Wednesday, July 22, 2015

You're the Canary.


The Psychopath is smilling like he swallowed me.

Instantly I get a picture of Kylie.

'What do you mean I'm the Canary? Is that like a Budgie?' I'm certainly not Kylie! I couldn't smile my way through a tumor and a rat of a boyfriend. At least Britney spacked out when she was cornered. Gnash those pearly whites and dig your fangs into the bone and spit like a viper. Snakes are survivors. I'm no bird. What's the value of a bird with clipped wings and no feathers? Being a budgie didn't help Kylie. Everybody loved her but she still ended up with a Love Rat! He devalued and discarded her in public. What a french bastard! Be careful of whom you kiss lest they damp the spark in your pussy (power) He was vermin! If my head was bald I'd be bloody well using it to haunt him. Budgie Revenge!'

The Psychopath is staring at me intently. He's got a half grin on his face like he cornered a live one. His fist is holding up his chin. His elbows are on the table. The Hipsters eyes are full of anticipation.

'I felt awful watching her flying career turned into a mortality play. We had a lot in common at that time. Of course she's a very rich kitchy stadium sized feathers and sequins, lazors and short legs type of Showgirl and I'm more a small room in a room full of drunken poets with two channel lighting board. Have to bomb the place to get money out of them sorta broad with pins to die for. But I can't sing either. I mostly talk.'

'I'd never have noticed'

The Psychopath is now leaning is holding his head on two fists and has settled in for the story. 

' But nevertheless I came up with the name of my book 21st Century Showgirl before Kylie announced her Showgirl tour which I suspected was some sort of sign from the Showgirl Heavens! Like we were both tuning in to the Great Showgirl Unconscious and had found ourselves at other ends of the spotlight but in exactly the same position. Do you know what I mean?'

They don't have a clue what I'm talking about but I don't care.  I never know what I"m talking about but I babble on regardless. The Psychopath is still listening and I"m on a roll. The Hipster stopped listening ages ago. His soul is still catching up from Sydney so  I let it go and I focus on the Psychopath who doesn't have a soul so he's right here in the moment. Listening. It's like having an audience with the Devil. Auditioning for the Chorus line in Hades. I continue...

'And there I was having my own mortality nightmare in New York when we found out that Kylie had cancer. And all of a sudden Kylie and I had something in common. Tragedy! I mean not the small stuff....boys gone...boo hoo! kettle's on! What next? The BIG ONE!. The Oh No! Fuck me! I'm Dead! Finished! DOOMED! That's wrong!!!

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

'And once you've died on that level well you never come back again. Well you come back but you never come back as you were. That kitty is dead. She's been ahniliated and she's not a cartoon character. You can't just pick up the pencil and re-create her.. And the only difference between Kylie and me is that when she went through her Mortality Moment she handled her suffering with dignity and grace and I screamed and yelled and waved my arms around like a drowning woman and wrote a book about it. But mortality is a funny one because after you've wrestled with it you can't just pick up where you left off and pretend you're Aphrodite. I know forty is the new thirty but Kylie's last tour was ridiculous. Her through line makes no sense. She's not in control of her destiny. Someone else is pulling her strings.  What do you mean Canary? '

'Canary in the Coal Mine. You'll sing through everything. You won't shut up. The day you stop singing is the day that you're dead. Then we know we should get the fuck out. Mine's are dangerous. And Canary's are oblivious. You're an oblivious type. I can tell.'

'Am I ?'

I withdraw. I have nothing to say anymore. I just sit there quietly thinking. He's not very charming for a Psychopath. He mustn't want anything from me. But he still wants to watch me grab for the bait. He's the cat. I'm the bird. That's the only game he knows how to play. And he's got me in a gilded chinese fucking restaurant as a canary. The prick. Singing away until I drop off my perch. Is that how he sees me? Psychopaths are tricky because they've got a very perceptive eye for who you really are. They know when you're kidding yourself. They know before you do. They're clever like that. They get into your psyche through your vanity and weakness. They gently prod for peccadillo, the poke around your pockets of corruption. So you'd better know how deep those pockets are, because soon enough they'll empty them onto your lap. With a gag in your mouth and your hands tied behind I know their caper. That's why I give everything away so there's nothing to ransack. No corner to hide in. No silent and festering scabs to stick fingers in. I have offered my life on a plate. And then watched him come in for the kill. He even offered to knock off my enemies over prawn toast. He was checking my need for revenge but murder is so not my style and his offer repulsed me. But Magical Thinking sure has been a problem. Not to mention Malignant Optimism. And I have to admit to times when I've been just a tad Oblivious. So he might have got me there. But I don't think it's who I am. I'm less a song bird and more a screamer. I wonder what time it is and what time the trains run to? The plates have been cleared and the glasses are empty.

