the ’sham

A free-form Haiku episode, three sentences.

And a contribution from my brother: Bert Newton’s brush with Petersham.

Listen in here. [2min, 1mb, mp3]

Read the original blog entry here.

I drift inexorably towards my conclusion. I trust less and less the prediction made by Caroline the op-shop lady. Back in early April, she assessed my personality, and judged that I “function better by working towards a deadline”. But here we are, with only two days to go ’til my exhibition, and I’m still blundering about like Mr Ryder, the pianist in Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled.

The entire time I’ve been working on the ’sham, I’ve been reading this novel. And I feel like it’s had some powerful yet subtle influence over my writing, not to mention the way I move through time and space in the suburb. In The Unconsoled, Mr Ryder arrives in an unspecified European city. He’s a famous pianist, and is booked in to do some sort of presentation on “Thursday night”. Trouble is, everyone seems to know what he’s supposed to be do except Ryder himself. Worse still, it appears he’s agreed to countless minor appointments between “now” and Thursday - none of which he can recall. He rushes, flustered and irritated, to make each meeting, only to be waylaid en route by someone who has been expecting him somewhere else. In fact, he should have been at that encounter more than half an hour ago. And so on. Each journey bifurcates, and every subsequent path is itself diverted… After four hundred and thirty seven pages (I’m not yet at the end!) Ryder still hasn’t arrived at Thursday night.

In novel time, less than three days have passed. But for me, it’s been more than fifty days. And although most of my days in Petersham have been nowhere near as frustrating as Ryder’s, to a certain extent I share his feeling, that I’m not quite master of my own destiny. And even more: the absurd sense that the looming deadline is somehow rather meaningless. In my case, all the more so, since my exhibition is going to take place in Camperdown. And still, I allow time to wash over me, moving me closer to the end.
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Just after two, Reuben arrived. I was checking my lettuces. Some of them have been eaten by snails. They’re so vulnerable in that way.

I made us coffee, and while we were drinking it, I proposed we make the flan/pudim which has been the focus of much speculation lately.

Inside the cardboard box was a tiny sachet containing a pinkish powder. We emptied it into a bowl, added what seemed to be a lot of sugar, then a drizzle of milk to make a runny paste. Immediately, the powder mixture turned the colour of egg yolk. But at least it dissolved pretty well. When the milk was hot enough on the stove, Reuben trickled in the paste while I stirred and took a photo. It began to look like custard, and took on a kind of eggy smell. We poured the resulting solution into two round takeaway containers, whacked em in the fridge, and went out for a walk.
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Rain starts to fall in heavy drops. The cats slink back inside, fur plastered down. I put aside my coffee and stand in the doorway, smiling benificently at my lettuce seedlings.

Two ginger cats in the house now. We keep trying to get them to meet and work out their differences. But whenever Drazic comes inside, Ruben hides under the bed. And on the odd occasion when Ruben ventures out into the kitchen, Drazic gracefully absents himself to the garden. This has been going on for four days.

*

After seven, Roberta called me up. Was I still coming over? The Petersham Bowling and Community Club had been shortlisted to host an ABC radio show with James O’Louglin. Along with the other contestants, Roberta was booked in to do a live pitch on air. James was then going to announce the winner immediately. Some club people were gathering at Roberta and John’s to drink a drop of champagne and lend support. I got out of the bath where I’d been languishing, and made my way over to Brighton Street, stopping for some hot and very salty chips from Silvas to line my stomach in preparation for the booze.
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OK, here’s what I do.

I wake up really early every morning, make myself a strong black coffee using the aluminium stovetop percolator, and I boot up the computer. In my dream like state, the words just flow out of me, my fingers machine-gunning the keyboard until all of my memories from yesterday are vomited up into the blog. This process takes about an hour, and then I’m free to go about the day however I please.

Hmm. That’s the theory at least.
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