Moon Over Desert

Log off, shut down.

How is it possible that it's 11 o'clock?

Lights out. These terrible fluorescent lights. All day, all evening. The feeling lingers on the skin afterwards. Unhealthy.

The long walk out. Office to the left, empty. Big window on the right looking down onto the facility floor.

Dark down there. Up here, more of those fluoro lights, one after another, steady pulse, like driving a car - the "cat's eyes" on a dark road, the overhead lamps.

Door release. Elevator. Another door release. Deserted lobby. Footsteps on the hard floor. Picture window, glass door, orange sodium lights of the carpark.

Warm night air.

Dead pigeon on the asphalt beside door. Blinking. Nudging it with a foot.
What's that supposed to do, bring it back to life?

Tired. Warm night. Car park, mostly empty. Three or four cars, and there's the Audi, lonely out there on the far side. Footsteps, heels sharp against asphalt. Slight breeze. Black shape - security guard, walking along the side of the facility. Hand lifted in acknowledgement.

'Night,' he says.

'Night.'

Stating the obvious.

Pausing for a second once the door's unlocked. So tired. A tired pause. There's the moon, full moon tonight. Or not quite. Almost.

Driving.

Voice on the radio. 'Not immediately apparent,' it says. 'Whatever relevance, whether any of it is in fact relevant.'

Streetlights, a steady pulse. Wall on the left, screening out the other plants, the other facilities. A slope on the right, down to the train tracks, the desert. Rocks and plants scattered around down there.

Graffiti on the wall, vivid pink: "ASHNOPI".

'Obviously have a better picture as it plays out,' says the voice.

'Ashnopi,' he says. Trying out the sound of the word.

He notices something out of the corner of his eye - a train, down there in the valley, coming up from behind. Lights at the front, big ugly bull of a locomotive, then car after car after car after car, rolling out beneath the almost-full moon. Beautiful sight.

Thinks about the train, those cars. Thinks about tramps maybe riding in the cars. A young guy, runaway, looking up at the moon. What the hell, give him a musical instrument, a guitar. No. A trumpet. A muffled trumpet.

Eyes back on the road, but shooting glances down at the train. A rush of feeling, thinking about that kid. The melody he's playing out over the train's percussion. Excited, wistful, jealous. You could do anything with that freedom. You could do anything. Just your instrument, a little money, half a pack of cigarettes. Maybe a girl somewhere, or maybe that's too much. The girl would weigh it down, he thinks. Okay, so there's a girl but maybe things didn't work out between you, you needed time to think, get out into the open spaces.

Christ, so fucking tired.

There it goes. The tracks veer away from the highway as they reach the outskirts together.

The highway carries on to the left of the residential zone, runs close beside it, there are exit ramps and entry ramps connecting it like veins.

The car goes left, follows the grey bloodstream.

The train rolls right, into a wide shallow valley. Surburbs sprawling away on the left, some more off on the other side, further away. The valley and the tracks rolling like a wide river between them, a continuation of the desert which spreads out on all sides of the little streets and houses.

Any big space will give you a spooky feeling after dark. The desert, the ocean. Outer space.

Locomotive pushing forward like an angry jaw. Yellow and black stripes on its face. Huge lamps, loud white light. ROARING. The engine, the wheels against the tracks.

There is a car with its door hanging open.

A broken latch. Momentum tugging at the door, a little further aside, hour after hour, wind and motion shifting the cargo inside. Inch by inch, until this, a crate falls out. Crate slipping out of the train as it rolls through the valley. Tumbling out. Hitting the ground, rolling, smashing to pieces.

The train rolling on. Regardless.

Clattering, shaking. Car after car. Car after car. The broken crate beside the tracks. The wood shifting, pushed from inside. Clattering. Car after car. Gentle pushing, edging the splinters away. Creating a gap. Large enough. Clattering, shaking. A feeler emerging, testing. A tendril. Probing the dry earth. Moist, dark.

The black clay.

Car after car. Car after car.

So fucking long, the train. Always like this.

The locomotive already out of sight to the right of her, what is that, North, and to her left you still can't see the end of it, it's like a wall running along the valley, "a wall between them", her place and his, and that's perfect actually. That says it all, right there.

Tilting the wine glass up to her lips, except it's empty.

