LUMEN

Snapshots

Anoushka

Anoushka stands in front of her bike. It’s red. It has a high gloss finish. It has improbably white tires. They don’t have an ounce of dirt or grime on them. Then again, neither does the pavement on which they rest. This is Lucerne, Switzerland. Pop 57,890. The pavement is the colour of a cold fur seal, perhaps a little more blue. It is strewn with the occasional leaf. Although the light that falls upon Anoushka, upon her bike, upon the pavement, is cold you can tell it is spring in Lucerne. The leaves strewn on the pavement are still green.

The tips of Anoushka’s hands are tucked into the front pockets of her jeans. She has only dipped the tips of her fingers in. Her thumbs rest on the raised seams of her pockets. Her hands look as if they are buried from the knuckle down. Her shoulders sit square with the ease of resolution. There is power in her shoulders. Her collar is popped a little. Her shirt is crisp. Crisp in its colours, red and white. Crisp in its substance, a cotton blend. It is crisp in its tailored masculinity. The top buttons of shirt are left open, revealing a tattoo that bursts up from her sternum like a heart in bloom. The tattoo falls short of her collar bone. I want to look at it more but she’ll think I’m looking at her breasts. Her breasts are everything they should be. Her shirt is fastened across her breasts, falling short of the possibility of exposure. In this way she is flirtatious. She is a thousand promises whispered in hot breath against the neck.

Her hair falls in straight warm shocks around her face, framing it as curtains do a stage. Her dark eyebrows betray the fact that she dies her hair that shade of cider held to the light. Her mouth is pursed into an almost smile. The apples of her cheeks are prominent. Like pillows. Her eyes are deep-set, the lids hooded and heavy. I could not say what colour her eyes are. Her nose reminds everyone of a button. Her lips are a worn shade of red yet they still manage to sing of the bike and the stripes and checks of her shirt. The red lines on her shirt suggest containment. Her shirt suggests structure, containment, practicality, consideredness. So do the black ballet flats on her feet, the neat mid-blue jeans hugging her hips, her thighs. Anoushka likes colour coordination. But I know she only uses these things to heighten the pleasure she takes in being none of these things.

I can tell this from the way she has leant back a little, still very upright. Her back is effortlessly straight. She transfers her weight onto her right foot. Her left foot is placed on an angle in front of her, in the same way starlets pose for photographs on the red carpet. She probably learnt to dance at a ballet academy. She probably mastered those considered movements while yearning for something else, looking out onto paved streets lined with trees. 

I can tell from the way she has pursed her mouth and plunged her hands into her pockets that she contains containment. It does not contain her. It’s in the way her thumbs, which are long and strong, press down purposefully on the raised seams of her pockets. Also, her pockets are shallow. Anoushka is as considered, as intentional, as impulsive brushstrokes bursting forth across an expressionist painting. I consider asking to take more than her picture. She is almost smiling. 

Mav

Mav’s eyes are focussed, uncertainly, into the mid-distance. His arms are raised into the air above his head. His head is covered in a cable-knit beanie with a peak. It is the colour of the soft underside of a fern. In this moment his chin rests on a plaid cotton scarf. He found the scarf in a room in a hotel in Cambodia, 5 km from where he was born. His leather jacket contains within it all the competing shades of a crème brulee. It bunches up to meet the scarf and his chin. Mav likes crème brulee. When he is done with one he rests his spoon on his nose and impersonates a koala.

His mouth is smiling. His head is dipped. His eyes are raised, staring off into the mid-distance. Things are moving fast around Mav. Car lights on the street blur and buzz. You can see his cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket. He is never without them. Mav rolls his own. They reveal themselves to you as a hint of blue from the pouch of his pocket.

Mav is flash frozen in a moment of movement. His trip has just kicked in. His hands have moved towards the warm dark of the sky as if of their own accord, as if in accord with the laughter that is brewing within him. Mav likes to cut loose.

