Slave Called Shiver

Stupid Dream has arrived. I’ve spent the afternoon reading Anais Nin, and deciding quite prudently not to include any quotes on this blog. Ever. Septembre et Ses Dernières Pensées is still in transit, several months after I first made an order. If I could how incredibly, utterly, drifting-into-hyperbole-but-still-ridiculously keen I am for its arrival, I’d be far better writer than I am right now.

I’ll break from the usual blog rant/terrible poetry for a moment to ask that you take a look at Samantha Holford’s fundraising page. She’s running a half-marathon in the Twilight Festival on March 18, and hoping to raise at least $200 with proceeds going to Cure Cancer Australia. Even if you’re not overly interested in donating, or are about as charitable as Scrooge before his late night epiphany with a ghostly ménage a trios – have a quick look, if only to send mental and psychic support. This is a thing, as far as I’m concerned for this endorsement.

Today marks the second consecutive day off I’ve had since New Year, and despite all signs to the contrary – it doesn’t look like I’m about to be called in at 9 o’clock at night. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d give a few pieces of advice I’ve learned from a month and a half selling phones, which will only serve to show how little I actually know about selling phones to begin with.

Firstly: If you work at a trade, buy a protective cover and insurance for your phone. If you do not - bad things will happen to it. The number of customers we have in with cracked screens, chipped motherboards and assorted miscellaneous phone-related trauma is staggering. A decent phone case will put you back around $60. If you’ve recently entered into a $2000 contract, and are working at a site where dropping your phone is not only possible but likely – now is not the time to quibble over a sum you’re likely earning in less than a 2 hour period.

Secondly: If you work at a desk, buy a cover for your phone. The rules are slightly less relaxed here. If you’re working at a desk (so long as it’s not a desk inconveniently located out in the middle of a quarry, overlooking a precarious drop and exposed to the elements – in which case, you should defer to Rule 1) you likely do not need to be sporting a bulky piece of hardened rubber and a protective screen. Even a light case will offer it a far greater level of protection than allowing it to brave the elements naked. The one thing that you should remember is to have the case level higher than the edge of the screen – it will help break the fall. After this it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a leather flip case, or a case flowery enough to put a kimono to shame.

Thirdly: Now that you’ve bought your case, do not test its durability by throwing it against the wall. Just don’t.

Fourth - Coverage issues: If you live with a metropolitan area, chances are that you’ll receive excellent coverage with Optus or Virgin. If you’re constantly travelling out to the mines, or frequently complain that you can’t receive Optus coverage where you live – do not attempt to an Optus contract. If you need to stand out in the middle of the street to receive coverage, it’s a safe bet to assume that you might want to switch carrier. Stubbornly refusing to mention that you need to dangle off a ladder in your backyard before you’ll receive even one bar of coverage, until we’re halfway through a contract, all because you ‘Didn’ wanna go with Telstra,’ is an excellent and productive use of an afternoon.

Vodaphone coverage is less than exceptional in Mackay, at least until they erect a few more towers. If you want to go on a plan with them, expect a few raised eyebrows.

That’s about all. I stopped listening to Porcupine Tree to finish writing this. I’ve started it up again, and that’s as good enough a reason as any to bring this blog to a close.

Black Coffee

"On page eleven I found a poem titled 'Florida Dawn'. I skipped down through image after image about water-melon lights and turtle-green palms and shells fluted like bits of Greek architecture.
'Not bad.' I thought it was awful." Sylvia Plath

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I'd avoid the bitter poetry that makes reading blogs like this an exercise in inanity. I intend to break that promise as quickly as I've made it. As before, a great deal of this means nothing - some of it does, but that shouldn't get in the way of reading it. I've spent the last week pretending to sell phones, secreting away a copy of 1984, and abysmally attempting to gain weight. So far I've lost 1.5kg - success. For those that expected something better than badly written poetry: Jimi Hendrix. For those curious about the blog title: The Seatbelts.

'Pressed up against the beetle
Alone in the dark electric box;
Turning out Labyrinthian explanations
For the mangled mass of Skinner flesh.'

'Blame the pretension of enjoyment

On this sudden onset of depressive anxiety;
Confirmation, affirmation
Proselytizing, analysing;
Throwing words out without the rhyme or reason
Of a madman walking to the gallows
To deliver his final vapid verse
Plucked straight out of Corinthians and a scribbled toilet curse.'

'Laying flint against the mettle;

Lighting spark after spark of fizzled fury
Fortuitous meandering verse
From mental stone plucked
As meaningless as gravel
That lines the path
And leads straight
To the manure at the rose’s verge.' 

