphids, and vegetables had served as a restaurant for pests of every kind. All that remained was an angry-looking spiky bush that flowered spitefully every two or three years, for a week or two, before shedding its costume and retreating as if crouched to pounce on anyone who ventured too close. There were some succulents concealing the dry sand, but they’d grown there by mistake.

The wall had a few scars- lifted in places by tree roots that had long since withered- patches of baldness where a soccer ball had blasted off flakes of paint, and the dark bruises of mildew where the sun hadn’t penetrated the shadows.

It had been climbed on by children, who jumped off it screaming, as if it was the prow of a sinking ship. Once, a burglar had vaulted it in a single leap, but he’d already been to the neighbour’s house and wasn’t looking for anything more.

The smoke of barbecues had drifted over it during long lazy evenings, carrying the thick scent of grilling meat to the saliva glands of people out in their own gardens.

And in summer, the steady bleat of the sprinkler had turned the bottom half of the wall a rusty orange, the tannin in the ground water from the borehole adding an aged tint which seemed quite apt.

In the cracks and seams of the wall the ants hurried in their endless rush-hour streams, stepping urgently around each other, and occasionally ganging up on caterpillars and spiders which had paused too long.

The arcs left by snails after the rains shimmered gently in the cooler mornings, and attracted the birds who gathered on the top to dip their beaks at each other. A sugar-bird had been a regular for a while, but the garden held little to keep it, instead, the starlings and pigeons bullied each other for airspace.

A tortoiseshell cat was in the habit of weaving a daintily menacing path across the wall in the way cats have, sometimes pausing with one paw raised as if distracted by some furry creature, but then shimmied away to find a quiet place to sleep.

And down there, hidden in the slight tunnel at the foot of the wall hid the snake. It was still and barely visible, and lay inhaling the dry air through brittle nostrils. It lay, waiting, knowing that it needn’t search in the way other creatures must for food, but that just by waiting, motionless, the meals would come. Any day now, the prey would come.

Mr Small

2011-04-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

I remember when it started. My friend, Jason, aged eight or nine, was teased about something small. I confronted the bullies, giants, perhaps aged ten. One of them did the equivalent of a chest bump, but I was too short. I was enraged. Someone was insulting my best friend!

In the tradition of violent people the world over; I swung my fist straight into his smirking mouth. Knocked out his front teeth. Baby teeth, but still, it was a fairly mean punch.

From then on, I stood up for the underdog. I’d been teased as a kid about a skin problem I’d had as a toddler which had left me scarred: Don’t worry, the doctors had said, it should fade by the time you are eighteen. So I spent my childhood being asked if I had measles or some other virulent pox. I knew what it was like to get teased.

Flash forward- a few years later- mid-eighties- I was calling myself a peace-punk- all protest badges about animal laboratory testing and with a proud membership of the CND- campaign for nuclear disarmament. I headed up my school’s chapter of the SPCA (oblivious of the woes of Apartheid whispering under the radar of the State news channels).

But I made lots of friends. The kinds of kids who knew what it was to feel the dismay at being left out of soccer teams, or mocked about their sad attempts at expressing themselves by dressing oddly,. I overdid it. It was the eighties- at my all-boys school, wearing make-up was frowned upon. Screw them, I said, and did it anyway. Got beaten up.

Anyway, another flash forward slides into the nineties- an age of acceptance which I missed out on. Until certain political unrests stirred me. Suddenly, the clubbed seals were people. People being killed or left to die, either by warring factions or a government characterized by neglect. So I marched and volunteered, joined causes. Tried to understand the plight of, say, refugees from war-torn countries trying to make a living in a hostile environment.

Shift a decade. Who knows where it came from, but Facebook appeared. I signed up to causes, groups, commented on pages and places that nobody cared about, and became an armchair activist. Not too bad. One click, and you can appear to give a shit.

And suddenly, I am middle-aged. Wearing a badge on my corduroy jacket, in the words of The Fun Boy Three is no longer a way to indicate my political affiliations. I have done what I can to get involved, but yet not enough to threaten my security.

