A silver guide to unconsciousness

The trick to unconsciousness is knowing when you've achieved it. It's like balancing on a tightrope - one minute you're awake and the next you're not. Everyone wants to know what happens on the highwire. But what happens on the highwire often stays on the highwire. The tricky thing - to maintain enough wakefuless to experience falling out of wakefulness. Your feet doing their best to swallow the rope dividing light and dark like two carpet snakes, your body perfectly balanced, half and half weighted, moving back and forth, back and forth, almost rocking like to keep your weight distributed above your left foot then your right, coming and going, going and coming and coming and coming ... but the next thing you're swimming up from the weightless dark of unconscious samsara towards moksha, towards the light and it's another day

The Cat Piano

More poetry in the poetry incinerator right now. I just noticed a rat run under it, or perhaps a ferret. Flaming Hoop will be poeting again soon. I think I will just go investigate what that flash of fur was.

Guitar by Gabby

ARTFUL DODGERS STUDIOS PRESENT OUT OF MY HEAD

Please come! All welcome and it's free
Out of My Head
an exhibition at Signal
Signal @ Northbank - behind Flinders St Station, towards Sandridge Bridge, Northbank, Melbourne
OPENING: Friday 30 October 4pm
EXHIBITION: Wednesday to Saturday until 14 November 2-6 pm

Mental sparks fly as the Artful Dodgers Studios, Melbourne’s award-winning urban studios for young “at risk” artists, create installations for their new Out of My Head exhibition at Signal.

“The collaborative process is very exciting”, said Clare, 21, one of the participants. “Everyone put forward their own ideas to come up with the one theme, Out of My Head.” Together 10 resident artists on staff and around 40 young participants under 28 have been involved on some level in the development of work for the exhibition, which will also feature individual pieces and projections.

The critical battle of the growing individual to manage issues like mental illness, societal prejudices, family hardships and the misuse of drugs and alcohol inspires the work. The centerpiece installation is an outsize ganglia/neuron station representing the thunderstorms and lightning-struck inspirations of the brain. The second group-devised installation features footwear: shoes, boots and sneakers layered with the vivid and maddening detritus of life. The venue will be filled with sounds created in the Artful Dodgers music studios under the Living Music program.

Artful Dodgers Studios has mentored young artists (15 to 28) from marginalised backgrounds through the respected Gateway program of Jesuit Social Services at 1 Langridge Street, near the corner of Smith Street, Collingwood, since 1995. Professional staff include visual artists Alison Burton, Zoe Horsfall and Forest Keegel, musicians Abby Dobson (Leonardo’s Bride), Charles Jenkins (Icecream Hands), John Favaro (The Badloves), Natalie Allison (Vanessa Amarosi) and Andrew McSweeney (Kutcha Edwards) as well as dramaturge and Arts & Culture Coordinator Rebecca Lister and multi-media honchos Justin Schmidt and Tim Osborn.

Out Of My Head will be one of the first exhibitions in the City of Melbourne’s new Signal creative arts studio for young people near Sandridge Bridge, Northbank, behind Flinders Street Station. Wheelchair access is available from Banana Alley,

Website: artfuldodgers.tv

Signal

A tiny tree down the wormhole of a book stack in the window of the Book Affair in Elgin Street. I did some publicity for the shop's marvellous Fringe Festival exhibition The Liminal.

The LiMINAL
Universes in transition
MELBOURNE FRINGE ART EXHIBITION in Book Affair windows (3 new locations)
161 Elgin St, CARLTON * 287 Smith St, FITZROY * 149 Sydney Rd, BRUNSWICK
Thursday 24 Sept. - Sunday 11 Oct., 10am to 8pm (& 24/7 from the street)
Opening Parade: 200 Elgin St - Wednesday 23 September 6pm for 6.30pm
ALL FREE

A record, three-day heat wave peaked on January 30 last summer in Melbourne, when the mercury hit 45. Suddenly Book Affair, that rambling and greatly loved second hand bookshop at 200 Elgin St, near the corner of Lygon, seemed to spontaneously combust.