He can see the smudged domes of Angkor Watt reflected upside down in a pool thick with water lilies. He is in Lucerne, Switzerland, pop. 57,890, staring into a puddle. But his mind is in Cambodia.

Mav is the only surviving child of his parents. They survived something much like a holocaust. In 1979 his parents took him to France. Once I have taken this picture I will ask Mav if his parents have been back to Cambodia since they left. He will tell me they will never go back. How could they? 

Wow and Flutter

Recollections of a Stereolab concert.

The sun has started to set on another warm day in Melbourne by the time you arrive to meet your friend on Spring Street. You sit outside Con Christopoulis’s City Wine Shop with a view to the pavement, to the suit-clad passers by and similarly clad patrons. A steady stream of traffic, trams and cyclists trickles out of the city. Slowly you work your way through the bottle of wine and the cheese your friend has ordered while catching up on topical events in X Ray research and pizza sales. You discuss dreams of doctoral research, latent and realised. And where you were when you first heard this band.

With the contents of the bottle of comfortably ingested, and the sun’s attention solicitously turned to the other side of the globe, you wander through warm, lazy night streets. Together your feet tap out a rhythm, they skat and hum/ skat and hum. They bear you forward, buoyant, to see the band. This is anticipation.

As you arrive at Billboard, the venue where the band will be playing tonight, you are greeted by a swarm of teenagers from the outer suburbs. They wear t-shirts which punctuate the pavement, a coagulation of exclamation marks. They shout and squabble with each other. Their bawdy attempts at self-aggrandizement are as loud as their t-shirts. Neon light spills onto the footpath, it bathes bouncers dressed in black in a wave of overexposure. You blink, shocked out of your reverie, like a doe caught in headlights. A collision. Sensory overload.

You wonder whether this is the right place. The bouncers assure you you are in the right place. They direct you downstairs, where you dutifully hand over your tickets and are informed by Neil (aging barfly, die-hard music aficionado, and tonight’s entertainment manager) of the state of the crowd. His communique is something neither of you manage to catch. He mutters. It’s loud. You smile and sidle past.

Inside, the venue is awash in young men and women who look like they’ve escaped from the set of French New Wave film or, for that matter, any art school party you ever attended from 1998 – 2004. People mill around through an oddly styled mise en scene of chrome and mirrors. They sip beer from plastic cups and politely observe other’s personal space. A tall, familiar face pops out from the crowd gathering by the bar. It’s Marty. You exchange greetings.

“Hey Marty,”

“Jenna! Hey!” From what you have noticed, Marty only ever greets in exclamation.

“How’s life with a wallet again?”

“Amazing!!” You check his pupils for signs of unusual dilation. None present. He is not on drugs. He is just very excitable tonight, as are so many.

You spend more time than you would like deflecting beatitudes and thanks, re-tracing the Bacchanalian excesses of the Big Day/ Night Out and the after party that never ended. The conversation has begun to bore you and you start to smile and nod feigning thoughtfulness while tuning out this monologue down memory lane. Behind Marty a screen flashes images of bands that will play over the coming weeks, each more horrific than the other. There is more black eyeliner and bad-taste than you could shake a stick at. You see how this venue is commercially viable. Anything goes as long as there is cash and a crowd in it.

Marty snaps you back into the conversation with mention of Edward Said.

“’Orientalism’ Edward Said?” you enquire.

“Yes. Amazing,” he replies. Now you wish you had been paying attention.

Movement on stage seems to indicate the band is about to go on. The images of bad, though presumably successful, Goth, metal and R n B bands fade to black. You move towards the stage as the jittery convulsions of ‘Percolator’[1] leach out into the room. A distinctively Stereolab sound is being built layer upon layer. It swells and steeps in what is now a fertile space.

Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier founded Stereolab in 1990, amassing vintage keyboard instruments – a Moog synthesiser, Vox and Farfisa Organs – guitars, a trombone, xylophones, glockenspiels, and Sadier’s beguiling French vocals. They set about blending 1950s – 1960s style lounge music with experimental pop, while also revealing a penchant for the repetitive ‘motorik’ beat of 1970s Krautrock. Their efforts were soon rewarded when they were one of the first bands to which the term ‘post-rock’ was applied. Lilting vocals, layering and looping are combined to produce a mesmerising effect. When you listen to Stereolab like this, live, you are transfixed, held in a space where there is no thought, just sound and your smile. (In time, this effect will dull and wear off. You will be left in a semi-soporific state, not unlike the state you find yourself in when listening to the rehashing of old events or conversations already had. This is the thing with Stereolab. It does get boring after a while. But for now you are a bit bewitched). You are drawn backwards in time to John Street, Ponsonby. It seems like a lifetime ago… Auckland. 2004. You sit at a beaten up dining room table with Tom MacFarlane. He is 4 years old, covered in green felt tip pen and seated on your lap. Enfolded in your arms, he wriggles around and presses his head into your neck. He asks you with an odd combination of coyness and matter-of-factness “Jenna, is magic real?” In the kitchen, Tom’s favourite song of the moment, Stereolab’s Baby Lulu, is playing…[2] Your answer tonight is as much “Yes” as it was five years ago. Music moves you like no other thing you know. It is visceral. It wraps itself around you, resonates within every cell, every cell a store room for luminous memories, every cell processing a current, converting the current into a smouldering glow. You look around the room and see others immersed in, presumably, the same joy and state of connection to happy memories, smiling, dancing. We are like five year olds again. A room full of Generation Y gambols and sways in suspended animation. ‘French Disko’ elicits expressions of elation. Some people hoot and whistle. Other’s mouths are open, agape. Most people here are awed and silenced, surprised by how many old songs are being played tonight.

Sadier’s hands hover around her stomach, her back is straight, belying a background of classical training. Her hands, fingers spread wide, flap and move like doves. Her performance is straightforward yet entirely idiosyncratic. Sometimes she clenches her fists when she dances, it looks awkward.

Someone is missing from tonight’s concert. Mary Hansen, an Australian addition to the band, who joined Stereolab in 1993 and sang backing vocals, played guitars, keys and percussion until 2002. On December 9, 2002 Hansen was tragically killed in a cycling accident. Even though the stage is full with musicians and equipment, it seems like there is a space where Hansen should be. An apologetically drunk girl spills beer down your back and then again on your shoes, as a kind of afterthought. A finale, if you will. You hover in a state of indecision for a millisecond as to how you will respond to this development. You smile at her. You turn to your friend and you laugh. Looking at your feet makes you realise your white shoelaces are glowing in the dark. You have an overwhelming feeling that you are grateful to be here. You smile and dance and listen to the band. There is only the wow and flutter of a super falling star.[3]

[1] Percolator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eKUAO1jE3k

[2] Baby Lulu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfA8PiGzVg8

[3] Super Falling Star: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRbe2p_NzLk

Tommy in Things Being Various

I. 

of the room brightly illuminated

of conversation, the shrill soprano

of the girls rising against

of the other two, like three tape recorders

running simultaneously

of everybody outside of their own group

of the scabs and pimples which disfigured cheeks and forehead.

of his body imploring to stay hidden

of the wood came to life and rushed across the floor in dizzy, zig zag lines.

care to dance beautiful vision

of himself and the girl lying in the long grass,

of the sun on their backs.

of nervousness in his stomach;

of her.

of the moon

of his neck.

of the same prototype.

of the hall into the eye-blinding, cheek-flushing gaiety

of the boys turned.

of his arm the seats he meant.

of his throat,

of the sudden wall.

of them oozed herself into a tiny space between

Tommy and the boy next to him.

of her tight, shimmering skirt

of her knees,

of his thoughts,

of his throat.

of his breaking voice.

of the cornered television.