But maybe, maybe, maybe…

Sometimes, there’s that metaphorical bully. Swaggering with his cock-pigeon chest. In my face, reeking of testosterone. And, despite myself, I feel the pin-prick of tears in the corner of my eyes, and, at that moment, do anything to change the world…

So what’s next? There will always be hierarchies and cool people. How much more power do the underdogs have? I don’t know. I don’t want to be a hero, but, yet again, I do. My version of being a hero is being willing to do what isn’t cool, tough, successful in order to change the lives of someone else. Not someone crappier than me, just someone who has at least as much potential.

And if, in the process, I get my metaphorical t-shirt pulled over my head?

Bring it on. I’m smaller than you. You won’t even see it coming.

The Strangest Room

2011-03-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

He stood at the door, uncertain. There seemed to be all sorts of things happening inside, and his imagination hinted at some of the crazier ones, but he didn’t know whether the invitation his friend had given him would allow him complete access, or if he’d have to wait a while until the right people showed him the more interesting rooms.

Looking back, he saw a lifetime of loneliness. As though he was holding a mirror up to himself, and, reflected in a second mirror was just himself, dull and uniform, cascading into history. He’d heard rumours about this place- it wasn’t a secret anymore- but those who came here seemed to be holding an access card to something he’d never quite believed possible.

Outside the doorway, piles of newspapers lay moldering, rotting and unread, and somewhere far off, a vinyl record spun with a scratch catching it at every turn, an infuriating snatch of music which never reached a crescendo or faded out with the usual hiss and click.

He stepped inside. A group of ten people stood to his left. He caught snippets of conversation. Sport of some sort. They were chatting, giving the low-down on a match, and seemed friendly enough. He considered walking over, but wasn’t quite sure of himself- the language they used was different to the idle chatter of, say, a bar or a railway carriage, and he didn’t want to give himself away.

On the far side of the room, he could see something which looked like a gallery. Hundreds of pictures of sunrises and sunsets, snapshots of glistening cocktails with olives and cherries, and plates heaped with sushi, all pinned to the wall. A crowd of people gathered round the pictures, wrote small comments, and melted into the crowds again.

There were massive screens with multiple facets- reminding him of disco balls- each tiny screen showing a news channel or a sitcom, and many people clustered around pointing, arguing or laughing.

With a jolt, he realised a noise he heard wasn’t coming from the screens, but from a shadowed area in the corner. There was a man sitting next to a woman, but not with her. They were weeping, and he was slapping the floor with his open hand, shouting in between the tears.

Looking away uncomfortably, he felt before he saw the unmistakable electricity of romance. Testosterone. He saw groups of women and men posing and laughing too loudly at each other’s jokes, all the while moving subtly closer. They seemed like wolves, to him, and again he looked away.

In the centre of the room was an ordinary-looking crowd of people. They were passing each other cups of coffee, sometimes giving each other hugs in a familiar way, or opening a bar of chocolate to share. They were talking about dreams, the weather, sleeping in on weekends and the natural progression of stress from Monday to Friday. He saw his friend there, in the middle, and held his breath. If there was any way to get started here, this seemed like the right crowd to do it in. He tapped someone on the shoulder. Hello, he said, I’m Scott. Can I follow you?

Across the room, an angry person screamed incoherently about customer service, and someone else cackled hysterically at their own joke.

He’d finally joined in.

Final Snapshots

2011-03-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

It’s dusty in there. And more spider webs criss-crossing the beams than you’d find at a Halloween party. The air is dry and thick, and seems to absorb the hum of the fluorescent light which sends insects scattering for the cracks so they can plot once more their musical dance of destruction in the papers and objects piled against the walls.

On the floor is a large box. Inside it, I am a child. So are my brothers. Of course, we’re grown up, now, but the hundreds of rectangles in black and white or faded orange Polaroid trap us in permanent youth. There are aunts and uncles, cousins dressed in their best outfits for weddings and lavish Christmas lunches, and pictures of my parents when they were younger than I am now, looking relaxed and tanned on the gravelly beaches of summer holidays.

There’s my pet cat. He’s sitting on a tartan rug, an inscrutable Siamese, forever reclining in a patch of sunlight next to a boy whose skinny legs are capped, predictably, with Wellington boots.

There’s my Dad. I think he’s dancing. His friends are laughing, and holding glasses full of amber liquid. Their sideburns and checked trousers slot them neatly into another decade. There’s Mum. She’s squinting into the camera, the tint on her glasses not quite shielding her eyes from the sun, which is causing the skin on her shoulders on either side of the swimming costume straps to redden.