Walking back from the picture window to the table, the bottle. A refill. Warmer than the last glass, the flavour not as sharp, sweeter now. Sickly sweet. Like rotting flowers - HAH.

The next song starting. Track list on the back of the case, listening, pacing.
Was it this one? The woman starts singing again.

She sings: 'I'll remember FOR you'.

And: 'can't take it away'. Was it this one?

Pacing. Clock on the shelf. How is it possible it's 11:30?

Here we go, yes, it's this one. She's singing: 'Everything you've done, everything'. YES. That's it. Tipping the glass to her lips, filling her mouth with rotten sweetness.

The woman sings: 'the things you say / you're a fucking liar'.

Nodding, swallowing the wine. Exactly, yes. Thank God for this woman, the singer. She's a genius. That's exactly it, EXACTLY the feeling. Nodding, listening, pacing.

Wheels turning fast, round and round. Heat and momentum. Another refill, last of the bottle.

Song finishing. Walking over to the player, stopping it.

Thinks about playing it again. No. Or about calling him. What's the time? 11:33. Looks out at the valley. The train's gone. Just the streetlamps on the other side of the valley, lights in some of the houses. Yeah, some of those houses with the lights still on.

Ought to be able to tell which one is his, see if the lights are on, but the wheels turning fast and fuck it, if he's asleep she'll wake him, he fucking deserves it. Standing still for a moment, middle of the room. Are we doing this? Blue light from the fish tank. Hypnotised for a moment, watching them drift back and forth.

These god damned fish, she thinks.

She reaches for the phone, punches the speed dial. Back to the window.

A second of silence, as the call is relayed through dozens of miles of fibre optic cable, then routed back to the other side of the valley. Then a steady pulse in her ear, the phone ringing on his side.

The black clay has pulled itself free from the wreckage of the crate. It lies inert in the dust, as if exhausted.

She squints, half-expecting to see a light come on in one of those houses.
Phone ringing in his kitchen. Small, shrill sound.

The dog rises from its place by the front door, pads over and stands in the kitchen doorway. It watches, quiet and misrable, as the phone on the kitchen counter continues its unpleasant screeching.

She waits. Pulse after pulse, then a click. Teeth clenching. His answering machine message.

After the ringing, the familiar silence as the answering machine plays its greeting.

The dog stands watching.

There is a piercing beep. Then a loud metallic voice says:

'Are you there?'

The dog watches, does not answer.

'Pick up if you're there.'

Standing at the glass, looking out, watching for a light to come on.

Lying in the dust, gazing eyelessly up at the stars. Listening.

'You better pick up if you're there.'

No answer.

'Yeah, I guess not. Well it's eleven thirty, and I guess you're so fucking choked up about things you've gone out to a party, or you're sleeping with someone.'

It twitches.

Lights outside, through the curtains. The sound of a motor. The dog turns, whines, it's deep melancholy lit by painful flickers of hope.

'Which would be quick, but not a surprise.'

Another twitch, the clay rolls over onto what might be its belly.

The dog walks to the door, listens excitedly. The engine dies, the lights die.

'You fucking tryhard. At your age. Not so young anymore are ya? No, well neither of us are too young anymore.'

It shudders. New extrusions, new limbs sprout from its sides.

'Thanks for that, by the way. Wasting FOUR YEARS of my FUCKING LIFE, with your FUCKING USELESS LIES-'

The click of a door opening, the thump of it closing. Footsteps. The metallic rustle of keys.

'-BALD sack of SHIT can't even get it UP don't know why I'm calling NOT WORTH THE FUCKING EFFORT I hope you're DEAD in a DITCH, I bet that's why you're not answering, you're fucking DEAD.'

The black clay turns itself, eyeless, up towards the moon, and out towards the houses on either side.

'I hope you are.

'I really hope you are.'

She hangs up.

The door opens.

The answering machine falls silent.

The clay takes its bearings. It quivers. Then at once it moves, pulling itself across the valley at terrifying speed.

Blog Entry

Ordinarily I wouldn't be making an entry about my personal life (at least in the present) or music or going to see bands etc, that's not the sort of blog this is.

Not really out to post photos of my friends or anything ("look, there's you! And there's ME!"). Go on rants about my political opinions. Talk about celebrities or thinkers I think are cool.

HOWEVER

Yes HOWEVER because through the good graces of a woman who is not actually named Quincey but for the purposes of this blog is, I am in possession of the following:



Probably this means little or nothing to you. YOU DAMNED FOOL! I forgive you.

