brogan bunt

A small pile of waste paper is arranged at the right side of the table. I deliberately placed it there in preparation for me to fetch it up, exit at the sliding glass door, turn left beneath a modest verandah, head left again through a garden gate, walk down a short section of concrete driveway and deposit the paper in a large, yellow recycling bin. But I have yet to do this. Instead, in the gathering darkness, I dragged a hose down past the bins to water the new plants in the front garden. In the midst of this, the watering attachment popped off the hose, leaving a gushing naked tip. The concrete became wet as I pulled the running hose back to its proper place at the rear left hand corner of the house. The pile of paper remained utterly unaffected by any of these goings on. Even now as a cold breeze blows in at the glass door, it retains its composure. I can only regard it with awe. I can only wish I had similar tenacity.

Sunlight zig-zagging up a low tiered garden wall. Getting cooler. I am wearing a black jumper. Listening to John Fahey’s “The Legend of Blind Joe Death”. The volume fades down in the middle of a track for no particular reason, lifts to become loud and then fades out again. Very little seems to have changed on my table. The table itself, of course, rarely changes. Only the material on top of it. Only the orientation of the chairs. Only the quality of the surrounding day or night. Only the person who types these words. I can hear the garbage truck out on the road. Six small black plastic pots arranged in a row in a clear spot in my rear garden. My neighbour has gone away for three weeks, leaving me to care for the strikings. I wonder what chance they have of growing. All I can do is water them regularly. The rest will depend upon the efficacy of the miracle formula he has applied to their buried stems. My favourite track is “Sligo River Blues”.

A smiling young man in a Godzilla suit towers above a small artificial city. Fetch TV – some kind of on-line movie delivery system. $9.95 a month, and for only $20 more, the full entertainment pack, with additional television channels. I try to imagine watching lots of television. Beneath this lavish piece of promotional literature is a large white envelope from the Australian Government. I am quite confident that it contains a bowel cancer testing kit, having already received one some five years ago. I pick it up, test its weight, squeeze and shake it – as though it were a Christmas present. Just a moment ago I was contemplating watching a great deal more television than I currently do. The next I am painfully aware of my own mortality. I can hear the quiet bleeps of innumerable small insects in the garden. The bugs seem to be everywhere, yet I cannot see a single one of them. They lull me into sleep – despite the full yellow moon.

Darkness again. The only light. I lost my way today. Muffled sound of rain. I am searching in the shadows for the certainty of ghosts. Somebody had to die here, but why should they bother hanging around? No idea, especially as the world itself is becoming ghostly – a tentative, soon to disappear thing. Coils of white power cord on the ground. Red wine. One chair angled back from the table. My brown bag has pulled back its hair, revealing a blue flap of soft skin. It nestles into the black bag of gym gear, with its ridiculous white rope handles and cursive promotional text. Their intimacy permits no intrusion. I should leave them be, but am shocked by the visible towel – that two things should indulge in such close exchange in the midst of this terrible silence, that they should ignore the messy stacks of printed materials, that they should risk the sweet embrace of cloth. I wish them well in the midst of their uncertain future.

A long, sharp knife beside the laptop, shining with a thin slick of lemon juice. Beside it a half drunk bottle of beer. In the air above, one of three lights on the chandelier – a pool of glowing glass, with the bulb a solitary bather. Then back down at table level, my upturned and askew reading glasses. These four things, perceived in quick succession, prompt me to sit down – to put on my glasses, to drink the remaining beer, to notice that the lemon juice is now only faintly visible on the vibrating knife. I cannot help looking up again towards the chandelier light, but suddenly it no longer makes the same impression. It is just one of three chandelier lights. It no longer enters into relation with the three things on the table, which in the same instant suddenly drift away from one another and grow opaque. There is nothing here. There is nothing to see. The evening darkness has descended. The rain has stopped.

No end to this rain. The sky is a dim and striated grey. I bought a ceramic bird bath on the way home to put beneath the Christmas bush in the garden. I was the last customer for the day. The birdbath is glazed blue. I hope it will attract birds. Two items in my mailbox – a Dominos pizza advertisement and a letter for the former owner. The latter comes in a reusable envelope made from recycled paper. A green arrow and some green text explains that the recipient must open the letter at the green end to reuse the envelope. The return address is STATE DEBT RECOVERY OFFICE, LOCKED BAG 2128, NORTH SYDNEY NSW 2059. I consider opening the letter. I consider forwarding it to the former owner. But then I remember that I don’t have her current address. There is also an undeliverable option – a PO Box address. To be honest, I’ll probably just throw the letter out. I will at least make sure to put it in the recycling bin.

