Sketches

October 14, 2006

Oki Oki is a Perth Band

It happened on Wednesday. On that morning X rapped on his brother's door, waking him, and asked for some dosh and a place to crash. His brother had seen it all before, and turned him away. Some hours later--forensic tests will remove the doubt--he was dead.
Surrounding his body were 60 capsules of something (I have not dared ask what) and alcohol was later discovered in his "system". "System" is a word science uses in articulating its objective findings; the family would use another to describe the vaguer, sickly architecture that lay beneath his skin. He was 25. He was my cousin.
I first met X when his family--two brothers and Ma and Pa--moved in with us after emigrating from Ireland. I didn't like it.
Much like divorce or distant death upsets the young because it threatens the neat emotional balance and movements of those they're anchored to, this sudden inflation of our family unsettled me. Toys, time, and a cherished personal space were sacrificed as so my mother could (quite decently) offer up the first lily-pad in this new country. My father, still cherishing time and personal space, begrudged the invasion, and time played itself out--vaguely recalled now as a series of violations and confrontation. And so they moved out, finding a dreary niche in Perth's northern suburbs. Selah.
The meat of this piece won't be provided by any narrative of intimacy: there is none. They moved out, we all grew up. We saw each other under perfunctory family auspices, and then... nothing.
It is the way of our family, and now, in a year of bad luck and mortal old-age, the perverse appeal of having no close family attachments is becoming clear. And so it will be a strange funeral, and God smite me for saying that.
There are ripples cast by most deaths, and X's sad demise is no different. My brother received the news just an hour before a gig, and hearing a deep register of shock in his voice when I spoke to him, scuttled down to the Hyde Park Hotel to offer up some small support. I got there 15 minutes prior to them playing: he was white and his eyes were elsewhere; glazed with the meniscus of a humble tear. That night, at least, the water tension would hold.
It was a strange gig, sabotaged by the careless hipster at the sound desk, but happily notable for the good-humoured shruggery of the three. But it was more notable for the cloak of melancholy that had settled on my brother's shoulders, and the aloof, blackly bemused relationship he held with the music.
My brother's depression had made him poetically sympathetic to X's death, and the suspicions of suicide that surround it. It is a bad poem. It is all gallows humour and dangerously entrenched introspection--the harmonies of a depressive's solipsism. And so I rode this one ripple with my brother, aided by compassion, guilt (I should see my brother more), outside advice and beer.
And my reflections on this sad, silly, terrible death? Life's grim and absurd, and made remarkable by too many fine things to name.
And so may we well "beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" but while we're at it we can be joined by lovers and, if taste requires, The Apples in Stereo.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 2:12 PM

June 7, 2006

Homage to Journals Everywhere

It's been a while, hasn't it? Writer's block is a nasty business, deepened, as it is, by my sympathy for Samuel Johnson's line: "What has been written without effort is generally read without pleasure".

My notebook bears marks. The most recent scratchings were made on the weekend, as I sipped coffee and tried to articulate my frustration with Australian film criticism. The source of my frustration were the reviews for the recent Australian film Candy, and aggravated by an odd piece of hostility--the studio interview I conducted with its director Neil Armfield, and co-writer Luke Davies.
But my scratchings came to nothing.

I made mental notes as I watched Booker-prize winning author DBC Pierre interviewed by Andrew Denton. While watching the exchange I turned to my housemate and asked: "Is that beer he's drinking?" It appears that it was. Piqued by the interview, I resolved on making something of my own interview with Pierre a few months back, and of our subsequent drinking bout. After many vodka shots and beer, I went home to vomit in my bed--he read from his latest book to a large crowd of well-dressed readers.
There was plenty to our conversation--awkward chats on the merit of Hemingway, his quizzing me on various subjects and authors. There was my admission that I thought his second novel rubbish, and his subtle bemusement. But so far I have written nothing.

