Ingratiation

My brain feels peppered with aluminium filings and my pores feel as though clogged with petroleum run-off. I think that I am sick. Well, we’re all sick, we humans, for it is, of course, part of that condition of being; although, some are sicker than others, such as people who own millions of dollars or Australia’s Liberal Party members (conservatives) or people who nowadays have multiple children (except by genuine accident despite the very best efforts to the contrary) or who shoot Californian sea lions in the head (yes, there are such people, and I don’t mean using a camera), and the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on – like me just now, in fact. My primary point was that I may be developing ’flu but don’t worry, that’s one virus you can’t catch over the internet (although I’m sure some sick prick is trying to discover a way how). My various ailments, which currently include but are not confined to fatty liver, heel spur, sinus problems and a form of obsessive compulsive disorder (o.c.d.), make the job of author an uphill battle, and that’s just the writing part; then there are the problems of agents and publishing and a lack of any real camaraderie.

However, I am working on my second novel and trying to get my first one published, as well as writing the odd poem here and there; odder, indeed, than society’s usual automobile, football and sodomy concoctions and so they, therefore, sometimes earn me the classification of untouchable – or, at least, if I find myself accidentally enmeshed within a crowd of yuppies or suburbanites or urban ‘hipsters’, unfuckable. I shall be splotching this blog with some such poetry soon, so get ready to toss your Keats; but remember, my head is NOT an ashcan.

Also, I shall probably be continuing performing around Melbourne as backing (wind-chimes, steel-string guitar and mouth noises) for spoken-word artist Rupert Owen as part of Boh-Dandy and The Cranks, maybe even adding a poem or two of my own to the mix. Our performance in Richmond earlier this month went very well – frankly, we were the most popular act of the evening – and so this is either encouraging or a sorry story for the state of live performance in this city. But my Mum thinks I’m cool.*

*Actually, she thinks I am odd.