I can recognise implicitly that I should write about the mandarins. They are so strikingly orange. They nestle into my wooden fruit bowl like clouds above a low valley, or better still, like bloody offal in a saucer – the offal, perhaps, of a slaughtered white horse that is scooped up to feed cats. They can also be likened to a group of football players packed in closely to gee themselves up for a big effort – their shaved heads so closely pressed together that they resemble clouds or offal. But these are definitely mandarins. One even has a blue label, which is fortunately bound to come off before I eat the piece of fruit. It is my practice to always skin mandarins prior to eating them. The good thing about mandarins is the you can eat as many as you like. There is no sense of excess if one eats a substantial number in a single day. In this sense, the mandarins may be likened to cigarettes for somebody who has a pack a day habit.

I walked up Gray St and across the Princes Highway to the new housing development on Woodland Avenue. Completed about a decade ago but still unconvincing. Small blocks, big houses, lots of brick and half grown gardens. Turned right at Red Ash Drive and then left at Gahan’s Lane, heading up steeply in the direction of the escarpment – the houses becoming older the higher I climbed. Then an overgrown fire trail, with lantana closing in on both sides, to another fire trail leading up to Rixon’s Pass. Followed the track from the top along in the direction of Broker’s Nose, but the afternoon was growing late so I stopped at a powerline clearing with a view over the coast. Large swell rolling into Bellambi beach. That’s about all I noticed before I turned around, worried that it might be dark on the descent, but no problems. Only became dark when I got back and was watering the new plants.

Circular echoes. All in close proximity. That small rubber band. The opening of a pouch and its looping draw string. The bronze guitar slide in the pouch. The top rim of a coffee cup. The rubber band and bronze slide are drawn into particularly close relation, like the shadows of chickens, like the certainty of temperature extremes. The dark pouch would consume the shiny bronze slide, but cannot quite succeed, which only accentuates its slack and gaping maw. The pouch is stitched at the sides. It resembles some exotic seed. With the slide visible, it also resembles some dark, disconsolate eye – fated to be evil, but somehow lacking the appropriate resources. Instead it is the rubber band that reveals grim determination – a steady, elastic poise. It will not blink. No trace of shining. It is imbued with gummy light. It knows the legitimate power of its circular shape. Sun. What does he sun matter? What additional circularity does the sun offer?

People were here. They have gone. A unopened bottle of wine, or better, a bottle of wine not drunk, stands close by and in the near distance a morbid relic – a collapsed headstone, actually a breadboard. Bread, olives and cheese – these are things people expect to eat, but not on separate plates. A breadboard is much more convivial. Now that my guests have descended uncertainly down the front steps, nobody can stop me listening to George’s McRae’s “Rock Your Baby” – “Woman take me in your arms, rock me baby”. I listened to that song a lifetime ago as we drove through the back blocks of Miami looking for dope. I can recall thinking that I was somehow growing up. I envisaged some kind of future, but it never happened. Nothing is ever as envisaged. No matter how closely I attend to the immediacy of my current circumstances, I am always distracted. The nights spread across the far hills.

I have closed the glass door against the windy day. Four green tomatoes that had been growing next my front sewer line – product of an earlier disaster – sit hopefully on my rear step. Doubtful they will ripen. I’m following links to obscure bands, typically with dead members who in turn need to be pursued more closely still. Saturday morning. What should I be constructively doing? I have already washed up. Since I cleaned the table, it no longer serves as central focus. Instead it establishes a vantage – a flat platform set amongst the woods, with odd creatures dashing from tree to tree in the mid-distance, gnashing their teeth, refusing to appear as anything but dark shapes. I feel at liberty to disregard them, to sink into my uncomfortable chair. I am waiting for the day to obtain shape, to discover its proper identity, to rise up on its haunches and then, in a fitful moment, fall on its back writhing and foaming at the mouth. Not yet.

The leather laces of the fronds blow against the grey sky. The far window has 12 panes. The curtains are always pulled. The roof is immaculate green. The intensity of green grass. The hedge around my BBQ is already growing back – curling tendrils and expectant, mounted leaves. Only one tree left to be planted – a small, upright rainforest sapling. I rescued it this morning from where I had left it last night, amongst the back weeds. The pot had fallen over and the tree was already drifting into the oblivion of the surrounding skeletal weeds – pitiful, but scarcely seeming to care, slipping into unconsciousness, finding its way beyond the moral necessity to grow. I picked it up and moved it to just outside my back door (until I decide where to put it). It is standing up now, but I know that I only have to look away for a moment – to wander off, for instance, to make coffee – and the pot will fall over. I will never see this happen, but it will occur.