'Thankyou. I have to go now. '

'Come back with us? says the Hipster. 'We have a spare room at our apartment'. And some more Mount Gay rum in the bar there. ' We can all kick on. Come On. It'll be fun. We'll drive you back home in the morning.'

'Yeah sure'. That's a great idea!'

I'll go back to the apartment so they can both take turns raping me and then go to the Police I don't trust in the morning. That is if they Psychopath hasn't killed me already. I mean I know I'm a little dizzy but what do they think I am? Oblivious or something?

This is my 9th life.


Thursday, June 18, 2015

The Cat The Chair and The Guido.

THUD

I thought he was Adonis. But that was before he turned me into a Chair. now I see him more as a Mama's boy with a flat screen tv that he never turns off. Since I've lived in his house I've turned wooden, lost my stink and and my heartbeat. I'm not even human. I'm a Chair! And now I am a chair I can see he's no Adonis! The truth is he's more of a Guido. Smooth and sorta stupid. All his girl friends sound like Effie from Wogs outta Work. One of them laughed at my name, not knowing the walls are made of paper and I could hear her. I can hear everything.

SWEETHEART.

He stands outside my bedroom door and calls to the cat every morning.

SWEETHEART.

He yells like he's living in a double brick mansion. As if anyone has to yell to be heard in this box? We can hear each other fart and sigh with a hallway and bathroom between us

SWEET HEART.

He calls me Sweetheart too so it wakes me! Then the sound of breakfast television filters into my ears. What's the point of surround sound if you don't use it? What's the point of a flat screen tv if it's not on night and day?

I measure his moods through the remote control. So does the cat. When he turns up the tv she jumps from his lap and starts pacing. I grit my teeth, close the paper doors and creep off back to my cat perch. The cat perch is comfy. I feel like I'm safe here. I was restless for a week trying to find a corner to settle into. In lieu of a room to call your own there's nothing like a perch. The cat wants it back but bad luck. She's not getting it. This perch is all I've got. It does me nicely. My needs are simple. A desk, a chair. A power point. I lived without those needs for almost a week until I found this spot. And now the cat hates me.

THUD.

But not as much as she hates him. At least she doesn't piss on my bed. Good on her! I would piss on his bed too if all I got for dinner was dry food and water. Just because she's damaged doesn't mean that she doesn't have fine tastes. Sweetheart and I have a lot in common. He rescued her from a shelter. And he spared me from having to live in one while I find accommodation. I'm on the run from Perth. She's on the run from Adelaide..

THUMP.

No doubt he loved her too in the beginning. I'm sure there was wet food and treats to begin with. The first night I moved in he cooked me mashed potato with sausages. Mashed potato is my ultimate comfort food. We drank wine and flirted. I was high on his cooking, his smell, his good looks and all the Adonis attention. I had left a beer soaked mine in Perth to come to to civilised Adelaide. What a city! What a dream land. What a hunk of a man. He made me dizzy.
And then when I put down my fork he said 'You know when Leo told me that you were a Reporter for Simon Townsend's WonderWorld and all the things you do I thought I'd be sexually attracted to you. But I realised when I met you tonight that I don't find you attractive at all'. And he started clearing the plates. That was it. Conversation over.

What a weirdo?

And from that moment on and every day I've since spent here, I slowly turned from a hot blooded woman into a chair. Yes a chair. An odd type of objectification. At least when you're sexually objectified you're still human. But a chair is just a piece of wood. It has no sex. It has no feelings. You don't ask a chair if you are going to move it. You just move it. You don't have to turn the tv down for a chair because a chair has no ears. You can ignore a chair. You can shift it to one side without apologising. You don't ask a chair how they're feeling? A chair is there for your arse to have somewhere to sit. Nothing more. Nothing less. If I sat down on his couch and a re-run of 'friends' came on the tele he would sit on my head until he heard my muffled screams and then he'd say...

'Oh sorry Sweetheart. Didn't see you!'