This is like you getting to see one of YOUR bands, whatever they are for you, like the top two or three bands in your life. Jhonn Balance is unfortunately dead, so there's no more Coil, but Peter Christopherson made all the music anyway and this is him and I'm getting to see him.

And it just keeps coming:



The first ticket is a 12 hour horror movie marathon. Then Threshold Houseboys Choir. Then on Monday they're showing Suspiria. In a cinema! Amazing.

The movie tickets, I should say, were subsidised by the Film House membership I got as a going-away present from my job in New Zealand. So in something of an irony, working to promote the rights of women has given me a discount to see a film where women are stabbed, dissected, impaled by glass, hung from nooses, covered in maggots, cursed by surreal flashing lights, dropped into a room full of barbed wire, and then brought back to life to attack their friends.

If someone pitched me this weekend, and said: "all of this could be yours, but we'd have to pull one of your fingernails out with pliers", I would have said: "okay, do it." I would probably have asked for a shot of whiskey or something first. But going to these movies and this gig is better good than having a fingernail pulled out would be badly bad. Go Quincey.

Thank you for indulging me. Hopefully this does not constitute gloating. Probably not.

It probably doesn't mean a lot to you. There has been mention that recent Sleep Dep entries ("Sleep Dentries") have been gloomy and suggestive of a sad or depressed state of mind. Not so.

Here is a picture of a boarded up primary school near my office:

The Big Sleep Dep Monster

The laughter dies, an awkward silence ensues, and then the ground quakes.

The Big SDM wakes, it comes lurching out of the soil, from a field or a hillside somewhere. Maybe out in Sterling, the outskirts of Perth.

It would yawn, except for that mangled face. It grinds its jaws in a yawn-like way.

It's sort of a greyish green monster. It has lean limbs, a dessicated face, teeth which grow straight from its cheeks. No time or expense wasted on lips or other such pleasantries.

It would blink, except that mess of tissue couldn't really be called eyelids, and the misty grey balls of mush therein couldn't really be called eyes.

It does, however, have a garage. From this garage it extracts two oily, bulging sacks, both leaking coloured powder.

The one in its left hand, the bag with the white powder is labelled FEAR.

Fear that you won't wake up in time for work, or that when you get there you'll have forgotten something. Fear that you're not doing a good job. That your colleagues do not like you, that your job itself is beneath you, that your childhood self would recoil in shame if it saw what a miserable hash you'd made of your life.

Fear that you'll be old before you know it, dead before you know it. Fear that you're missing the point, that people out there, your friends, are making a better go of being alive. You should be more like them. Or actually fuck your friends, let's have instead the fear that they're HOLDING YOU BACK. All of them. Holding you back from what? You don't know, and that scares you. Surely you ought to know what you're being denied.

Scary. Scary, scary fear.

The other bag, the one in the right hand trickling with candy-pink powder is labelled HABIT.

Because you need a little treat to reward yourself for getting out of bed on a Monday, let's say a danish or a donut, and then you're at work so there's your coffee. There's your chewing gum, good on you for not smoking. There's the mail, the Outlook Inbox, there's those fuckers you work with filing in. There's the 10:30 slump, waiting for lunch. The perfunctory lunch. Nothing too lavish, got to save money. The afternoon, Jesus, roll on the weekend. The clock, ticking. The chores, performed. Jesus, Jesus. Almost there. 4:30. 4:40. 4:45. The evening!

Except what to do, God, well there's the post-work run, dinner, a video maybe, a beer most definitely. Two? Any more than three and you have a drinking problem, so let's call it three. There's Monday. There's Tuesday. I wasn't kidding when I said roll on the weekend. Thursday. There's the weekend!

What were we going to do with the weekend? Tell you what, roll on payday. More money would solve this. Only the end of the month. Not much longer.

It's a monster all right.

The Big SDM hefts its two lethal bags, grins its mangled smile into the weak light, and sets off to destroy me.

It's big. It's HUGE. It's so utterly vast that a single one of its steps crosses 20 entries of Sleep Dep.

OHETR TNHGIS, ICLUIDNNG AN IDCNTRIUTOON

(PRAT OF) THE ROSEAN TIHS IS CLELAD SEELP DEP IS I WTIRE IT WEHN I CNA'T SELEP. I GET IONIMSNA.