I bought 17 native plants at the Botanic Gardens. An elderly employee helped me load my car. He stood beside my trolley and handed me the plants one by one. Each time he said something about the size of the plant – “this is a big one”, “this is a little one” – as though I couldn’t recognise the size of the plant just by looking myself. When I accidentally knocked one of the pots over, producing a little pile of dirt and mulch in my car, he said, “you clean that up”. Helpful advice, I guess. I spent the rest of the day digging up garden beds and planting the plants. I didn’t finish until it was dark. Despite the light rain, I made sure to water all of the new plants, dragging the hose around to the opposite side of the house to reach the most distant beds. I was covered in mud by the time I finished. I am looking forward to seeing the garden in the morning light. The overall impression escapes me for now.

In the morning I will often sit on the couch in the front room to eat a bowl of cereal. Occasionally I will go into the small sunroom, with its two cane chairs and large striped cushions, to look out toward the sea. I use the bathroom and laundry fairly regularly. I go into the bedroom mainly to sleep. I use the corridor to move between rooms and also when I am entering and exiting the house, although sometimes I will take the rear glass door and the side gate. I spend most of the time in the dining space adjoining the kitchen. That is where the table is located. The chairs are just basic pine chairs. The table is very plain as well. I bought the four chairs and the table for $30 altogether. The hippies across the street had put them out on the verge to be sold. It seems that that the wife had received a payout when she become redundant. They have since bought new dining furniture, which they describe as surfie-metal-gothic.

A scrap of paper resembles a small pig with a stunted, stumpy tail, abbreviated legs and two tiny, little distinct eyes looking straight upwards. Beyond that, as you’d expect, a quite distinct snout. This scarcely evident pig subsists in a flat state beneath the looping immensity of my tilted back, laptop screen. The pig cannot run off. It is stranded and utterly naked against the brown of the table. Cables bend and twine on either side. How it managed to take convincing pig-like shape is an accident of the clouds and my extreme youth. I am breeding pigs. Just the one. Let it try to run away. Let it try to escape beyond the horizon of ordered things. I have only to tilt the monitor forward to see it again. I would butcher it if I had the heart and means, but instead I simply gaze at it with dreamy eyes. It is good to keep animals. It lends me some partial humanity. It makes me happy and whole.

So I did it. Quick, half-arsed clean of my table. Most of the paper gone. Just a small stack of apparently necessary stuff. Two largely empty notepads. Listening to the White Stripes first album. A narrow archipelago of coins. My two sets of keys randomly splayed. A Stanley screwdriver pointing roughly my way – some small, clear plastic box adjacent to its tip, like a miniature prison in which the soul of the most evil person is kept. Pens, a portable hard drive. Francis Ponge’s The Nature of Things. I wonder whether Ponge would ever descend to simply listing items? Would he stoop to naming them without considering how they are properly described? A very small, circular rubber band, somewhat isolated. A pair of reading glasses in a dark cloth case. There were eight cargo ships on the horizon tonight. I walked along the beach in the rain. The bright lights of a football field made it hard to find my way back up to the path. I could see the rain on my shirt, which was becoming almost wet.

I found a spoon placed on top of an unused Yellow Pages near the centre of the table. Rather than simply observing it, I picked it up and placed it at my left. The spoon is not directly in contact with the table. It rests on top of two black leads running into my laptop. It needs to be washed. Traces of avocado are evident. The head is streaked with a light sense of oral contact. Milky streaks extend from the curved crown down to the neck. Soft reflections of the overhead light run down its narrow frame. I have no sense of how long the spoon has been there and can only wonder that I have not noticed it before. I had hoped to see something more than uncleanliness in its greyish silver depths, but instead I see only a spoon that needs to be washed. I am determined to only speak positively of what I see, to not invent scenes that bear no relation to the experience of the spoon itself, but now I am tempted to speak of salamanders and exotic moonlit scenes.

The confused experience of drifting breeds fantasies and, more than this, modes of being. I lie in bed most of the day. I go on long walks. I don’t wash up. I can’t focus at work. I try to imaginatively repair the damage. I imagine the damage as much worse than it is. The drifting is as much a swirl or words and embodied attitudes as it is a spreading, inchoate thing. It constantly obtains form and then decomposes. There is no actual wound to heal and so nothing heals. There is no sense of an end. An end is undoubtedly coming, but it seems even worse than the state of drifting itself, in that it involves giving up and forgetting. The drifting remains as much because I will it to remain as because it will not go. The drifting is an amputated limb. I am accustomed to its absence. I struggle against the limb’s absence and cannot do without it. Through a window, playing on new leaves, I recognise the heedless light of a hidden sun.