What else? I've read some of a Capote biography, some Peter Carey, and re-discovered The Decemberists. I've met and spoken to a number of remarkable men and women--politicians, comedians, writers, and directors--and I've farted a few times. I've mused on the logic of advertising, and its relationship with Perth's most boring myth, street-artist Yok. While showering, I've often thought about my novel, and about my not having started writing it. And in a week where Patrick and I have, between us, interviewed Peter Singer, Rolf de Heer, Malcolm Long, the exceptionally sensible Father Richard Leonard, Richard E. Grant, and SBS's Damian Lovelock, I'm inclined to think we have a great little community radio station. But is there anything more boring than a list? This self-reflexive rubbish? When you write on your journal what you're currently listening to, I couldn't give a shit. So when I tell you what I think of when I'm in the shower, I shudder a little, and turn my eye back to that quote that sits at the top of this thing.
We all have our ideas of what's important.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 3:44 PM | Comments (28)

January 31, 2006

Love & the Pope

As stupid as this sounds, I was thinking about love the other night. I approached it as a linguistic difficulty, and scrawled in my notebook things like: "slave to language--see Burgess' comments...". And I came up with theories--basic and unhelpful ones, easily thought of before me. And then I personalised--I wrote notes about my differing interpretations of love and I'll tell you about them later. But, soon exhausted, I placed my notebook on my bed-side table and fell asleep...
Imagine my surprise, then, to wake in the morning to NPR's All Things Considered and hear that Pope Benedict himself had been thinking a lot about love too. So much so, in fact, that his first 71-page encyclical was all about the stuff. And he made some obvious but useful distinctions, and introduced me to this golden expression: "existential freedom".
Benedict uses Greek distinctions of love to establish his thesis: "Eros"--meaning the erotic love between a man and a woman; and "agape"--unconditional love. Benedict says that "eros" is fine, as long as it is contained within "agape"--ostensibly an extension of marriage.
"Eros, reduced to pure 'sex' has become a commodity, a mere thing to be bought and sold or rather, man himself as become a commodity.
"Here we are dealing with a debasement of the human: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom [snap!]; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less related to the purely 'biological sphere'."
And I would agree. Largely. Our not fulfilling our "existential freedom" is our failure to be all that we can be. That is the meaning of existential freedom--all that we can be. Hunter S. Thompson himself said that sex without love just wasn't any damn fun.
Of course, my problem with Benedict's statements is that they provide no provision for "unified love" outside of marriage or between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman.
There's another problem. Relativism. Pope Benedict, though often eloquent, believes in universal truths--endemic, inarguable truths which, if I'm reading my theology correctly, can be seen as the unchanging and benevolent body-glow of God. However, if you've read your Richard Rorty, or just plain simply believe that there's no truth, only perception, Pope Benedict's proclamations can be difficult to reconcile.
And what about the linguistic difficulties presented by the word "love"? What is consistent between the "love" you feel for your partner, mother, best friend, favourite author? What can I find consistent between these objects of attention? Is it what you find consistent between them? Doubtful. In fact, it's doubtful if the shifting shades and colours of the heart, as the heart sees these objects, can be meaningfully articulated. Rather, it's felt.
There is something strange in universalising something so personal. But, looking over these last few words--hyper-extensions of uncertainty and ego--Pope Benedict's universal assertions contain a comforting glow. Unfortunately, for me, it's a glow that remains non-negotiable as long as there are people excluded from the church's definitions.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 10:58 AM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

The End of Something

This really isn't a good enough entry, but anything to break the Block, eh?

MARTY enters workplace.

WORKMATE: "What are you doing here?"
MARTY: "Ahh, working."
WORKMATE: "Have you checked the roster?"
MARTY: "Yes, that's why I'm here."
WORKMATE: "There's a new one."
MARTY: "A new roster?"
WORKMATE: "Yes."

WORKMATE hands MARTY new roster. MARTY flicks through it.