And then my brothers and I, progressing through school. Wide happy smiles in the early years, attitude and bad hairstyles as teenagers, always posed with our bodies slightly angled, reminding me of missing persons photographs.

Places and people I don’t recall, all having been threaded into our family script, and then discarded or forgotten, as we reinvented ourselves in different countries. Scotland. Canada. England. South Africa. Here.

And there, in the garage, with the boxes of memories and unused tents and golf clubs, the scrabble box with its score sheets telling a tale of winter evenings, and the paintings which didn’t fit in with the décor after moving house, is my mother.

She’s been waiting there for today for over two years. Once a carbon-based life form, now just carbon. Waiting for the request she wrote in the same curly loving script she used to write on birthday cards and letters- Santa’s handwriting, now that I think of it- the request that her ashes be scattered on the sea she’d stare at, walk next to, daydream into. Today she’ll join the waves in a broad swing of our hands, and pause, on the surface, thousands of granules, the sun reflecting off them giving them the same naughty glint she’d get in her eyes when being risqué with her friends.

And she’ll sink, and join the shifting sands, having passed through our fingers and our lives, and I think we’ll hear her voice just once more, whispering, goodbye, Scotty, goodbye John, goodbye Markie Parkie. Goodbye.

Guest Post By Jonah: The Interview

2011-03-14T03:38:00.000-07:00

She was tall, and had a kind but firm voice. I had a little voice inside that was telling me, run, run for your life, but my feel felt heavy inside the blue and green sandals I was wearing, and I knew that she’d catch me very quickly if I tried to escape. She took my by the hand, then, and led me through a massive glass door to a room full of books. I was used to those, they’re called li-berrees

Now, for some time, I have been sitting on chairs. Mastered the art, you could say, so it was with some relief that the chair she showed me was small enough, and made of familiar smooth wood with metal legs.

I was sitting with my head bowed a little. This was an Important Day, but I wasn’t sure why, so I looked up at her through my fringe, instead. She spoke clearly, and asked my age. Ha! I knew that- it wasn’t even a trick question- she seemed happy with my clearly spoken answer. Four! I said, reinforcing it with all fingers (but no thumb) splayed. I knew I was right, and I swung my feet happily as she said yes, and wrote on her paper.

I won’t say too much about the rest. Some of her questions were lost on me- I’d be thinking about all the books on the shelf, or about the muffin I had in my lunchbox, and only hear part of what she said. She’d repeat the questions, though, or ask me something else. I played with my fingers in between the questions, and bounced my thighs on the little chair. I also scratched my ear.

I did get horribly stuck when she showed me some cards. There were pictures on the cards- a man standing in different poses and positions next to a, a, a, well, a banging thing. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of it. A blow-up. That was it! But she didn’t hear what I said. I got a little confused, then, and muddled up my answers. But, I’m a clever boy, so, when she said “cannon” I pretended that that’s what I’d been saying all along, and she seemed not to notice.

After a few more questions, she made me do a dreadful jigsaw which was badly cut and didn’t fit together nicely, and then asked me to draw a picture of myself.

I’m quite proud of my artistic abilities, so, despite having to use crayons, which defy any type of controlled drawing, I created a masterpiece of expressionist art. It was supposed to be OF me, but I chose to rather represent the INNER me, and gave ME a huge purple body and powerful feet at the end of the tallest legs I could fit onto the page. I’d forgotten to leave space for eyes and a mouth and so on, but the overall effect was impressive.

My mom and dad seemed happy with what I’d done, so I guess it can’t have been too bad. I overheard them afterwards saying how great it was that I’d been accepted into Grade R for next year. I was proud of myself too, but forgot about it straight away. I needed-no- deserved- that muffin in my lunchbox, and licked my lips in anticipation.

A Sad Story About Branding

2011-03-09T07:07:00.000-08:00

There was a wide plain and a small hill separating her from the barn, but she could hear much of what was going on. She was nervous, the dry grasses of the semi-desert offering little comfort as she stumbled over the rocky orange soil.