Pulchritude

'Where is the beauty in your heart
Which sees the world through fickle eyes
And turns a love to vapid lies.
Where the lascivious kiss
Was nothing but a lecher’s wish;
Or a once romantic day
Nothing but a children’s play.

Where is the beauty in your soul?
Directed by such terminable desires
That used to ignite the midnight fires
And are now empty at the core;
The fruit that Adam spurned and Eve then turned
Rotten evermore.'

Missive Missed

'What is it?
What do you hope to find
By clawing at the head of some poor wretch
To find memories that a heart couldn’t etch;
Dragging at the clasp of some mental latch
Spinning off words that simply will not catch.

What is it?
What do you hope to find
To break a masochistic soliloquy
So that you could ramble with brevity;
Not once, not twice – not three times or four
Not again will it cross my lips,
Not ever, anymore.'

ビキニ・スポーツ・ポンチン

A few weeks ago, a man came into Mount Pleasant with an interesting tattoo on his neck. Curious, I asked him about it. ‘It’s me name,’ he replied proudly. The Asian characters scrawled on his neck read命名, which sure enough mean ‘naming’ (neither here nor there, I initially misread it as 冷名- lit. ‘cool (cold)-name’ - instant poker face for the rest of the contract).

I’m writing this not because I want to dissuade people from getting tattoos, or even getting hastily scrawled Chinese characters permanently inscribed on their nether regions. I understand the attraction having a symbol which appears to distil the well of meanings, shades, nuances that a word like ‘Love’ carries into a simple, elegant character like 愛. I’m not trying to discourage it; the personal meaning it carries is by far the most important thing in a tattoo. I will advise however that you do your homework first: concepts do not translate easily into different languages. It’s not appealing to suddenly discover that your expression of pulchritude is instead a commonly used euphemism for prostitutes; less so to find that it’s misspelled.

I’d advise anyone planning to get a tattoo in another language to do one simple thing: check your design. Find a native speaker (I wouldn’t recommend a student, unless they’re exceptionally proficient in the language, or it’s a commonly used word/expression. Even after a few years of study, it’s easy to get caught up in ‘Hey, I understand that!’ and miss the point that semantically, it’s a piece of drivel that a native speaker would never utter in a million years). Have them check the meaning, especially if it’s a longer phrase, or a colloquial expression. Never trust character charts at a parlour - you’re paying for someone to canvass your skin, not provide an accurate transcription in Cyrillic. And never, under any circumstances, believe anyone that claims your name can easily be transliterated. If you see a chart listing ‘A愛B 晩C気’ you can rest assured that it’s complete gibberish, and can nope out of the store safely.

The exception to this, of course, is if you have a sense of irony. I saw a woman walking the other day with the words 朝人 printed on the back of her neck. Literally: ‘morning person’. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t translate well; or that it’s likely to get a few confused stares from native speakers – it’s original, and funny (I’ll guess she’s being facetious, as no one is actually a morning person.)

I long ago decided that if I got a tattoo, it would be something completely vapid and meaningless. I would be personally thrilled with a tattoo reading ‘Should have spent more than $17.50.’ If anyone asked me what it meant, I could simply reply: Prosperity.

Babushka

They turned down the coat at the edge of the bath-houses; prescription pants mislaid, and allegations of theatre imitators forthcoming and rightfully so. There are few men who would stop a train to look for a hat; but they were successful, as the birch trees snapped their branches and the engine spits noxious boiled sap from the fire. Time moves interminably when you're living in the bathroom, and the landlord forbids partitions. A life defined by fickle memories; broken, rejected, discarded, erased, improved. Harsh vitriol spills from work houses, and into the street where wise men debate the folly of lottery divided by seven. Words cloaked in new meaning, turned down – vivacious meanings discarded, as if suddenly found salacious as a lecher’s evening stare. Trulls, trollops, dullards; piquant writers condemned to spurn never-ending filth, to be repeated by lesser men with the vivacity of freshmen. Wearing stolen robes; garish pieces which do not fit quite well and draw fits of deserving ridicule.

"To laugh with Pity at the crowds that press
Where Fashion flaunts her robes by Folly spun,
Whose hues gay-varying wanton in the sun."