MARTY: "I'm not in here."
WORKMATE: "No."
MARTY: "I've been fired."
WORKMATE: "Yes."
MARTY: "Man, Lea's a cunt."
WORKMATE: "Yes she is. I'm really sorry. It's really fucked."

ENTER: LEA

LEA: "Marty! Oh!"
MARTY: "Ahh, is there something you want to tell me, Lea?"
LEA: "Ahh...."
MARTY: "You can't fire someone and not tell them. What the fuck?"
LEA: "Ahh... I thought..."
MARTY: "No, you didn't fucking think at all. Every fucker is leaving this place, and it's because you're a misanthropic fuck-up and everyone knows it."
LEA: "Marty, that's a little..."
MARTY: "You remind me of Nixon. Fuck!"

EXIT: WORKMATE

LEA: "You can't swear at me."
MARTY: "Everyone here wants to. You run this place like a... jesus, I don't even know. I'm finishing my shift and I want an apology."
LEA: "Sure, I'm sorry."
MARTY: "Okay."

EXIT: LEA

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 7:40 PM | Comments (3)

October 21, 2005

Portugal: For Andrew

He had always liked this cafe. Especially in summer, when it was warm at 11 o'clock, and people walked and ran and skipped past his seat. He could understand a little Portuguese, but when he was like this, alone with a beer, he pretended he didn't.

On this night he wrote a letter back home, tore it up, and began another. He wouldn't post that one either, but he liked the exercise, rewarding himself with a sip of beer when he got that good line out. Often he wouldn't think the lines good, but he wanted very dearly to put the experiences in the back pockets of those back home.
He was very homesick.

On this night, he thought about ordering a coffee, but only briefly. The alcohol swelled his heart, gave gravitas to thoughts that would be forgotten in the morning. It didn't matter--for now, with the beer, this could be an absurdist play, an opera, a folk-song. He wrote another line. He thought this one was quite good.

He would wake in the morning, and then it would be his head that hurt more than his heart. That was okay, he had some good lines.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 8:12 PM | Comments (1)

September 23, 2005

Suicide Eyes

Once when I was living in Seoul I saved a girl's life. That really may only be partially true--her act of sitting defiantly on the train tracks may just have been a dramatic gesture not intended to end fatally. I'll never know. I pulled her off a minute before the train WHOOSHED into the station.
WHOOSH!
Hemingway once wrote that exclamation marks should only be used every 30,000 words. Or I may have read someone attribute that to him. Or it may be apocryphal. Either way, it's sound advice, and the use of that little '!' should prove sufficient for the next six months. Ho-hum. Let's return to the aborted suicide...
All of what I will tell you happened in the above photo--Itaewon station, a tube station much like many others in the world, only its memories and Korean hangul signage are unique. Can you see me, and her, and her boyfriend in that shot? Can you see the torn jeans and the blue-blues and the echoed screams and the rotten meat? No? I can. It's in the walls, the memories. I should tell you, dear reader, just what it was that actually happened, eh?
But, before I do...

I had told this story many times before, in many ways and in many places, but almost always in my own head. I had also tried to write about it, to capture the... hue, and place it in a narrative. That's always the best place for wisdom--in a narrative, far away from hill-tops and podiums... I had written it placing the thrust of the story in the hands of the relationship between me and a close friend. I had tubed to his house after the aborted suicide--I was in some state. It was around 7 in the morning and so I woke him up, brushed past him, got a beer from the fridge, sat down and lit a cigarette. "What the fuck?" he said.
Indeed.
But I never finished that version. I don't know why. It's tough, this writing business. Bukowski said it was the worst. Ho-hum.
But we've moved very far from that photo, haven't we? Have another look at it. Go on. I'll place those people and that pain in it for you soon...

She was Canadian and very far from home. So far, in fact, that it seemed to all of us that she wanted to die. Damn it. This was kinda fun. Then I wrote that word--"die". Damn. It's not so much fun anymore, but that photo hasn't come to life yet for you, has it?