Sparked in an air conditioner, flames soon billowed high above Carlton and the roof of the iconic 25-year-old business was gone. This led to flooding and a mammoth relocation of over 100,000 books. Finally, after hard work, understanding bridging support from staff and vital help and solace from the local community, a three-headed phoenix of three marvelous, specialist second hand Book Affair shops has arisen.

To celebrate this, the Book Affair – perhaps the only bookshop in Melbourne with a permanent Arts Projects Coordinator (Susan Bamford Caleo) and several practicing artists-cum-booksellers on staff - presents The Liminal, a delightful Melbourne Fringe Festival exhibition. Works are sculpted primarily from recycled book paper and bindings, but also incorporating other things such as barbed wire, silk, hemp, ash, cotton, wool, string and wood. It is the second time the Book Affair have appeared in the Fringe Festival; their exhibition last year 'Bookish' was very well received (“delightfully playful yet very thoughtful” - Buzzcuts; “drenched in the same sort of charm that one finds in any great bookshop” - Beat).

Led by owner Kaya Prpic, the staff of Book Affair is working with a group of consulting artists (including Shirley Cass, Katherine Connolly, Eliza Donald, Ute Leiner and Waltraud Reiner) on the exhibition, to be displayed in the windows of the three new shops. Sculptured forms and costumes will capture moments of transformation and disorientation, reflecting their experience over the last six months.

The Liminal (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is inherently unstable, alive with possibility. The myth of Daphne, who morphed from a nymph into a tree and the infinite possibilities of the liminal space that readers enter when they open a book, are some of the early ideas inspiring artworks that incorporate an element that can be worn.

This is a community project for Book Affair staff and friends and is important for morale as well as a marking a tremendous new chapter in the Book Affair story. Hence, a mad and joyous parade of staff and friends will proceed on Wednesday 23rd September at 6.30pm from the old shop (200 Elgin Street) to the seductively new wood-fragranced and sculpture-draped Book Affair HQ at 161 Elgin, to launch the exhibition and celebrate the three new shops. There will be fun, colour and an opportunity to shake off the last of the ash.

The new Book Affair second hand shops are at 161 Elgin St, Carlton (academic), 287 Smith St, Fitzroy (sci-fi, occult, graphic novels) and149 Sydney Rd, Brunswick (military, sport, transport).

For interviews with key personnel and further information, contact:
Publicist: Jen Jewel Brown email jenjewelbrown@fastmail.fm
The Book Affair: Susan Bamford Caleo, Kaya Prpic or Catherine O’Dwyer
Phone 9347 3542 email sbamcal@hotmail.com

your immediate cormorants

I wish I could remember
you sleeping
seems to me you were always
awake when I stumbled
to consciousness
awake and writing
I felt for the phone, dailled two, room service

golden
your long curved back
absorbed you reached behind
and clamped my left breast
the other hand
inscribed wet notes on the lions
Sicilian outrageous
grand mechanisisisms
melodious
infamy
my right breast
triggered the secret door behind
the innocent, panelling in my library

your immediate cormorants
oh, my mercy
transcendental work
is going on

Cat People (1982)

Cat People (1982)

when twilight crawls down the lawns of the old
New Orleans zoo
shadows lean like collapsing bars
at dawn she
wakes naked and bloody-faced alone
to the crisp lip-curling spank of cat
pungent cement
her own basso profundo moan

my panthera pardis …

go then through the empty streets as the black city mumbles
the Desire Project where ambulances won’t go
with its broken flat windows leaking Cajun smells
past boughs skeined with Spanish moss
in the drowned French quarter
the graveyard sinking
in Mississippi mud

now this old swamp pops and creaks
around her entering
above, the moon is beaten gold
a crocodile god’s eye

pole the boat past the cayman’s swirl
to the shack trapped in the bayou
black she waits
frightened panting
enter slow
don’t forget
to chain her down

starter

rubber tarmac fight
blue smoke stink
hairpin
a bunch of yaaaaaarhs
gaaaaaaaaarns getfuckeds
stiff arms waving
from the blur
with the glint of beer colour
glass cracking toast
cracksmashtinkle
yaaaaaaaarh
aaaaaaaaaarh she skids a thud
yella glass sprays
into the bush gasping
eastern greys pogo out
of scribbly gums
shade thin as sticks

amber ooze
cracking tree
phalanger turns
head tucked
black noon
cicadas with your
cluster eyes
drummer
green stick pin singin
wild chorus in the canopy
of flowering mountain ash

glass spawn
glints from rock
it split its head
open the thick
jagged lip
sizzles with light