of something to say.

of the boys sitting further down the bench,

of the conversation.

of dancers,

of the dance hall,

II.

of his heels striking the pavement,

of night.

of him,

of others.

of dry leaves nearby coughed hoarsely.

of the trees, the warm black sky

of time and place beyond this earth-rooted existence.

of the moon, and he alone

of the road the river.

of the day purged by the cleanliness of the night.

of the waves glittered,

from a star to a star.

of the street-lamps filtered through the dark,

of the water

of the city, rising and collapsing,

of man-made lighting.

of dirt and grime and pain, 

of sorrow and of lust, 

of disillusionment,

of idealists about to become cynics,

of dry-souled people

of life and living

of football pools and champagne,

baby napkins and theatres

of the other side of the river.

of the green-depthed ocean

of the waves in his body

of the waves in his ears,

of the politics and religions and triviality of people.

of fur at her neck.

third along on the right

of the steps, leaning

of women’s heels.

of the cat.

of loneliness.

of its fur still on his hand,

of the dark air, a grey ship

of the river, and a cabin light leaped into life.

One brain could not be entirely original.

of the long, coiling road

Revelation, we

I had a dream

That I awoke on the eve of the Apocalypse,

Overcome by a need to buy a maternity bra.

I heard Bukowski,

Standing behind me, say

“Born like this, 

Into this”

So I walked to a department store -

Through dusty streets alive with sirens and

Veins of people, rioting, throbbing like a dirty amphetamine rush -

To find a maternity bra for the Apocalypse

And as I walked I heard Bukowski say,

“Good. They will be rare as hen’s teeth;

We are born like this,

Into this”

And though I could not see him

He raised a weathered fist to his face

And he took a slow drag from a cigarette

Which crackled and spat

And I noticed the sun was indeed masked

By clouds of carbon particles in

A hazy state of visible suspension.

And fires burned dull on the horizon

The Woman

clothed with the sun and the moon at her feet

is in pain to be delivered.

He followed me through those dusty streets

Past cars turned to sleep on their sides

Like children whose parents didn’t know any better

And didn’t care

And I heard him say

“Eve, Mary, Israel.

We are born like this,

Into this”

Until I fell asleep on the street

Hiding, there

Ready to start the next chapter. We

Preface

We rebut with all the hope of the transitive

Action carried from subject to object

Requiring directness to complete meaning(s)

And re-constructions

I’m Like A Lot Of People

I’m like a lot of people

I want what I can’t have.

I’m not talking about fast cars, first class travel,

drugs at 3 o’clock in the morning when work starts at 7,

or a body like Halle Berry’s.

I want you.

I want a thousand tiny magnesium fires

Burning hot and incandescent inside you,

for me.

I want a night ferryman carrying Venetian magic,

vials of Aconite, Rose Absolute, 

and all the precious, distilled scents

of you.

I want to lie in bed, enfolded in your big arms

While you reorder the world, and your stories of it,

Around the night 

you 

met me.

I want the car radio to break

down

stick and

linger

on Al Green’s treacle voice,

Love and Happiness forever on repeat

Sunshine streaming in the window, your smoke rings sneaking out.

I want you to appall me and delight me in equal measure first thing in the morning,

With up-to-the-minute reports of your digestive system

And the morning miscellanea that floats into your mind,

Effervescent flotsam and jetsam.

I want a poem too.

A poem, or a song. I don’t mind. Either would do.

Your thoughts made into music

Setting me

and so many moments

to you.

I want a fibre-optic cable laid under the oceans that separate us,

Communication as instant as text messaging,

As certain as telepathy,

Unlocked, like the internet.

I want to wash away the sins of the world you chose,

To feed you water I’d turn to wine and 

Weed your dark corners

Overgrown with Old Man’s beard and fears like moths you cannot attend.

But I’m like a lot of people.

I want what I can’t have.

So, you build your ship and sail to sadness.