Ahh... there's always something keeping me from telling the story of that girl's eyes. Let's have no more of it. Let's tell it. Let's paint that photo with the colour of suicide eyes...

When I first saw her, she was standing at the top of the tube entrance, cold, but not as cold as I, who had lost his jacket, shirt and scarf in some forgotten drunken blunder. Shoot me.
She stood, trembling, talking earnestly to her male companion, who avoided eye contact. The gates rose, allowing us down, the few of us...

Very quickly she began screaming raped elegies of unrequited love. It was a rotten business.
He avoided eye contact.
She dropped to her knees. They bled. She screamed.
He avoided eye contact.
The very rational Koreans, the few of them there on that damned platform, moved to the other end. Good for them.
I approached the couple.
I said something, I really don't recall what, and she turned to me with those fucking eyes--"He won't love me!'' she said, not realising her exclamation mark.
Her eyes were the Queen of Hearts, turned righteous and ruinous with the collapse of her Empire.
Or something.
I kept talking to her, she kept screaming, holding my hand very tight and bleeding from the knees.
It was fucking cold.
I'm going to fast forward, get to the bit where she jumps onto those tracks. Have a look above. She was there, sitting, her bright blue backpack still on. She was singing some devillish thing, and her boyfriend stood limply, more dead than her. I looked at the clock. Dangerously close.
Damn.

Her friend wasn't gonna do anything. Nothing. Had his hands in his pockets. He looked beaten by some damn thing. My father once said that it's no disgrace not to be able to live in this world sometimes.

She was very heavy, and so are trains, but I pulled and she kicked, and I screamed, and she screamed, and I pulled her up. Phew. I was really shaking here, you understand, and I pulled a cigarette out, lit it. In Korea you can smoke in just near any damn place, except tube stations. The tube guard, who had done nothing in this devil's business, dutifully came over and gestured for me to put the fag out. He pointed to the "no-smoking" sign.
I swore at him, quite loudly, and threw the cigarette on the tracks. Damn Confucian fucks.

And so it goes, or so said Vonnegut, in a little book called Slaughterhouse 5. And so it goes.

What's your photo?

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 4:51 PM | Comments (1)

September 21, 2005

Four Years On: Remembering S-11

When I left the house on September 12, 2001, a strange solemnity stung the sky, and in the afternoon it was joined by heavy clouds. As I walked through Northbridge, the Mustang Bar had the Stars & Stripes fitted to a pole and it fluttered in a stiff breeze. By the time I had reached central station I had spotted two people wearing the same flag as a cape. The clouds were very dark now.
Against these clouds rose the modest sky-line of Perth, and images of plane-bombs entering the buildings inhabited my imagination. My poor imagination—it had been hijacked, like everybody else’s, by the grotesque bizarreness of a reality that could not have been imagined. My dream-state was exhausted and I had no time for flags—I caught my train and hurried home, determined to chew this all over with friends…

We got some good scotch and we opened it and we still didn’t believe in flags. We also knew that death was still there, will always be there, and that terrorism fell shy of, logically, cancer as things we should worry about. But that night, and for many after, cancer didn’t sit at the top of the table because we had seen—live—pictures of mothers and fathers leaping from their 87th-storey windows.
The symbolism of that day was heavy, and it was widely read, quite rightly, as an astonishing attack on each and every American. Unfortunately, the response was an equally heavy participation in symbolism and Wal-mart reported a half-million flag sales in the days following S-11, but I doubt if the majority of purchasers could discuss the Gettysburg address…
For my friend and I, who believed more in scotch than brightly coloured symmetrical shapes, not many questions were answered in the days following. Indeed, four years later much has changed, but very little has been answered except our fears.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 5:44 PM

September 9, 2005

God Bless America

Like most nights out in Seoul we had descended with vulgar enthusiasm upon a hof, or pub, determined to take full, and unfortunate advantage of the local mekju, beer. And, like most nights, we ruthlessly monopolised the internet jukebox, ensuring no half-bred, hyper-real Korean pop fucked up our night. It was always an easy conquest—we simply beat the Koreans hands down at obnoxiousness. It was a bitter-sweet victory.
And so, like many other nights, and many more to come, we each sat at our table—a little piece of cultural geography annexed from the East—and danced and laughed and spent our (seemingly) fake money at the bar. But, unlike most nights, it got serious real quick.