She heard the baying and mooing, the other cows being eased into formation by men with sticks. The sticks had been made from saplings, bent and twisted into knots, so that when cut down and smoothed, the wood formed a perfect knobkerrie. The men swung their sticks and occasionally swiped at the flanks of the beasts they guided- not too rough, just enough to keep them going in the same direction.

But the cows knew. They tended to follow one another out of habit, swinging their hips as their massive heads bobbed up and down. It was rare that one became separated from the herd, and rarer still that one should be able to escape completely.

She'd not meant to escape, but had sensed something in the air that morning. The trucks had arrived earlier than usual, and there seemed to be more humans shouting and making loud jokes in the yard outside the farmhouse. They'd clinked steaming metal mugs of coffee together, and smoked cheap cigarettes they pulled from behind their ears.

She'd seen the fires being stoked, and knew at once that this was unusual. In the late summer, it wasn't necessary to have fires at all, except for cooking. The smells of the braais had always bothered her, but really, it was the smoke that set off primal alarms. Fire. The threat of being caught in the wrong place as the whole veld turned shades of orange and black was her worst fear. She'd seen it, once- thankfully avoided it, but watched a calf struggling to get out of a ditch, and being engulfed in the inferno.

The fires, then, were unusual.

She'd watched the men approaching, more of them than normal, and had sunk to her knees behind a small thorn tree. The two younger men who normally guided them to the greener patches and watched them from the shade of rocks or bushes had gone to greet the new arrivals. It was only midday, but they'd started to swing their sticks and herd the cows towards the white buildings in the valley.

She'd almost stopped breathing, then, the hot air steaming out of her wide nostrils and the sun burning down on her rusty brown hide. They'd been in such a hurry, they hadn't noticed she was missing. Cows tend to move together and don't wander off, as a rule.

She could see some tension from her fellows in the herd as they headed off, baying into the dust cloud of their own making.

And later, when she rocked to her feet, she could see everything that was going on down below. And felt chilled to her marrow.

Her family was being herded into a small enclosure- a rough wooden fence which she'd noticed often- and then, one by one, held still as a very big human sized them up. He'd reach into the heart of the fire, and grasp the red hot implement, swing it around and press it to her herd-mate's haunches.

Even from the hill she could hear the sizzle as the metal burned home. She watched the other cows buck uselessly against the hands holding them down, and then stand absolutely still. She sensed that they were in pain, could smell it on the breeze as they defecated while they waited, and still she hid.

All night she stood in the cold, afraid to move, afraid to eat or drink.

The sun eventually rose, shimmering off the dew which had settled overnight and exposing the valley again. She was tired and felt heavy. There was activity in the farmhouse, and then she saw the dust cloud starting out across the plain towards her

After a time, the herd was close by. As close as they had been when she'd slipped away yesterday. She stretched her aching feet and hobbled closer. Every single one of her fellows was marked by fire, a strange symbol which made her feel uneasy. Afraid. As she approached, they looked at her, the redness still showing in their heavy-lashed eyes

She struggled to tell them what she'd seen, how she felt, and how sad she was that they'd been through such pain, but they all just turned away.

They'd all been branded, and she'd be set apart, forever.

Sex and the City and the Forest

2011-03-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

Oddest advice about sex I ever received? A friend's father to me, when I was heading out, aged sixteen: Don't f*ck up your life for something that looks like a dead pig's eye.

A dead pig's eye? Seriously?

But this isn't about that.

It's about not having to think about dead eyes or anything else repellent.

In the forest you can lose yourself inside your head. Hiking through a carpet of leaves, hearing nothing but the drone of crickets and the chirping of invisible birds, you can go places in your head you could never access while sitting in your room. The forest stamps your thought-passport with an open-ended visa to drift across space and time and refresh a mind cauterised by routine and familiarity

There are people there, usually, walking their dogs or going for a run. Sometimes you'll see a rider on a horse, stepping aside to let it pass, chestnut flanks shimmer in the sunlight which pokes through the canopy. They'll nod to you, or greet you in a way which reminds you of the way neighbours used to say hello- slightly formal but friendly. Mostly, you're alone.

Some of my favourite forests are the ones which skirt the mountain here in Cape Town. There are seams and pleats of rivers and waterfalls, sometimes slight brown trickles, sometimes gushes of nature which batter the ferns and mosses which have grown too bold on their banks during the cooler autumn months.