From Russia, With Love

I’m currently listening to Arkona. I’ve started the poor habit of starting these posts with whatever-I-seem-to-be-listening-to; however it’s felt relevant – at least to the extent that this rambling blog actually has relevance. The esoteric Russian folk metal group remains one of the most passionate and powerful bands I’ve heard to date. Never mind the fact that the lead singer Maria (Masha Scream) Arhipova has a voice that could leave Catherine the Great quailing, and a pack of wolves suddenly seem impotent. The unique combination of folk and metal maintains the evanescence and power of each respectively. Yarilo is one of the few songs I could ever see myself dancing to. It shares this ignoble designation with Japan X’s Kurenai.

The mental images this conjures should involve long-legged spiders tap-dancing across a hot-plate. It shouldn’t be pretty.

On an unrelated note, I’ve almost reached a thousand page views. While I’m convinced that at least 50 of these are from when I tried to format the first entry, I’d like to thank the people that have clicked on this site, either mistakenly or intentionally. The few Russian views lead me to believe that ‘mistakenly’ might be more often than not, while the high number of American hits makes me confident that at least a few people are running proxies through a small flower shop in Phoenix.

For those interested, Google Chrome users far outweigh the lot, and 22 views have been from Android phones. The one view from a Samsung was likely by me, on an archaic flip-screen phone that rendered the page in tiny little vertical lines of text. It wasn’t repeated. On that phone related note, I’ll bring this to a close. For the couple of Russians, I’ll leave you with this:

Наказ писала, флоты жгла, 

И умерла, садясь на судно

"Decreed the orders, burned the fleets

And died sitting down on the toilet”

Canzonet

Solipsistic Soliloquy

It seems that I will always be

A solipsistic soliloquy.

Rhyming verse forms an empty cage

That fills the lines of this vapid page;

And if at times this may seem terse,

Remember that I'm simply verse.

Freud would have that I should beget

As an oedipal canzonet;

But in reality, as you will see

I’m just a narcissistic verse of me.

I've mentioned that I'll try to avoid making this a dumping ground for my poetry. For a start, most (read: all) of it is complete and utter rubbish. Don't believe anyone that tries to tell you that all poetry contains inherent meaning; frankly - it doesn't. A lot of poetry comes about out from complete nonsense, a sudden desire to write something, and an enjoyment of how words fit together. Everything I've posted to date falls firmly into this category.

However it's equally true that poetry can contain true, and personal, meaning. It's for this reason that I hesitate to post anything that could be considered serious. Let alone allowing myriad (and by myriad, I mean all of five) readers into the inner workings of my psyche, but let's face it here: bleeding heart poetry tends to be bloody awful. So, I'll end this blog with a few unconnected stanzas that I came across while reading my old writing. Enjoy derisively.

"It rolls on towards the hills in the fashion of a drunk

Returning home with those first few rays of dawn;

Covered in the stench of last-night’s bile

Which Bundaberg’s finest tends to spawn."

"Dull insomniac esoterics
Write in candlelit furies,
Their own ecstatic revelations;
That don’t make a single iota of reason."

"Poisoned ivy across the vine:
Know what’s good
And what’s malign;
These loves that stars entangled entwine
And twixt at last, they share divine."

And my personal favourite:

"I’m looking for something to write

About what I’m not quite sure,

But this is certainly very light.

I won’t even save this idiotic drivel

About my chair – I still can only swivel."

Winter of Artifice

I haven’t posted anything for a while. This, for those of you who are tired of your Facebook feed being filled with them, is surely good news. I’m currently listening to music I’ve never heard before, by bands which are sure to become a favourite. Soundwave 2012 is only a couple of months away; memories of the previous iteration are strong, and my excitement is beginning to approach the fevered madness which has led crazed individuals to run off to an asylum and write a dictionary.

I’m searching for Anaïs Nin novels (those of you who know your contemporary authors should begin silently judging now); and listening to French shoegazer metal, which I’m more than eager to finally buy. My bank account, resplendent in its nascent income stream, is about to lose a little of its lustre. My parents, when they either read this or have it relayed by an inquisitive aunt (“It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”) will berate me until I’m slowly driven insane.

On that point, my bank balance is already wounded from purchasing plane tickets to see Rodger Water’s “The Wall” in concert. While I’m not expecting anything approaching the monolithically famous spectacle of the original concert that was performed long-before-I-was-born, I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. If you’re in Brisbane at the start of February, you should consider coming along to it too.

And on that point as well, if you’re in Mackay at the moment, and would like to meet up for coffee, you should send me a message. It’s something that I don’t do as often as I’d like, but I like as often as I do. And on that rather unsettlingly annoying turn of phrase that I can’t-rewrite-for-the-life-of-me, I’m bringing this blog entry to a close.