He was 19, and piqued by such a large bunch of Westerners. Usually the shyness overcomes any chance of encounter, but our young guy had some moxie—and a full belly of rice wine.
“Hello,'' he smiled at us.
Most ignored him, but I invited him to sit down.
“Thanks,'' he said.
“Sure. Have some soju,'' and I poured him a shooter of lemon-tinted rice wine.
He smiled.
“Many thanks.''
“Sure.''
He stared at us, kinda dizzy-like, while we each tore apart the night. Others would ask him questions about Korea.
“It’s, ahhh, it’s okay,'' and he would turn and look at his friends who were envious.
Someone yelled kombei, the Korean drinking salutation, and so we drank.
The kid spoke up: “I go to war soon.''
“What?''
“War. I go soon.''
“War? Whaddaya mean, ‘war’?''
The kid dropped his smile, and turned anxiously to his friends. He pointed. “Him, too. He go to war.''
South Korea had just pledged troops to Iraq. South Korea had a mandatory two-year military service. This kid was going to war.
“I’m sorry,'' I said, “I’m embarrassed.'' The truth was, I was embarrassed, I still am embarrassed. This damn crooked cultural hegemony of the US has got it so that every US kid, in the eyes of the Korean youth, has triple, quadruple the cool points that he does. The Korean kid can’t win.
“I’m scared,'' he was certainly drunk now.
I drank more slowly this time, staring at his eyes, thinking that first and foremost this kid just wanted to hang out with older Western guys. He would rarely get the chance. What was so acutely embarrassing was the fact that this kid felt genuinely proud to be hanging out with us—a group comprised largely of Americans. He felt good about it. Damned fucking chipper. And yet the fact that he was going to war… our war… fell in his reverence’s shadow.

I bought him another drink and explained, once again and in terrible Korean, the concept of regret.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 11:10 AM | Comments (7)

August 23, 2005

Bees

I see a lot more bees these days. They’re everywhere. They usually fly solo, but sometimes in pairs, and, yes, even in groups. It worries me.
David is thirteen. He has cerebral palsy and his right-side is paralysed. He does not have a dad, but has a mother and a twin brother, who, when the genetic cards were being dealt, came out lucky.
He has a dog.
I know these things, and much more, because I am David’s mentor. And so, I know that David has written a ballad for his hero, Adam Gilchrist, and that he can wax volubly about the flaws in Jason Gillespie’s bowling, or the embarrassing incompetencies of the English wicket-keeper. David argues compellingly, and I agree with most of what he says.
David swims well, he tells me, and he rides horses with a disabled group. I have not checked this empirically, but I am positive that he can swim and ride horses better than me. I’m less certain, but still sure, that he can write a better sport’s ballad than me, too.
But what of those bees? Well, David also suffers a first-class reaction to bee sting. He can die.
The other day I thought it might be nice to take David down to a park. Get him out of the house, the first small step in soldering his independence. I thought it would be good. But then I thought of the bees.
When I first met David’s mother, she ran me through the steps I should take should David be stung by a bee. She looked very worried, and I would have been too, had I been her—she was trusting her son in the hands of a stranger who looked like a young Rod Stewart. I felt for her.
David’s mother ran through the steps and phone numbers, and then she showed me the kit. The bee-sting kit. She pulled out a syringe. It has a special name, but I can’t remember it. “Twist this,'' she said, indicating a part of the syringe, “and plunge down here, hard,'' she pretended to bring down the syringe into her thigh.
Jesus, I thought.