There are the pines: You squint up- they tilt into the whiteness of the sun, at angles which seem to defy gravity- and of course, the angles often do- the wind whisks them out of the soft sand and fells them more cleanly than the saws which are threatening to remove them from the slopes. The pines will be gone one day. But for now you can gather any cones not gnawed by the skittish squirrels, or sit on the fallen ones- perfect benches- when you need to catch your breath.

There are more open patches where wild flowers flirt with the big black bees and the drunken butterflies, and the fynbos has stretched phoenix feathers after the fire. The scents are subtle- not the obvious cloud of perfume you'd get in a garden, but an undertone of something rich and herbal, dense and living.

A rock is a sun-bed for a lizard, who seems to look away when you pass, but he's actually just angling his face to get a better view of you. He's like those old Mediterranean guys you see in in art movies- grizzled and contemplative, feeding off the sun and the heat.

You sit again in the shade of an oak tree- not planted, but rather the result of a randomly dropped acorn a century ago, and allow your mind to unthink. No more anxiety. A break from the loops of pressure, deadlines, commitments, failures. Instead, you look out over the other trees below, and the parts of the city you can see but not hear through the trees, and enjoy the solitude.

That's a whole lot better than thinking about a dead pig's eye, wouldn't you say?

Open Letter to the Squidlets

2011-02-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Dear James, Hannah and Jonah,

Guys, I want to tell you something. Maybe a few things. Things that I sometimes whisper to you when you’re asleep, things that I think when you’re not around, and things you couldn’t possibly know I’m thinking. Or maybe you do.

First off, I love all three of you. There. That’s not going to change. You’re all so different, and changing faster than I can keep up, but even though I get distracted with making sure you guys are all bathing, eating and not beating each other up, I love you. Yes, I shout. More than I want to. And yes, sometimes I have to say “no” to you, but that doesn’t change the simple fact: I love you.

Love’s a pretty important part of life. No, man, I don’t mean the snogging that you aren’t supposed to see (and that makes you embarrassed) if you accidentally (on purpose) turn on the TV when the soapies are showing- not that love- I mean real love- that you are part of somebody’s life, and they are part of yours. You’re an extension of me. That might sound a little self-absorbed, but I can’t imagine a life without you. So there you have it: I may find it hard to express between stopping you from calling each other “doofus-head” or “monkey-face”, or while I’m checking to see that you’re not putting your dirty socks back on, but in case you ever doubt it: I love you.

I wish that I could be there all the time- sometimes it feels like you guys are a trapeze act, and I want to be your safety net, and that’s ok, but sometimes I have to trust that you’re learning how to swing, how to catch and even how to fall safely. I underestimate you. One of the best parts of watching you all growing up is when I see you doing something I’d never have thought was possible, whether it’s making a wise choice or managing to colour within the lines. Then I wonder at how you made that leap, and I feel like a spectator to something awesome.

Awesome. Yeah, that word gets tossed around more than fries in a fryer at McDonalds, but I do get caught dead in my tracks sometimes and go: Wow. These kids are awesome. That’s exactly how it should be. You teach me how to be impressed.

You also help me to understand my own fragility as a person, but also my strengths. I know that much of what we do is a response to our environments, a reaction to events and situations, and that can be a little scary when we can’t control it, but being your dad has shown me that I can be responsible. Sometimes. You’ve also helped to turn a microscope onto my frailties- my moods, temper, lack of self-control, and I hope that I’ve learned a little more about how to be a better person. I’m sorry- sometimes I do lose my cool- and I hope that you all understand that it doesn’t change the fact that I love you- not one little bit.

But I do want you to know that you are all incredible people. You’re not grown up quite yet, and you have lots to learn, but you’re so full of possibilities: gifts, talents, future. What a privilege to be a witness to that.

So don’t let other people mess with your confidence. When there’s teasing going on, keep telling yourself that you are bigger than that. Don’t listen to haters, and avoid cynicism. I know you all have a sense of humour, and that helps. I love seeing you laugh. Best feeling. Being able to laugh will chase away so many clouds. Promise.

I could go on and on, but I know you have short attention spans, so perhaps I’ll save some for another letter. Just wanted you guys to know I’m cheering you on, and loving you to bits.

Love, Dad.xxx

When I grow up, I want to be a gateau.