Past Portsea

112 tram North Fitzroy to city

Lost in a puddle
autumn rain and autumn leaves
Edinburgh gardens
goalposts barely held by gravity
Seagulls strut a patch of sun
‘council flats’
Dusty shoe tram boy reads poetry
- whose?

Trees burst from midget yards
Clouds on strings
Spiderman crouched on busstop
Poet rusts on plinth
Holden FJ ute in Brunswick street
drop dead beautiful
Jungular graffiti brilliant walls
Marquis de Sade
flogs leatherware

Labour in Vain
pub patrons well employed drinking
Over a forgetful shop
fossil tinsel
Marios
local heros make food
Central Hall
the ol’ TF Much Ballroom
True Blue Shoes
I wonder?
Tree stencilled on wall
with ghost koala
Persistence of possums

City Square
ghost of Vault ‘Yellow Peril’ II
Shops too full of objects
my imagination’s already full
Free:
Banksy’s rats and Little Diver

Still lost - Burke & Wills
stuck on
Collins & Swanston

idiots are everywhere

Follow the title to the story in The Age last December. Apparently certain anon sees his nothing silver vomit as better to look at that Bansky's Little Diver was. He slopped his paint all down the back of this iconic street art's protective backing. If I wasn't a pretend Buddhist I would say I hope he departs us soon to rort in hell instead. It's a sad, sick world my friends. *Sigh*

Dorothy Porter reading and celebration, Collected Works

Alan Didak all is forgiven

this is how you did it
kicked out their rusted-on disdain
shot your 85 kilos ballward like a foxy out a cannon
cut the herd whip hips a freak machine the wiring
foottobraintohandtoeye ecstatic
and the nanosecond prethink reaction swing 360 3D
a blast

whelped in black and white
kicks like a circus
dog heart
the rhino-fuel joyride
with pumpaction angel
of obfuscation
headdown ghostrider death set
of assignations
mystery man midnight shaker
all forgiven
all is forgiven
thy name is Alan Didak
hallowed be thy name

Dream Baby left me dreaming sweet dreams ...

White Stripes (for Meg)

what's inside a girl?
a series of red tunnels
leading to a parallel universe

a raspberry beret turned
inside
out
a strawberry incense SLAP

theriotouspinkslipperydip
of her inner cheek
watermelon smile
red alert

a cherry

acandy-stripedsetofcomplications
like a carnival carousel on fire

a red brigadier
a SCARLET woman
a psalm played on a cherryburst guitar

Buy ACME

Buy ACME’s special Hairy Pets DVD. It’s compact and fits easily into
your DVD player. The colour is crisp and clean. The whole family will enjoy it. The neighbours will love it. Comes in a box with free instruction manual. 12 easy payments of $99.99 per month. Plus GST. Up front. Actual colours may vary. Please check state laws before using. May not work with portable DVD player. Family may divorce. Dog may not be alive. Insertion may cause rectal trauma. Almost certainly. DVD not included.

Ida

runaway monkeys

if god exists
riding down the highway
if god exists
in her FJ
hope she thinks we're OK
not kind of hokey
if god exists
runaway monkeys

if god exists
she plays a Stratocaster
if god exists
not just any guitar

if god exists
she could come over
if god exists
and bring her lover

if god exists
she could be pissed off
about the football field
clearfelled each five seconds
if god exists

if god exists
will she help us
not just whelp us
if god exists

runaway monkeys
if god exists
runaway monkeys
if god exists
if god exists

beauty rots

FITZROT: This wall was wallnapped

Shameful lack of blogging deserves a flogging - watch this space for more of the Fitzroy black and white wall conspiracy shortly.