I’ll build a fire on the shore

And watch the waves slap softly against grainy gold,

Your body against my thighs.

These soft breaths fill your sails,

And Sina’s promise.

In your eyes a welkin ocean,

Sea brine and salt air

Stars and songs for navigation

The sturdiness of generations of seafarers.

I saw myself inside of you.

Reflection.

A bone-flute. Ivi ivi.

Skylab 3

I say  Quantum Physics or String Theory?

It’d have to be String Theory you reply.

Above us threads in a spider’s web refract light

Arachne has been weaving her web in the sunshine and solitude of a Pohutukawa.

We raise our hands to the sky

And the webs between our fingers glow a soft shade of Betelguese in Orion.

A Stone Wrapped in Cloth

Simon has a theory of time that looks like a snake biting its own tail. He says everything has already happened. He says time is an illusion. It’s one big joke and we’re the punch line. He says that everything that is going to occur has already occurred. Our lives, the events in the Universe, everything. It’s already happened, we just haven’t arrived there yet.

We are running late. Simon stopped to buy sandwiches around the corner from his office. That put him behind schedule. A hungry young man chases hungry Chronos down cobblestone lanes. He told me he didn’t know what to get, tuna or turkey, so he got both. Simon says they are both super meats, that is why he prefers them. Then it occurred to him that he couldn’t remember if I was still eating meat. I said I was and ate it anyway.

Simon is flustered. He raises a hand to head his close shaved head and runs his hand over it in sweeping circles. He hates being late. He says tardiness is the height of rudeness. He hates to be kept waiting. While he was fretting and hurrying I sat and waited for him at the kitchen bench. I stared out the window to the reserve across the road and the people walking their dogs during the middle of the day. Simon calls it the most boring reserve in the world because nothing ever happens there, apart from the fat Chinese kid’s daily visits. His parents make him run around in circles, grazing the perimeter of the reserve. I think reserves are meant to be boring, other wise they would fill them with lions and wildebeest and call them wildlife parks. I like to watch the fat Chinese kid drag his feet around the reserve and shake his hands above his head and go red in the face from complaining wildly to his thin, immovable parents.

Simon says we should hurry. We could still get there in time. So we hurry down three flights of heavy stairs to the carport. I balance our sandwiches on my knee while we eat in the car. Simon drives with one hand on the wheel, close to one o’clock. Simon usually drives with his hands in the 9 and 3 o’clock position. He says this is the best way to minimize the risk of injury to your arms, hands and fingers in case your airbag deploys. Simon says that good posture is the foundation of good health. Crumbs fall from his mouth as he eats. They land on his suit pants, on his seat, on the floor. Some even find their way on the lip of the dashboard. Simon says he will have to vacuum the car on the weekend.

We aren’t so late and they have kept our appointment. The lady behind the glass screen buzzes us through two sets of doors. Do you think they’re bomb proof? I ask. Simon says they probably are.

Everything has already happened. Our lives, the events in the Universe, everything. We just haven’t arrived there yet.

I fill out forms and pass them back to the lady, through a hole in the safety glass screen. An old Bakelite clock sits on beige textured wallpaper behind her. It ticks and thumps through those form filling minutes. The room is filled with the overbearing smell of hospital grade disinfectant. Simon checks his phone impatiently and jams it in his pocket. Then he shifts his weight onto one leg and runs his hand over his head.

The Hopi believed the first man was made by a woman. In their creation he was made out of clay, the same stuff with which they built their mesas and pueblos. Their language contains no words, grammatical forms or expressions that refer directly to time. The Hopi speak so that the past the present and the future are all one.

My name is called by a woman with a clipboard and Simon and I stand up. Simon places his hand in the small of my back and says I should go first. We have three people to meet. The first two are interviews. The third makes me cry.