2011-02-26T04:09:00.000-08:00

I remember peeling the corrugated paper off the bottom to reveal the soft sponge below- slightly paler than the rest of the thing- the colour of straw or the hair of a toddler after a long summer in the sun. This was after chipping the icing off the top- wait- and that was after plucking the damp sweet from the centre of it. It was a complicated affair, eating a cupcake.

Most parties when I was a kid involved sitting in some friend’s lounge, the furniture shoved to the perimeter of the area giving it the feel of a dentist’s waiting room- sometimes shrouded in sheets to protect the already-stained upholstery. The adults would be hunched over, hands on their knees, trying to coax the guests into having a blast at pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, or musical statues. It was in the Midlands of England, and most often the party would be held indoors to avoid the rain.

Next to the kitchen, there’d be a table with paper plates and some trays covered with the kind of food only someone under the age of ten would enjoy: iced biscuits, cups of jelly, sweets in bowls and huge mounds of orange crisps. Some parents would do savouries, too: pretzels, buttered slabs of gingerbread, and cocktail sticks with squares of cheddar and wedges of pineapple impaled on them. Mostly, the sweet stuff would vanish fast.

But it’s the cupcakes I remember. Heaps of them. Some parents iced them neatly with water icing, and some stuck closely to their home economics classes and used perfectly measured butter icing. I never got tired of planning how to eat them, or choosing which one would be the best. Would the chocolate vermicelli be as satisfying as the miniscule crunch of a silver ball? Choices.

If the parents had had enough time, and they were wise, they’d have made at least two per guest. Then you could eat one as if you’d just returned from an expedition to the jungle- guzzle it down whole- the icing squeezing out of the corners of your mouth, and the sponge melting into one dry, sweet mouthful. I don’t remember if perhaps one parent had used rice paper cups, but form then on, I’d eat the paper, too, chewing it if it wasn’t edible until it was just a wad of soggy paper, and spitting that discreetly into a bin (or a pot plant).

The parties would be loud and over-organised- the kids would have to line up to do this, crowd around to do that, and the only time we’d really relax is when we could eat. And we ate. By the time the birthday cake came out at the end, most likely decorated to suit the birthday boy/girl’s tastes, we’d already had enough. Mostly, the big cake would get dissected but remain uneaten, to get squashed into a mess wrapped in a paper towel on the way home.

It’s the cupcakes I remember: Small pretenders to the cake throne, but always usurpers when it came to satisfaction.

The Happy Story of Piles

2011-02-22T05:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve got piles. Before you wince and discreetly pass me a tube of Preparation H®, I don’t mean piles-piles, I mean piles. Things that gather in corners and teeter and tilt like Dr Seuss creations. Papers using a vertical archival system understood only by me and that crazy old woman at the end of the road- you’ve probably got one of those, too- she’s got newspapers piled on top of newspapers, back issues dating to the point when newspapers were hand chiseled on tablets by whip-scarred slaves. She has cats slinking over her crocs® to get to food bowls which haven’t had a good scouring since, well, ever. One of those people. She’s wears some sort of gown/robe that doubles as pyjamas and clothing. If you were to slip in close, and give a sniff, you know exactly how she’d smell. An earthy mixture of potting soil with the sharp tang of newly chopped onions. Irish stew. That’s it. She’d smell like Irish stew.

I don’t smell like any sort of casserole or wear crocs or collect newspapers. I don’t have cats- not that being a cat-person prejudices you towards being domestically disadvantaged, but if I did, they’d be lost in the piles along with my birth certificate and a medal I once received for extreme bravery. Ok, the medal was essentially for attendance, but, since it doesn’t actually exist any more, that’s not too serious. The corners are stacked high with miscellaneous objects I was loathe to throw in the bin.

Last year I spoke to someone who said that your living environment is a reflection of your inner state. In which case, mine is mostly neat, but with pockets of mayhem. If someone should remove a strategically placed object or paper, the piles threaten to cascade down and carpet even the tidy bits. That happened briefly last year, but I carefully managed to throw out so many useless things that I was almost clean. Still am. It makes sense, really- half the challenge of cleaning is positioning everything so that it’s easier to maintain. And the fewer things you have to position, the better. So you designate places where it’s acceptable to have some accumulation, and keep others free.