Gordon Bennett's reply

jean-michel basquiat

black panther

on the beach

capsized cage
black panther spilling
under moon's sullen cloud
beach and sky are one

moveable calligraphy of paws
smell of burning canvas
tail rope whips wet clawed
fur imprinted sand gleaming

wave goes out
she leaves the beach
legend

transient and nomadic

A couple of days ago I had to go into Fitzroy and I was socked to find that the Night Cat wall, which used to be swell mash up of black and white work including the razor sharp Scythe Does Matter, had been taken out. Apparently some official mural is going up, or advertising, because the space is all marked out. Rotten loss to freeform street art though. Miss the Dylan that had been lurking there for some time.

New Year's poem

darkling – do you know
the moth whose
sandalwood wings
wait for the moon
has your eyes on them?

do you know my pens all bleed in your house
and then repair themselves?

and that this dark knight son
was sent to be your protector?
(he will save you
again and again.)

you know
this vertical beach you sleep in
whose blocks are sleeping dogs –
do you cut your hair so this can’t tumble
from its turrets? (ha!)
(a rain of Rumpelstiltskins.)

do you know your beauty’s
more immutable than
bone and skin can catch?
your words, indestructable?
we your lovers love you,
expanding the chambers of all our hearts.

do you know you’ve
turned this New Year’s Day
into a storm of butterflies?
do you have any concept of this?

believe me!
a secret.

you

are

perfect

Vale Jenny and John Barnett

Had just starting reading The Age this morning in my favourite cafe in North Fitzroy after dropping my son at school when I got a very sad call. Can't be confirmed due to the intensity of the fire, but it seems certain that two key members of the Mammal Survey Group of Victoria, Jenny and John Barnett, have died trying to escape Steels Creek. Not long after we came back to Victoria, my family and I went camping with them at Cape Liptrap and elsewhere. My daughter, then about 10, has very sharp eyes and a strong animal instinct. She found an owl pellet - a 'cough up' little ball of skin and fur. The Barnetts, making we new members feel at home, were immensely kind and knowledgeable. They gave years of volunteering and career work for the better understanding and protection of both wild and domestic animals. So many people have been touched, many disfigured, devastated by this hell of wildfires. So many animals and birds and plants lost too. We know of no worse peacetime disaster here. It's a huge wakeup call on climate change. In time, some healing will take place. New growth will, we hope, return. Nothing could make this catastrophe worthwhile. We are clutching at embers. But let's hope our sluggish leaders finally start to get the urgency of our world's need for protection from ourselves, and especially from the industries who have callously exploited our naive lack of safeguard regulations against pollution, and the governments who have ignorantly backed them at our great peril. Ignorance is razed. The climate change wolf is over the threshold. The meeting for a new lock may need to be brought forward.

Ball of confusion

They think 200+ dead in the rampant Victorian bushfires so far. This so eclipses anything in the Euro records of Oz. I am a member of the Mammal Survey Group of Vic and one member is beside himself due to not only losing his house but nearly also nearly his life - he was saved by a road block - but what's really freaking him out is a suspected extinction event of all local wildlife('It looks like an atomic bomb's gone off'). He's pleading for help to rescue animals, if anything can be found, round the Hume Plateau forest system, Mt Disappointment state forest and Wallaby Creek water catchment area and further east. But authorities warn of crime scenes, road blocks, unidentified remains and electrical wires blowing, bushfires that might reappear as walls of flame out of nowhere, flames walking with ten league boots. Embers, trees can fall from the sky at any time. I'm calling him back Friday, as arranged. But by then ... ?

Melbourne fries - 46.4 degrees C = 115.52 F

It's a new all-time temperature record today in Melbourne after the hottest January week last week with three days over 43. Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun climate change denier), check your brain. A day over 100 F used to be a one out of the box when I was a kid, but climate change is bearing down on us like the riders of the Apocalypse, beating all predictions with its speed. Many garden plants are toast. Instead of showers,we favour baths,with the kept water doled out to the garden. We dunk the dogs in this to keep them sane. Four major bushfires are out of control around the state with wild northerly winds ripping loose dead leaves and embers. Blogger's not letting me upload images again - seems to be a regular feature these days - so sit tight and I'll post some when I can.

xJen

Bon baby Bon

Walls of Melbourne