I seem to have too much time on my hands today and have spent some of that time wading through failed creative projects.

I had an idea, some time ago, of fabricating an autobiographical fiction and the piece that I posted earlier today was part of that thought.

I also began writing an introduction to set the whole thing in motion and that is what follows in this post.

The fact that I have dusted these two unfinished pieces off and given them some air suggests (to me, at least) that I may not yet have entirely severed ties with the project.

And so, if you have the time or energy, feedback would be more than welcome.

Ta.

*****

When he was gone it was left to me to rummage through the remains of his life in the search for answers. It was not a task I took on with any great enthusiasm but rather one thrust upon me by a puzzling sense of duty. Certainly there was no-one else who cared enough or would even have considered it. And if I was looking for answers I don’t know what form I was expecting them to take, exactly. Even now I don’t really know what it is that I have found.

The physical search itself was a straight forward affair and really just involved the emptying out of his flat before the lease expired for the final time and the agent gave up on chasing unpaid rent. It was a clean-up, in other words and might just as well have been done with a fire or a fire hose, but I chose to do much of it on my hands and knees conferring upon it the respect of an archaeological dig. In the end the tangible scraps of his existence were gone in three trailer loads to the tip.

Though some things, inevitably, I could not let go.

I held on to a beanie he wore almost constantly for the four years he had been convinced he was going bald and then discarded when this proved to have been a false alarm only to be resurrected as a poor disguise upon his going into hiding. It was moth-eaten and dirty and it still smelt. Of him. There were some old school photographs too – black and white and fading, as well as a snap shot taken with Lionel standing outside the Pantheon (when had either of them been to Rome?). There were various other items of clothing that I remember him wearing and I kept them with me a while and cried when I finally disposed of them in the charity bin.

And, of course, I kept his old brief case. I say ‘old’ when, in fact, I don’t know when it came into his possession. We were apart for many years (for most of his life, in truth) but I would think that it appeared somewhere between him leaving school and finishing his brief career in real estate and if it was, indeed, ‘old’, it certainly didn’t look it. He bestowed upon it the love he denied just about everything and everybody else and it carried barely an injury from the train wreck that was its owner’s life.

Before opening it I had no idea what may reside within. Anyone who has paid any attention to his case knows, of course, that at one point it had carried, fatefully, a copy of the Koran. I now know that it had, during that same period, also contained various other religious texts – a fact that was not deemed worthy of report during the general hysteria. At any rate, by the time I opened it, all such texts were gone and what remained (apart from a driving map of New South Wales, a packet of mints and $3.75 in small change) was just this. The brief volume that rests before you.

Not that it was in this form when it came to me. Some was written in disheveled notebooks, some on single pieces of loose leaf paper, some on 5 ¼’ floppy disks (I was amazed that the data was recoverable) and some on a single portable hard disc. There were tiny snippets of poetry scribbled on hotel napkins. The only way to get any idea of the order in which things were written would be by way of the technology used to do so. But this is unreliable. Who could tell what has been rewritten over time and what may have been transferred to digital format with the original versions destroyed or discarded? Certainly it is clear that the whole thing was not written sequentially. I think that one may be able to judge that accounts of his early childhood were penned long after those describing his arrest, for example. My guess, in fact, is that he first started writing his memoirs during that brief incarceration. I could be wrong.

To make matters worse there was very little consistency in terms of style. There were (are) sections written in present tense chronologically preceding others in past tense. He has alternated between first person and third person to the extent that he uses both in the space of a few sentences. I am assuming that he would have settled on one format or other prior to publishing. But then I am assuming that he ever intended to publish at all. And of his life one should assume nothing.

I have chosen, therefore, to reproduce it as it came to me. The subsequent final draft is as a result, I admit, a little difficult to read and, perhaps, more than a little annoying for that reason. I have tried to put it in a logical order and corrected some spelling errors (not all of them, perhaps) but otherwise what you see before you are his words. It is not the work of a great literary talent. It is the record of an unusual but essentially ordinary human talking about himself. As he did often.

And whilst it is not a work of fiction it should not be treated as one of irrefutable fact either. He was not the pathological liar that many made him out to be, but he was more than capable of mistruth when matters of ego were involved.

He states at one point, for example, that I never loved him. The truth is that I loved him from the first.

And he knew it.

 

Emma Anderson

 

 

I came across a small piece that I wrote some time ago. It was intended to be something that was going somewhere but, in retrospect, I have no idea where.

I post it here for no particular reason other than to garnish opinion and criticism. There is something about it that doesn’t quite click, but I’m not sure what.

 

***********

 

There is a photo tucked inside the cover of a book somewhere. Black and white and cut from an old newspaper. It is of a young girl, perhaps of only fourteen or fifteen years old, captured on film as she is emerging from the shallows having taken a swim, fully clothed, in the muddy torrent of the Macquarie. Three days earlier the river had broken it’s banks in the floods of ’55 and her blonde hair is matted and stained with the detritus that has washed downstream from Wellington and Bathurst and places further to the south-east. Her white Sunday dress clings to her body along with the mud and the leaves and the reeds and the sticks. She is carrying one shoe and blood is visible running from a cut just above her right knee. She is staring straight into the lens.
A well intentioned journalist snapped the shutter with thoughts of ‘local interest’ but captured instead a disturbing image of beauty that defies not only convention but also an act of God.
It is the photograph of a mermaid.
And it is inappropriate, nowadays, to describe children in any sexually suggestive terms. It probably was then, too. So we will have to assume that I am mistaken and that she was sixteen or perhaps even eighteen years old. Because there it is, as I say, in black and white. There can be no getting around the erotic impact of it.

Inappropriate it may be too, to think of a close relative in such a manner.

Believe me – I try not to.

It is not the only photo giving testament to my mother’s dangerous magnetism and it may not have even been the first. But it is an early piece of clear evidence documenting her insanity. She had leaped from the bridge and floated downstream along with the uprooted trees, bits of roofing, old car tyres, dislodged fenceposts and drowned sheep. She had been alone. She was not showing off. She was a strong swimmer. She had no thoughts of suicide.
She was just crazy.
She came ashore to the north of town where the river had spread across the plains and the current had slowed and where she was met by the small crowd that had gathered with ropes and boats to intercept her passage. The story goes that as she set foot onto dry land another river parted for her and, refusing offers of towels and blankets, she strode between two lines of awestruck townsfolk and, carrying her one shoe, continued home.
Not a word was said.

 

Haiku Challenge

May I please advance?

Ever so slim just a chance?

You and I. A dance?

I enjoy, on this site, a very small readership made up entirely of people I don’t actually know. That is the way I like it. Nevertheless I still live with the constant fear of offending someone. I am easy to misjudge, perhaps, and after jotting down a few obscure thoughts this morning it occurred to me that some of it might be perceived as nudging the boundaries of good taste. There are a couple of bits that might even come across as sexist. And one that may have about it, a hint of racism.

Be assured that I mean no offence.

Upon Contemplating Cannibalism

 

It is 2018.

So, we are speaking here, my friends, of an issue that comes up in polite conversation only rarely. It is the rare events in life, however, that get you.

As usual, it is best to be prepared (on that note we will be discussing, in the coming months, ‘Upon contracting the Bubonic Plague’, ‘Upon being Sentenced to Crucifixion, and ‘Upon Encountering Alien Spacecraft’. Stay tuned).

Thoughts of cannibalism come to us, in this day and age, only occasionally , as I say. But who has not given it at least casual consideration upon boarding some rusting airliner prior to a trip over remote, mountainous terrain? Where, in the long days awaiting rescue after the crash landing, it is notoriously difficult to get a decent bite to eat? All of you? Yes, I thought so.

It is in these situations that the powerful human instinct for survival takes over. But that is no excuse for bad manners. There are matters of etiquette of which you should be aware, and should observe, lest your fellow survivors turn upon you after sunset.

It is not the done thing, for example, to start leering at the rubenesque figure seated beside you before takeoff. Even worse to do so during the meal service with knife and fork in hand. By all means, however, offer her your dessert.

“Madam, I have had elegant sufficiently, but you look absolutely delicious, whoops, I mean ravenous. Could I interest you at all in an additional serving of ice cream?”

Then, if she accepts your gentlemanly offer and offers you, in return, a smile it is quite OK to smile back and say,

“We never know where the next meal may be coming from, do we?”

Try not to be too pedantic , at this early stage, with your post-accident culinary requirements. It is easy to become obsessed with the tasty treat sitting beside you and lose sight altogether of everything else potentially on offer. If you are travelling on a low-cost carrier (and, let’s face it, you probably are, these are the ones that crash all the time) the cabin will be absolutely bursting with boorish, poorly dressed, overweight loud-mouths. You may take some comfort in the thought that such people, though abhorrent in life, may prove to be absolutely scrumptious in death. Take note as well, as you are looking around with an eye to the future, of the people looking back at you with similar interest. These are the ones to be avoided at the crash site should you be suffering from any potentially life-threatening injuries.

If possible, it is wise to give other passengers the impression that you may, yourself, be inedible. It is perfectly permissible then, to shout loudly to a flight attendant,

“Excuse me Miss, I seem to have misplaced my leprosy medication. Has anybody handed it in?”

The nature of horrific mid-air incidents is that they tend to occur quite unexpectedly. The craft in which you are travelling is hurtling through space at about five hundred miles an hour. So is the one going the other way. It is highly unlikely that the pilots will give you much of a heads-up prior to the collision so any preparation you can have put in place beforehand will be time well spent. Before the flight attendants start rudely snatching the meal trays from in front of you try to find somewhere safe to secrete your knife and fork. These will provide for you a huge advantage later on. If you enjoy a bit of formality around dinner time (and who doesn’t?) it is wise to hang on to your serviette as well. Likewise, if there are any of those little bottles of burgundy lying about wrap them carefully in a blanket and place them under the seat in front of you.

Statistically, of course, your chances of survival are almost zero. But it pays to do anything you can to increase those chances. Those wearing a seatbelt enjoy far better odds than those not. So keep yours fastened. Tightly. And spend the entire flight in the brace position (details of this can be found on the safety card in the seat pocket in front of you). This sensible precaution may create varying degrees of concern amongst other passengers and particularly with the one sitting beside you. But ignore her obvious inexperience with the situation . And try to ignore the humiliating laughter it precipitates in the rows of drunken football fans behind you. This is not a popularity contest. Yet.

The crash itself is never a pleasant experience, but as you are plummeting earthward and people are screaming all about you try to remain calm. It is not, at this time, considered impolite to put a comforting arm gently around the delicious piece beside you. You might even lean towards her and kiss her tenderly on the forehead. At the same time your other arm might find its way across her juicy leg and onto her lap. Where it may surreptitiously unbuckle her own seatbelt without alerting her to the fact. Remember that this is a survival of the fittest situation. Any advantage available should be leapt upon. Having done so return to the brace position and hope for the best.

Unless you are the only survivor you are bound to be surrounded by a lot of negativity in the first few hours after the crash. In the short term this is likely to stifle, to a degree, appetite. Nevertheless it pays to get the basic preparations underway before it gets dark.

It will be cold. Light a fire. There is no need, at this point, to mention cooking. Encourage fellow survivors to huddle around closely sharing the warmth. This simple gesture will greatly enhance the feelings of camaraderie so vital to getting over those initial social hurdles that invariably arise when you, as a matter of necessity and leadership, bring up the delicate issue of cannibalism. By now the fire should have burnt down to a solid layer of hot coals.

Try not to be greedy. Share the best bits around. If somebody else is making moves towards the very thing that you have been salivating over all flight then you should apply to the situation the sensitivity that it demands.

“I say, good Sir, I think you’ll find that there’s plenty to go around, but would you mind terribly allowing me the honour of carving?”

Under no circumstances announce any personal preferences for light or dark meat.

If there is a priest about a short prayer before the main course is appropriate.

And this is the time that you should publicly announce your sincere regret at having to do what you are so enthusiastically about to do.

It will stand you in better stead at the subsequent enquiry.

 

****

 

Until next time.

Bon appetit!

.