One trick: Don’t let the stuff pile up above your head. Once you do, the potential for smothering is enormous. Keep the piles low and maneuverable, keep everything mobile, so you can shift it or get rid of it entirely if possible.

I like some clutter, though. Can’t help it, with the kids, for a start. I enjoy finding their old drawings or toys, and recalling some happy moments. I like the clutter K leaves- the feminine accoutrements which give the bathroom a homely feel- don’t get me wrong- she’s a tidy person- but there are bottles and tubes of stuff I’d never have had on my own, and it’s part of what makes me feel safe here. It would be disturbing, to me, to have the pristine minimalism of an architectural journal illustration around me instead of books gathering dust, and a couple of plates in the sink. A stray doll hiding under the couch. A lego block which makes your eyes water when you stand on it in the bathroom. Some of what makes up a home will always be mess.

It’s the lego blocks inside my head that keep me from just settling into routine- every time I step on one, it’s an awakening. A reminder that while routine can help to produce inner calm and order, a sprinkling of chaos helps to keep things slightly risky- anything could happen.

They’re my piles, and I know what’s in them. And they know what’s in me.

Edward: A Fiction

2011-02-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

What became of Edward, I thought, as I leaned into the doorway. Poor bear. These days thoughts like these slipped into my head the way a streetkid shimmies through a space carelessly left in a warehouse window. It wasn’t that I’d seen a bear like Edward in a long time. Last time was over a schoolgirl’s shoulder on the computer, before the librarian coughed loudly and slid her eyes towards the door with an expression looking like it had been etched there with sleet. The computer bear had startled me- was almost exactly the same shade of baby-blond that Edward had been, same green glass eyes with the huge pupils that seemed to take in the whole room with their hypnotic stare. Anyway, the computer bear had been a while back. A year? Five? I wasn’t too clear on time any more. But tonight, Edward had lumbered into my thoughts again, a clumsy visitor, like a nervous young pastor visiting an ancient parishioner in a hospital- there, but you could tell he’d rather be somewhere else- perhaps sneaking a small glass of sherry in his study. Edward and I had been inseparable for a while. He’d followed me in and out of the foster homes; my comforter. He’d only been a teddy bear, mute, paralysed, but it had seemed at the time as though we were conspirators in my activities. The foster parents were generally quite patient, unless I bothered their own children, and knew better than to separate me from my bear. Edward had watched me with his steely glass glare the first time I sucked the white cloud from the filter of a stolen cigarette, and he hadn’t said a thing. He’d smelt a little like smoke from then on, but with undertones of other scents from the past. I swear, if you closed your eyes, you could hold him to your nose and inhale my entire history. The stench of unchanged nappies, the food which was left to dry on my chin as I dozed off on borrowed couches and floors. He’d soak up the wet rings left by the empty wine glasses, and carry with him the woody smell of the finished vintages. He slept with me at my cheek, his stitched nose nuzzling me where the scars healed on top of each other. He kept me safe from dreams, when the noises in the night were those of hissed or shouted arguments and toppling vases or coffee mugs. Edward watched over me always. And now, I wondered where he’d gone. He’d nudged me awake in the reformatory, and even been tucked into the satchel I packed when I thought I’d do something right for once and joined the army. He wasn’t here now. Or was he? I’d lost track of things recently. I’d be certain that I’d done something, or been somewhere, only to find myself lying aching in the same doorway, in the same position. Maybe I’d dreamed of those things- Edward wasn’t there to keep my head clear when I slept. But the years of drinking the cheapest wine in the darkest places had made me a little unsure of what was true. I patted myself down. Thought maybe I had a cigarette in one of my pockets. I knew I didn’t actually have one, but in one of the jackets I was wearing, it was possible I may find something else to take my mind off the cold wind. Smoking didn’t have the same satisfaction it had once had for me: Nowadays, if someone gave me one, assuming that people who live in doorways enjoy smoking, I’d choke it down, and struggle to catch my breath. Maybe that was it. I smiled a little, as I thought of him: Edward would know what to do. He’d lean over and stare into my eyes. His lipless mouth would touch my ears. Breathe, dammit, breathe, he’d rasp, over and over again. Breathe, dammit, breathe.