I HARED RCNETLEY TAHT THE BIRAN RGISETERS ALL THE LTERTES OF A WROD AT OCNE, RHTAER TAHN IN SEUQCNEE. AS LNOG AS THE FSRIT AND LSAT LTTREES ARE CROECRT, THE LETETRS IN BWEEETN CAN BE IN ANY OERDR AND THE WROD WLIL SLITL BE LLGEIBE.

IF TAHT'S TURE, YOU SLUHOD BE ALBE TO RAED TIHS OAKY.

I JSUT WKOE FORM A DERAM WEHRE I WKLAED ITNO THE PMAAURONT MVOIE MRTAAHON AND SITCHWED THE LIHGT ON. EERYNOVE BNIILNKG, AKSNIG "WAHT? WAHT'S HPAENIPNG?" FINKCUG ESRSRABAMNIG. IT WAS A GOOD LNIE-UP TOO, TEHY HAD TIHS BPCTLAKOSLIATION/HROORR FLIM CLAELD "CRCAK-DWON", WCHIH LOKEOD AMWEOSE.

AND TEHN I SAW MLYESF AT 60 - SLLEMY, BKROE, RPIS IN MY CAOT. ONE OF TSHOE GYUS YOU FNID SFHLUFING AUORND SUUBRABN SPPHOING DSTIRCITS, GTETNIG ATKCTAED BY THE LCAOL TNEES. TRFYERINIG BCSEUAE IT SMEEED SO PBAULLSIE.

Horrific Nightmare Action (1 of 2)

Hands down the worst dream I’ve ever had – a nightmare I had while living in London. This would have been 1998. We found out about this stuff called Wild Lettuce which gives you “intense dreams”. I offered myself as the guinea pig, and because I wanted it to work I smoked two joints of the stuff before going to sleep.

I was in this flat in London, a housing estate. My grandmother was dying. My family was all on holiday, somehow I’d been landed with the task of looking after Granny while she died. So there I am, on my own in her apartment, listening to her laboured breathing from the next room.

Phone rings in the middle of the night. It’s my girlfriend, except she’d stoned or drunk or something. She’s cold and distant, sort of sarcastic. This other guy (my best friend) comes on the phone and starts cracking jokes and innuendoes.

Something has happened between these two, like they’ve had sex and they’re calling me to celebrate. They want to come round, and I say “fine” – I’m angry, going out of my mind, but I need to know what’s happened.

So finally they show up. And my friend is all hands, he’s making it obvious my girlfriend is with him now. I’m looking to her for some kind of signal to the contrary, except she’s so high she can barely speak. She may as well be a doll, she’s just sprawled out on the couch talking nonsense and non-sequiturs.

My friend’s gloating. He’s looking for some kind of reaction from me. He wants to know he’s won.

I’m furious. I tell them about my grandmother, I tell them I don’t give a shit, I ask them to leave. I walk over to the door and hold it open. Slowly, and with a lot of resistance, they leave. I tell him: “get fucked”. I say nothing to her. He makes some kind of final wisecrack and they walk away across this courtyard, off into the night. There are trucks parked everywhere, tail-lights flashing, engines idling.

I slump into a seat beside the door, listen to the sound of my grandmother’s breathing, and wonder how my life could have turned into such a nightmare. I fall asleep.

And then I wake up to someone screaming. I’m still in the chair, still in the dream. It’s the next morning. And there’s someone screaming out there, out in the housing project. Then from somewhere else – more screaming, someone else. I edge the curtains aside, and then because I can’t believe my eyes I pull them wide and look out into the courtyard.

It’s full of coffins. Coffins laid out in a grid, with their lids open. The trucks are still there, in fact there’s more of them, with the backs rolled open and the engines idling.

There are teams of men walking around. They’re wearing boiler suits and masks, and they have tools – hammers, rope, things like that. More and more people screaming now, and I can tell what they’re doing. The teams of men are walking off into the buildings, breaking into the flats and pulling the people out of their homes. Dragging them by the hair, by their wrists, dragging them into the courtyard. Pushing their struggling bodies into the coffins. I’m watching them do this, this is happening in front of my eyes, I think: oh shit I have to protect my grandmother from this. Pushing the people into the coffins and hammering the lids shut with massive iron nails.

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