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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Friday arvo. I join Alex at the Livingstone. The Waratahs are already being beaten by the Hurricanes. Alex says the locals are being surprisingly tolerant tonight. They despise rugby union, and resent having it shown on the TV in the pub. (Union’s a toff’s game). Alex explains “ruck” and “maul”. The players put their heads down and mesh together in a ruck, the matrix of muscley men pawing the grass and lurching about like a great twenty-legged beetle. Actually, it’s not bad to watch. Alex knows the names of all the players, and calls out to them in familiar tones, as if they might hear him through the TV set. He asks if I want a drink. “Yeah, how about a shandy?” I ask. “Oh man, I hope none of the locals hear me ordering that!” he says. As soon as the game ends he puts down his red bull and rushes out the door. He’s got to get across to Wooloomooloo. The play he wrote, about AFL, is due to start any minute…
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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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Hi Lucas
Bec mentined you are walking the Petersham border. I would love to join you sometime. Let me know when you plan the next walk. xxSue

Dear Sue
well, I’ve still got the northern border to go. Why don’t you come out sometime and we’ll walk it.
X L

Sue arrived five minutes early. I was just returning from WenChai publications (who are going to print my exhibition flyer) when she showed up on her bike. We drank tea, and I rolled a map out over all the dirty dishes. I don’t think Sue had realised that the northern border of Petersham is, in fact, just Parramatta Road. The boundary between Petersham and Leichhardt runs smack down the middle of Sydney’s great artery (or, as it has been described, varicose vein). I think she was a bit disappointed. Sure, on the surface, it doesn’t look as interesting as all those little variegations, twists and turns and inaccessible fenceline runs which characterise the other three borders. But looks can…well, you know the cliché…
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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.

I’m sitting in my living room, gazing blankly at the computer screen, on the third morning of my Petersham artist in residence in my own neighbourhood. It’s just after nine, and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. About fifty metres away, construction work is going on, grinding pulsing abrasive rasping noises which permeate the house. I feel this noise in my body as much as in my ears. It’s unsettling, irritating, and difficult to ignore. “Luckily,” we live three houses away from the building site. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the folks who live next door. (more…)

Luciana came around about ten. She’s my nearest neighbor, from the flat next door. She’s from Milan, and we speak “recreational” Italian with each other (usually only when the topic of conversation is not too complicated, or we don’t need an urgent resolution to a practical issue). Otherwise its English all the way. Lately, though, I think she has decided that I need the practice, so there’s been more Italian, even when it gets a bit hard-going. Yesterday, for instance, we were convening to write a list for our landlord about security issues. Luciana was broken into last Tuesday. Our next neighbours across, Rachelle and Rob, were burgled on Thursday. Bec and I were cleaned out in early February. The cops said Petersham is being “done over” in a big way, lately. All this has created an atmosphere of mild paranoia, and we’re demanding that the landlords install better locks and maybe some bars on vulnerable windows. From Luciana, I learned that the word for lock (which needs fixing on her screen door) is “serratura”. Her windows have “serrature” installed, but some of them are a bit wobbly (“molle”) and hardly inspire confidence. We also need gates (“cancelli”) at the front of the whole building – there are none, and so the crooks can easily slip down the side passage and carry out their dastardly schemes, virtually invisible from the street. We made up this list, drank some coffee, and bitched about thieves (how could they be so bold?) and landlords (how could they be so stingy?) (more…)