Assault In Memory Lane

2011-02-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

The problem with taking a trip down memory lane is that you can’t control the route. Doesn’t matter what kind of satellite system you use, which maps you consult- memory lane has a mind of its own.

Sometimes it’s a cul-de-sac: you try and steer it towards something you want to revisit, but no matter how much you try and divert the kerb stones, or pile on more tarmac, it just peters out. There may even be a big prohibitive sign proclaiming NO ROAD BEYOND THIS POINT, or a little aluminium barrier; point is- you can’t take that chain of thought any further.

I don’t like it much at all.

Memories seem to take on a life of their own. A little like visiting the quaint rural cottage where you spent your formative years, only to find it replaced with a dog food production plant. You try and remember situations as they were: the people, the places, and yet you can usually only recall parts of the route. Erosion must have digested the rest.

In memory lane, there are too many dark doorways. You head off, skipping happily as you remember how you used to eat those icecreams with the flake stuck in them on summer holidays as a child, when, BLAM- an unrelated memory jumps out of a doorway and mugs you. It doesn’t ask politely if it can take over your head for a moment, it assaults you. When the violation is over, you wonder if it’s possible to remove memories permanently. Sometimes, you don’t even want to go down that stretch of memory lane, but you can’t help yourself, and whole gangs of muggers batter you senseless, and all the while you lie there helpless.

Program the setting to Happy Day, ten years ago, and you find yourself plummeting over a cliff, fumbling for glimpses of the past- brittle roots which snap off in your hands as you head for the cruel rocks below.

There are plenty of things I wish I could forget. Things I did, things I regret. Things that happened to me over which I had no control.

So. What to do?

Well, for me, memory lane is under construction. It’s got tape around it at the moment, and isn’t quite ready for heavy traffic, but every day with my friends, family and especially my children and K, I’m creating new side roads, special pavements, fresh views and, with time, it’ll be a place I will come to often.

I don’t want to live in the past, but I do want to create a past worth remembering.

Everywhere

2011-02-10T23:17:00.000-08:00

There’s a gentle rain falling outside, but you don’t mind; for once, you don’t have laundry on the line. The car needed a bit of a rinse, and the garden was becoming too many shades of brown. It’s a summer rain, so there’s the promise of warm weather, maybe even as soon as tomorrow, and you probably won’t even have to put on an extra layer of clothes. That’s how love feels.

There’s a pot shivering on the stove top as its contents bubble quietly, and a cold glass dropping beads of water onto the counter top- the way you do when you sidestep out of the shower. Two plates say a dozen sentences to each other: We’re not alone/we share food/we’re about to eat/we have each other. They continue murmuring as you try the lights, dimming them first, then brighter again. Finally, you grab a couple of candles, and set them up in a way that they’ll glow and send reflections off all the right places without causing any glare.

The house isn’t completely tidy. You wouldn’t welcome TV cameras in to tell you about disinfectants at this point, nor would you ask an estate agent to come and put it on show, but there’s something warmer about it. The magazine on the floor over there is a clue to someone’s interests and passions. The two coffee cups at the sink are a reminder of a shared moment, as is the empty wine bottle next to the back door. There’s more laundry to do in the basket in the bathroom, next to where toothbrushes lean casually against each other. There’s even half a sandwich in the fridge-well, nearly half. A small hollow bite mark where a mouth had been is further evidence of a shared space.

The bed’s made up. It’s one of those things you both enjoy: making up the bed, and being able to climb into it at the end of the day, disturbing the flat landscape with your bodies’ hills and valleys. It’s such a companionable place. Not just for the physical intimacy, but the conversations that went on until the cars outside stopped driving past, then countless cups of coffee laughed over when you both woke- feeling tired but happy. You’ve asked questions of each other which nobody else has ever asked, and blushed as you shared dreams and ideas.

If you look out the front window, you can see the world passing by, people in delivery trucks, grown men on bicycles pushing newspapers into letterboxes. Women balanced like scales with shopping bags, and school kids in noisy groups, laughing too hard at each other’s foolishness. The rain has dried up, and there’s a little steam rising off the road, some leaves sliding down the gutters to the storm drains. A plastic bag is lifted by a gust into the air, suddenly, and wheels about. It’s joined by a second one, and they head off down the street, over the houses, dancing and rolling over each other, carefree as they head for somewhere else to play.

That’s what love feels like. To me.