I did not take David down to the park that weekend, but I will, eventually. In fact, the sooner the better, for both of us. I have to overcome my fear of needles, and David, bless him, must begin exploring.
There will always be bees.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 12:00 PM | Comments (3)

July 5, 2005

On Writing (Badly)

…But if you only knew how distressing it is to spoil an idea that has been born in you, made you enthusiastic, of which you know that it’s good—and to be forced to spoil it consciously! —F. Dostoevsky

I’m hanging myself with that lament—that black rope which forms when the written word falls lengths shy of translating the hum and buzz and spit of something you know is true. It’s a real fucking struggle.
Looking back at my work, I see… what? Badly smudged carbon-copies of Hemingway, faint echoes of Brautigan—pale rhythms that communicate experience indirectly, the indirectness a result of some kind of Chinese whisper….
Sitting at my bench, reading Hem’s epithet “Write the truest thing you know,'' I wonder how best to tell you the story of Anne and her father. It’s a story that demands to be written well—written with commitment and a steady eye to the breathy sadness of it. Ahhhhh, right there: “breathy sadness''. That does it no justice, eh? But I’ll try to tell you the story anyhow, and you can decide for yourself and to hell with that black rope….

It was a Sunday and I was in bed beside her. The stray cat she had rescued meowed from the laundry. She wore a white t-shirt and gym shorts. I was in a smoky shirt. We both had headaches and I was very sure that I was in love with her.
She was much more attractive than myself, if such things can be compared, and much taller. Her apartment was small and warm and sparse and held Simon and Garfunkel CDs.
“My father comes to visit next week,'' she said, looking at the ceiling.
“For how long?''
“A week. He misses me.''
I too looked at the ceiling.
“He never knows how to be around us.''
“Who’s ‘us'?''
“Me and my sisters. There’s an awkwardness. He thinks he looks weak.''
I turned and looked at her. The cat meowed.
“A few years ago…''
She coughed lightly and I widened my eyes just slightly.
“He tried to kill himself once. Few years ago. He was up late one night, and feeling the weight… He went into the garage, fixed the gas and sat in the car, waiting. He was there for a bit, feeling it, you know? And then he realized he was leaving behind three girls. He turned the gas off and came back inside. Got into bed with mum. When mum woke in the morning she could see something from beneath his pillow. She pulled it out and it was a photo of us girls… she didn’t know anything until a few days later when he told her.''
We stayed in bed for hours, talking. I hesitated asking her “what now?'' but I did and she told me she wasn’t interested in anything more.
She had a party to go to that night and when she was in the shower I let myself out and caught a cab back home. It was a very long trip and I thought of calling home on my mobile, but decided against it, and sat back and watched the buildings and smog become one and I thought hard, real hard, about nothing much at all. My heart was too hung-over.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 10:44 AM | Comments (3)

July 1, 2005

Everywhere the Pursuit of Heaven

His name was Robert and his best friend had hung himself three years ago. I never did find out why. Robert was very tall and serious looking and even his slightest movement suggested a very large weight that he was practiced at holding.
We met in Seoul in the summer when the nights relieve the humidity and you can drink beer on the streets that are full with lasers and pussy.

“It gets very cold in the winter,'' Robert says, expertly capturing his noodles, “it gets so that you can’t be on the streets.''
I take a large swig of beer and imagine the streets filled with snow. I wonder where the prostitutes go.
I begin to discuss Australian politics, but Robert cuts me off, “I don’t care,'' he says, turning his head to observe a group of young women, “I came here to get away from that.''
“What?''
“Australia. It’s mediocre. Classes and classes of mediocrity… I prefer it here—food and drink and women,'' he points to the women with his chopsticks. There is a hint of BBQ sauce on his chin. He wipes it away pretending that the weight is of no significance.