It's not a very dignified position to be in. So I hung out in the courtyard like an odd piece of furniture and paired up with the Cat Perch. It's the only spot that Adonis won't wipe down and sanitise my stink. There's no point wiping down chip board. It reflects nothing and leaves splinters in your cloth. So I am safe here. Around Adonis I feel feral and swampy. Like I leave a snail trail. In his house I am always re-tracing my steps with cloth and a bottle of Windex. You'd think I had the arms of Medusa I leave so many finger prints. That's why I like the Cat Perch. You can't scratch it or stain it. Well you can but the cat doesn't care. She just wants me off it because the smooth surfaces are driving her crazy too. There's barely room for one cat in this house. Let alone two. She has no space at all now. But I'm not taking responsibility for all her issues. That cat needs a shrink.

Since Adonis is training to be one so you'd think they'd be the perfect couple. But Adonis doesn't have a zit of empathy. He doesn't have a zit either. Or a wrinkle. He's Adonis. He's beautiful. Just don't scratch the surface or leave any crumbs on the bench in the kitchen. He likes his surfaces. empty, smooth and glassy so he can see himself in them. Cats, on the other hand, subscribe to the Quentin Crisp version of Happiness which 'consists of living in the continuous present all over your body for as long as possible.' Cats understand this instinctively. Cats need to rub up against things that rub them back and to climb and to play hide and seek and feel shrubs rub up against their faces.

But in this box there's nothing to play with. The small courtyard we share is closed in by a clear corrugated awning and hot tin walls. A table sits in the middle. The table is clean and bare and smooth like everything else. When the sun hits the table in the morning you can look down and see the shadow of your face in it. Through the awning the heat burns a hole the back of your head.

The cat has only polished floorboards, hot stone and concrete to rub herself up against. So she rolls around in the litter box and gets gravel and shit in her fur. I try to comb it out with my fingers. She's stopped caring for herself. I can relate to this. Since living with Adonis I've stopped looking in the mirror. I'm a chair. Who cares what I look like? Adonis absorbs everything around him. Including me.

The Cat meowls at the top of the hot tin fence. She wants to climb that fence but it's smooth and shiny and she's been de-clawed. She's double thwarted. Every time she makes a leap for the fence she lands with a THUMP on the concrete. Then she picks herself up and tries it again. Wild vines peep over the top of the fence from the neighbors. It looks cool and luscious. The vines reach like fingers to beckon her. She looks up in despair trying to gage the jump. The white cat next door can manage to do it. But that cat has confidence, strong legs and sharp claws. That cat leaps over the hot tin fence at least three times a day. Her mobility mocks us.

I have nowhere to go yet. And Sweetheart has no claws. Just two soft pads like a cartoon cat. They slide down the shiny surface of the fence. She falls to the ground with a thump. Picks herself up, flings herself at the fence again and again. Thump Thump. THUMP. It's unbearable. I want to fling her over the fence just to have it over with. I can't stand it. But it's not like I have any say. I'm just a chair. It's not like I'm PETA. And Adonis is watching...

'Sweetheart what are you doing? '

Does he really expect her to answer him. It's obvious what she's doing. What's he doing? He doesn't pick her up. He doesn't stop her. He doesn't lift a finger to try to help her or comfort her. Because it's all about him. Her need to escape is bringing up all his 'abandonment' issues. He sits there docile as a soft toy.

'She hates me.'

'Maybe she's just depressed?' I offer.

'Sweetheart?'. his voice goes up like a question mark.

She ignores him and throws herself at the fence again.

'She hates me. She really hates me'

The cat falls to the floor like a sack of potatoes and wipes herself across the concrete getting ready for another suicidal leap.

'Look. She wants to get away from me She hates me'

'No she doesn't. She doesn't hate you!'

THUD.

But what do I know? I'm just a Chair.

















Feral cat in a cage j hammer oil on canvas sold 150 x 120cm by Jonny Hammer.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

32 Flavours and then some....


Feminism was a myth invented by Capitalists to send Women out to work for a minimum wage.
Norman Mailer said as much before the Feminists all shot him in the head. He may have been a misogynist asshole but at least he was an asshole that spoke truth. It resonates a lot more than Anne Summers and her holy grail quest to touch the glass ceiling.  She gave us one good book 'Damned Whores and God's Police' but then she started breaking bread with politicians.   You'd think she joined the Mile High Club when she talks about flying in a plane with Paul Keating. 'Let them eat Bilson.  You do not get a place at the table unless you're a mind controlled doll and I know this from the inside out because I've been that doll myself. I can spot a doll from 10 000 miles away now.