“Free Tablet”. I could use a free tablet. I should be able to begin with the simplest things, if not with objects on the table then with some words that have descended from the light air of this roughly bright morning. Nothing that can be felt on the skin, unless I attend very closely. I am not sure that I have that level of attentiveness. Voices, birds, cars, doors and the rest. Everything is growing though it is nearing late Autumn. All the flowers of an ignorant Spring. Seems like I have a great deal to do, that I am neglecting many little tasks. In the midst of my neglect, her face has changed. The lumpy awkwardness of it, which was her particular beauty, has been replaced by an anonymous symmetry. Why this attraction to surgery when it does nothing but highlight the traces of age? Lines are more pointedly visible in their absence. I have passed away again. I am distracted. How can I be sure that I wouldn’t do the same thing?

So many things are black. I could list them: the licorice that I am eating; the jeans that I am wearing; my motorcycle helmets; the untouched face of my mobile phone; the mouse and audio leads running into my computer; the keys on my computer; the magnetic back of a promotional card; the top of a pen; the handles on my keys; and the speakers through which I am playing music late this Tuesday evening. Listening to Hole – Live Through This. Holes are black as well. The night is black. My features, reflected dimly in the kitchen glass, are black. The hands on the clock are black. All manner of text on all manner of accumulated receipts, envelopes and printed pieces of paper is black. The bottom of one particular sheet close to me shows the code “1A-Ack-0813”. Everywhere I look is black. To see black is to recognise the point at which visibility and invisibility coincide. It is to fly across the rooftops like an insane and cackling witch.

Sleep, what’s sleep? Those small absences in the midst of a long night. The surf broke on distant rocks. I have done my best to be cheerful. It is raining once again. I can’t seem to see any details. I scan the lawn, the sky, the table. But then I notice that “Ticket queues are due to depart” on the back of a train ticket, which means something completely different to me – not that there will no longer be any queues, but that a set of queues are heading off on their own designated rail journey. I imagine numerous long lines of patient travellers all preparing to board the train. Instead of a single queue there is a vertical array of queues, perhaps a bit uneven, since no two queues are identical. I wonder if all of this is sufficiently distant from whatever intimately concerns me, whatever cannot properly be spoken? Our weird and uncomfortable conversations, which bring phone conversations to a close and leave long lapses in texts.

It rained on the way home. My helmet was wet. Could hardly put it in the top box. Brought it inside to dry. Now it rests as a strong echo of my old helmet. Both helmets face in precisely the same direction. My old helmet is closer to me. My new helmet is in the empty space where I sometimes eat. This is not the only echo. Two sets of keys just at my left – my motorbike keys slightly closer. Only one key points down the dark hallway. All the rest point roughly to the back of the house. Two specifically point right towards me. Both helmets and the handles of the keys are black. I am wearing black, although my jeans are possibly grey. I am cold. Wet again on the way home. Instead of sensibly showering and changing, I walked down to the ocean. The waves crashed heavily on the rocks. I walked to the artificially lit point above the Woonona baths and then in the opposite direction toward the sewage works.

For some reason Graeme Phillips was using Michael Seaman’s business cards. Perhaps he was only part time at The Good Guys. Perhaps he was only working weekends. He wrote his name in capital letters in the white space at the top of the card, with its “Pay Less, Pay Cash” slogan and drawing of an ecstatic, vibrating cash register. Graeme also included his mobile number, although this overlapped with the Warrawong street address. Seems to contain a supernumerary digit, but this is actually the number he wrote – 0413 2220 789. The card is closely abutted by my car keys and wallet and rests on top of two recent train tickets that are no longer necessary. Graeme managed to sell me a 55 inch television set. I offered only the slightest resistance. I gave into his bad cop, but dead honest sales spiel. I stood where he told me and appreciated the television’s colour and resolution. I even accepted his business card, just in case I had any other audio-visual needs.

Swirling rain – the train seats facing the wrong way. Wet walking from Circular Quay to Central. Down the escalator to the Illawarra line. Reading an abandoned paper and missing the Sutherland stop. Off toward Cronulla and then back again – running from the station to the car. The windows clouded with mist. Stopping to get petrol. The cashier says nothing, not even when I thank him. Raining heavily along the freeway – dropping on the Bulli Pass. Falling quickly into the usual view of the ocean. Only minutes from here. Darker and colder than this morning, when everything had seemed easier, when the extremities of time had seemed welcome. I have nothing to say in the face of all this. I still see the rain. I still hurry across the streets. I still look up at the tallest buildings, with their hanging gardens. There is only silence here. I can only hear the silence. I must avoid travelling away at the weekend – even for a single day.