We finish our meal and Robert suggests a scotch bar around the corner. It’s an upper-class sort of affair, and our cultural-curio status and salary assure us front row seats.
It’s on an upper story as so you can look out at the girls and lasers and all around are red neon crosses. Everywhere the pursuit of heaven.
The girls here are cute as hell. It’s a prerequisite. They wear tight, white business shirts and black trousers. Their hair is modeled impeccably. They smile a lot. Robert knows them all by name.

We order scotch and I look around the place—red velvet and suits; a long, marble bar. Above the bar is a large computer screen. Robert explains: “I have a cyber-jukebox,'' he says casually, “I have an account and the girls access it and play my stuff.''
He selects some blues, and I nod my head in agreement. Why not?
“Good looking girls, eh?''
I have to agree, but watching Robert’s practiced examination of their shapes unsettles me and I take a long sip of my scotch. I light a cigarette and calculate the cost of it—about 10 cents.
“You like the blues?''
“Sure. I dig Howlin’ Wolf best,'' I ash and watch the girls. I wonder if I’ve stumbled onto an extravagant shoot for a shampoo commercial. I would think the same thing many more times in this country.
“Howlin’ Wolf, yeah… I’m not so familiar with his stuff.''
I shrug and ask him about BB King. “Yeah, he’s coming up. Excellent guitarist.''
I order two more scotches. It’ll help with the discourse, I tell myself.
“Are you intimidated?'' he asks.
“By what?''
“This place,'' he points out of the window, indicating the city.
“No, not really. Should I be?''
“N—it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. You need to learn a few things.''
I assure him I’ll be alright, aware of my neglecting his need to translate the East to the Westerner. I can’t be fucked.
We switch to beers, just because we can, and neck a few of those. They stock foreign beers here, which is rare, and we talk inanely about how Australians don’t drink Fosters, and how Heineken is overrated, and we share our respect for the Coopers—“it’s unpretentious, cheap and tasty,'' I offer unhelpfully. Sure.
A girl is finishing her shift and I tell Robert he should invite her over. Robert’s on it, seeing in her, as with most every other Korean woman under the age of 40, a prospective wife.
She sits on a stool beside us and Robert speaks a little Korean. He introduces me, but I can only smile and shrug playfully at her words. I resolve to find some friends that I can speak to, giggling bar girls be damned.

Winter came and the prostitutes went inside. I did not see Robert anymore. His body was an old museum of sad strangeness, but I hope he finds his wife.
Rather, I discovered a large group of Frisbee players—alcoholics, cynics, charmers, faux-intellectuals, pugilists and gypsies all. Our vibrations were intense but shared and steady and the winter was very warm.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 5:07 PM | Comments (1)

June 10, 2005

A Very Short Story About Bread & Juice & Nothing Else. Or, Why You Should Listen to Simon & Garfunkel

the bakery.gif

I decided I wanted to buy bread. And juice. Bread and juice. Yes, that's exactly what I had decided. No more, no less. As I left the house, setting out towards grass and roads and openness, I thought: ''maybe I'll meet a girl. A real nice girl.''
And then I thought: ''maybe I'll meet a rat, a real nice rat.''
Who knows?

Simon and Garfunkel came with me, across all of that grass, and all of the roads, and all of that openness -- which reminds me: Simon and Garfunkel are very, very good to have, when you're setting out towards all of that openness.
But that's another story, and requires many things I don't have -- like narratives and structure; like characters with arcs; like style... style is important.

No, I don't have those things -- just a hunger for milk bread and a thirst for some good juice and I light a cigarette. Puff, puff -- inhale.
Okay.

Did I mention that the sun was shining? The sun was shining and there were no rats, no girls, just my hunger and thirst and the giant ghost-gallon of mine that's filled with a million million memories and pains and whispers and follows me wherever I go.
Even the bakery.

The bakery's close, and it's run by a Swiss man, who has his own ghost-gallon which is also filled with a million million memories. I think he likes his.