In the rainforests of the Amazon, leaves drip liquid drops. Watery prisms the size of pearls invert the world, upside down and back to front as in a camera obscura. There live the Pirahaa. They have a limited, primitive language, or so experts say. They have no past there. When something can no longer be perceived, it simply ceases to exist for them. So it is not talked about. They have no stories.  They only speak of the present.

Simon drives us home, his hands in the 9 and 3 o’clock position. We don’t talk except to fight. He pulls into the carport, turns the keys in the ignition and slams a closed fist against the steering wheel. Simon says I should go upstairs and get in the shower and get myself together. He says he can’t talk to girls when they are hysterical. I stand in the shower and watch a steady stream of water droplets make their way down the shampoo bottle like tears in the rain. The rose of my breasts blooms shades darker. I let the water run so hot it almost burns. The shampoo bottle suggests an infinite loop: Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Simon opens up the bathroom door a fractal and pops his head inside. He smiles and says You’re getting redder than China’s answer to Arthur Lydiard. He knows I love to watch the fat Chinese kid run around the reserve. I laugh and tell him to get in.

Simon says time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. We lie on the grass in the reserve and watch angry clouds advance over a blue sky. It’s that time of the day. The fat child and his parents have made their daily pilgrimage down the hill. I watch them cross the reserve. The kid has no fight in him today. He breaks into a reticent jog, automatically, like a cow at milking time. I watch the progress of his perambulations as Simon explains his theory of time. Simon says it’s just like a giant movie reel. Everything that will happen, every moment, every thought, every action, is already on the reel and when we get there we are just remembering. He says time is the set speed of the universe. 668 miles per hour. 24 frames per second. Nothing more than necessary illusion. I feel dizzy like a little girl on a merry-go-round, to steady myself I run my fingers over the tips of the blades of grass beside me. What if at some point you get disoriented in the loop, forwards and backwards don’t make sense and you walk backwards into the future. What if an effect precedes its cause? Simon says thought experiments are best left to science fiction. Above us the clouds have besieged the blue.

In Hindi there is only one word for both yesterday and tomorrow, the meaning is determined by the context.

Simon says it’s just our Vanity is such that we think we are in control of everything. I think of Rea, secreting little Zeus away to safety and feeding her terrified husband a stone wrapped in cloth, as it starts to rain. We scramble to our feet and hurry across the reserve until Simon slows in the deluge. He slips his arm around me, and squeezes me at the waist before his hand comes to rest on my hip, where other people’s babies sit. Down the far end of the reserve the fat Chinese kid punches his hands into the air with the joy and rapid succession of machine gun fire at a nomad wedding.

In China their Creator, Phan Ku, hatched out of an egg. He carved the sun and the moon and the stars, the world and everything in it with his chisel. He was the size of a giant, grew ten feet a day and lived for eighteen thousand years. When he died his soul and his body became parts of the Earth: lightening, plants and soil.

Dinner time? Simon says. It’s more of an assertion than a question. He has his head in the fridge already. His shirt is stained with rain. I get up from my seat at the kitchen bench. I want plain food. I prepare a pot of water to boil and Simon passes me eggs from the glow and suspended animation of the fridge. I grasp the first white egg with wet hands. Smooth and satiny, it slips out of my hands and hits the floor. It smashes. My eyes start to water and Simon says Don’t think that is relevant.

After dinner we watch TV until we both grow tired of it, then we go to bed. Simon says he hasn’t been the same since the interrupted sleep started. I wake him more times than I care to during the night. I have to go to the bathroom a lot. He bumps me in his sleep and knocks my breasts, making them ache worse than they already did.

Justice pursues the body beyond all possible pain.

In the morning I will wake up and it will be the 13th of February. I will wake before Simon and before the alarm clock. I will lie in bed and listen as the reserve across the road welcomes the first of its visitors for the day. Sunlight will filter through the blinds and show columns of dust particles, dancing. For a few more minutes I will still be the guardian of a new galaxy. Then the alarm will wake Simon and he will stretch and yawn and he will look me hard in the eye and say Get up.