I've been watching Nigella Lawson tortured in the gladiator pit that made her a Domestic Goddess and I find it unbearable. I can't stand to see a woman torn to pieces in this way. But that's because I relate. I'm an Empath.  Even though Nigella Lawson has nothing in common with me I feel her pain.

The Apaths would say (and they do) that Nigella was a Co Conspirator in her own murder. She is after all born to the ruling class.  A card carrying member of the royal Jewry. She feeds off it's table and makes its lies look luscious.  Her Daddy worked for Thatcher and her Mummy was jealous of her and around and round it goes until it ends up with Saatchi. The bride wore black. On some level she knew what was coming.

We always do.

But perhaps she was just trying to reach her destiny.  As I watch her being called 'A habitual Criminal, Hi-gella. a drug addict, a bad mother' I think of the quote that I recently read from Carolyn Myss.  'Unless we are prepared to be humiliated we will never reach our destiny. Only our fate'.

Thanks Carolyn. But here's the truth. It's not the women who are pulling me out of that burning ring of humiliation. It's not the women who are outraged that a conquering yank should invite himself into my world and rape me on my own territory. It's not the girls who are backing me up with my excruciating and ugly truth and handing me the brass brassiere to fight back.... It's the men.

Not the weak men. Not the bystanders.  They're bitching in the kitchen with the goat boys and the girls . But the good men, the strong men, the men like my father are telling me to think like a Liberian Warlord. To reach in to the valley of the heart buck naked and bring it to the table so they can stick it on the BBQ between the sausages. 'Take no Prisoners' they advise which is very encouraging.  But the girls are mostly keeping their distance. They're all eyeing off my pain like it's their prize. Their gaze holds both fear and envy. Fear that standing too close to me might blow their opportunity for success and envy that I was chosen to be taken for the ride.

They think I'm riding the stallion. He appears like a stallion. He has pedigree, success on the track, he is able to market himself effectively which is important in a stud. He's been linked to other high level mares.  But the truth is he's a donkey that just wants somewhere to pin his tail.

What is it about me?

Why do I always get to ride the donkey?

What is it about me that makes that donkey head in my direction with his carrot between his teeth like it's a rose? Is it because he wants to watch me reach for that carrot as he swallows it? Does he like the sound of my gasp as he snaps it in half.  How could a donkey be a sadist?  Donkeys are harmless? Donkeys feature in fairy tales. They watched Jesus come into the world.  They take donkeys to church fairs to give all the children a  ride. Donkeys have a good reputation. It couldn't be the Donkey. It must be me. Everybody knows that.  Especially the girls.

My latest Donkey ride has been very clarifying.  It didn't teach me much about the donkey but it taught me an awful lot about my gender. It taught me I can count my girlfriends on less than one hand and that the rest are just waiting for me to turn up with the donkey.  They don't mind sloppy seconds. They just want to feel their clit on the saddle as he clip clops them across the gravel. I should work out how to charge for this as I suspect it's my only real talent. And if you can't charge for your talent well it's not a talent is it? It's a Disability.

This week I was told by two separate girlfriends to 'Close down my facebook page and just pop in for a quick Merry Christmas. Put away my Crowd Funding as it makes me look crazy and desperate. Learn to play nice when playing with the big boys and perhaps it's time to go on medication.  But failing that perhaps I might change my name or learn to breathe underwater.'

 I don't need to take advise from people who are not as smart as I am. Who reduce my truth to an episode. Who tell me to forget everything I know. I don't need any sort of friends who view me as a pile of bad brain cells or dodgy DNA because they have no God and their grey matter has been colonized WITHOUT resistance. I know my disability and I admit to my weakness and life may have given  me a bad case of truth tourettes and a bad habit of freezing when I'm surrounded by predators but but at least I'm not jealous.  At least I don't have to put anyone down to make myself feel better. At least my disability didn't rob me of my compassion. At least I can cope with difference. I don't mind if you don't agree with what I'm saying but what are you doing working in the Arts if you're trying to take away my right to say it?  Why don't you leave the arts and get a job with ASIO. I hear they're hiring.  They're looking for Gangstalkers,  Script Writers, Lomos and Nipple Kissers. The only qualification you need is obedience to the status quo.  Making people want to commit suicide is a Futures Market. It's the New Nazi. No need for concentration camps just give them a nice short rope and enough reasons to hang themselves and they'll do the job for you. If I really am soooo crazy then what does it matter what comes out of my mouth? Why is everybody working over time to shut me up? What's the story? Where are you going? What did I saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay....