Bright Spark

Do you ever do dumb things? Have you ever executed to perfection a series of stupid suggestions, traipsed through a patch of puerility, dined in dimness on half-baked ideas, munched on meaningless, sucked the marrow from moronic?

Or is it just me? Perhaps I am the biggest idiot in the universe.

I am becalmed on the Sea o’ Stupidity, up Dope Creek without a clue.

Omega 3 here I come. If I can just remember to actually take the supplement…all will be good.

No?

National pastime

Jaws 2 was on TV last night. Only because it was hot and humid and I couldn’t sleep, I watched it. It is warm and humid today, so as ever, I headed to the beach.

Bobbing in the swell, out past the shore-break, I swam amongst a small group (safety in numbers). The water was delicious, once in you just want to stay in that tingle-bubble smooth-coolness all day. A man stroked in from the southern end of the beach. He greeted some friends in the group, they saw Jaws 2 last night as well. “Hahahaha!” they laugh off their in-built fear in that it-won’t-happen-to-me way.

And of course the small rational part of my brain laughs too. But statistics mystify me.

Evidence that I still exist

Last night I dreamt that I was eaten in one big bloody gulp by a White Pointer, biggest one I’d ever not seen. A witness, in the dream, said I didn’t even scream, I was just gone…eaten.

Today, at the beach, I fished for a while and then lay in the sun. I couldn’t bring myself to go in the water, but I let myself lay in the sun, and I let myself burn…stupidity.

The cicadas are abundant and insistent again this year. On the track to the beach they drummed in my ears, making me beg “Pardon?” every few sentences as he chattered on ahead of me…chatterbox.

High cool water greeted my feet after we scrambled over rocks to reach a good fishing spot. The wind and rocks put an end to the rock-fishing and we moved to the sheltered sandy beach. I spread out my towel, which is festive, red and stripy. I stripped down to my cossie and sat on the towel, surveying the family of bodysurfers that porpoised in front of me. Two boys and their dad, bashing the surf, their wiry bodies glistening, enthusing in stereo.

“Dad!”

“Dad, Dad, watch this!”

“Dad!”

I lay back and closed my eyes, and enjoyed the sounds of the harbour, the flapping sails from the yachts racing around the Lion, the distant motors charging through the swell heading out to open ocean. I turned my head to the side and my eyes settled on the line of flotsam nearby. White bird-bones amongst smooth grey-brown sticks, worn-out shells, and black shrivelled beads of Neptune, all tossed up onto the beach to be windswept and further eroded. I like flotsam, I can close my eyes now and see it…it reminds me that we start as one thing and end up as something else, and that change is natural.

Time to leave the little slice of heaven, the track passes in part, through a valley of cabbage palms, where the humidity rises and temperature falls, and I shiver as the sweat cools on my back…it’s all a bit pre-historic.

My calves ache a little from the walk up the steep hill back to the car. My ears are tingling and tinny from the cicada-whine of the bush, I’ve sprayed my burnt patches with aloe juice taken straight from the fridge…ouch.

Dust storm

Millions of photos of the dust storm whoosh onto the internet, like, well, a dust storm.

Whoosh.

;)

Mother nature never intended for us to save wails. For reasons unknown to me beyond saving face, we try to keep them down, deep down. But they inevitably burst even the calmest, turquoise, sparkling surface.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
It is much better, at the very moment a wail is given life, to set the wail free. Wails are massive, require lots of space and eat a lot. We are not equipped to harbour wails. Scream-sob-cry your pain away, and set the wails free.

To the departed

You’ve gone. And you, and you, and you too.

Re-entered into the stream of a life unknown to me,

or exited, who knows?

Taken up the pogo-stick, no time for words, no words come.

Must have been bounced out,

or perhaps evicted by the clatter-clank of background thoughts.

And once again, this is all about me.

Just another salmon.

Out there, somewhere. xxL

The cat shat on the mat…

My cat is peeved with me. When I went back to work, she started peeing and shitting in places other than her litter tray. I dreamed last night that I’d held her upside down by her tail until it came off, and I threw it into the dustbin. This morning she knew, and she pissed on the bathroom floor. She looks at me with hate-filled eyes, she sees through me into my real feelings.
What should I do?

Below the surface

It’s windy, it has been all night. I don’t like wind, it makes me mad below the surface. I live on the coast, the wind swirls around my house many evenings as the air searches for equilibrium.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” goes the wind.

“Stop telling me what to do! Stop your gusting and puffing and huffing! Stop whipping my hair into my mouth!”

Scarlett O’Hara, I want to slap your beautiful whiney face.

Got any chips?

Feel the rhythm, check the ride

I think some normality has floated back into my world, settled on my mind-space like dust. Then, whilst out on an early-morning-walk, I round-the-bend to the home-stretch, and spy my neighbour riding…a…fucking…unicycle. His jerk-lurch movement along the cracked footpath, arms all tug-pull-twist, was hypnotic yet unsettling. Those back-forth arms, spinning legs, the wobble-head; an electrostatic cloth exciting the positive normal-dust particles at the edges of this mind.

Dear Neighbour,

You are not a circus-performer, you are a graphic-designer. Please stop freaking me out.

Cheers,

Me