I like his bread. And juice. I buy my lot and smile, thinking that I'm the luckiest ghost-gallon captain around, 'cause Simon and Garfunkel are riding shot-gun with me.
Hot-damn.

The walk back's even better -- in the park there's birds without memories, old men with dreams and a story that ... has ... nothing.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 5:42 PM

April 21, 2005

a little piece about exploding stars & writer's block...

i had sat on that damned porch for months, waiting for life and waiting for words, but they did not come and so i left my typewriter silent and drank iced-beer and read celine and hoped that the stars would explode.
it was a rotten business.
it was one of those nights. the typewriter sat next to me and smiled smugly. i shifted in my seat, lit a cigarette and stared at the brightest star... if just that one star exploded... imagine the fart of the cosmos, the bright/hideous/angelic scream -- and so the ancient debris would fall towards earth and i would laugh and run inside and tell my two housemates: ''it's happening!''
''what?''
''a star's exploded; it's sending itself towards us. shards. shards of stars!''
''stop drinking.''
''no, no. it's happened. come outside!''
and they would. and we'd watch the rocks coming towards us.
they'd say: ''what'll we do?''
and i'd say: ''there's nothing to do. we just sit here and see where they land. they might not even hit this country, or any country, or they might land next door.''
and i'd pour another drink and bring the radio outside.
and life would scream back to that porch, and the words would too.

over several months i grew less and less hopeful of a star exploding. i had read a lot but the unemployment checks were coming with Find Work Soon demands, so i left the porch and did something else.

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 2:04 PM | Comments (1)

A Night in Itaewon

Scene: Itaewon. Seoul's western quarter, and party district, owing largely to the proximity of the US's largest military base in South Korea. ''The Strip'' is a grim vein of tarmac cutting through smog, heavily stained pavement, Russian-owned brothels, and super-tight clusters of American-themed pubs and clubs designed to bleed the GIs of their money. In addition to this are the food-vendors situated every 30-metres on the sides of the road selling everything from chicken kebabs to gimchi pancakes. The smell of testosterone and garbage married to the slippery sounds of chart R & B can prove nauseating if one isn't very, very drunk.
We are sitting in the American-themed ''Hollywood'' bar which has an unspoken anti-US army, pro-Western teacher ethic. Pitchers of Korean beer (Red Rock, brewed by OB and impossibly cheap) sit in front of us. A friend, Dray, a fellow teacher hailing from Portland, ushers over a heavy-set, goateed Canadian teacher. Dray whispers to me: ''Man, check this guy out; he's the fucking gas!'' The Canadian introduces himself as Dean.

DEAN: ...and that's why this country's fucked!

G_M: Because Koreans ''don't know what time it is''?

DEAN: Yeah.

G_M: Do you care to elaborate?

DEAN: Not really.

G_M: Well, how long have you been here?

DEAN: Three weeks.

G_M: Three?

DEAN: Almost.

G_M: Almost 3 weeks. Okay (lights cigarette). What is it you've seen or experienced that's given you this impression.

DEAN: What have I experienced?

G_M: Sure.

DEAN: Well, fuck man, I've experienced the girls... man, I don't mind the small breasts, you know. That's cool. Such soft skin... it's all good. AND THEIR HIPS -- different pelvises, man. Tasty.

G_M: (still smoking; grinning) Girls?

DEAN: Yeah -- you know what I mean... that slick shine to the pole.

G_M: What the fuck are you talking about, Dean?

DEAN: The fucking exotic dancers, man, whatever you fucking call them. Slidin' up and down, up and down these friggin' poles... they're all shiny with pussy juice.

G_M: I don't know if the girls are that turned on, Dean.

DEAN: Huh?

G_M: (takes sip of beer) The girls. I don't think they get turned on enough to secrete on the poles. They're working.

DEAN: Man, you just don't know what fucking time it is. Anyway, I can hook you up with some girls if you like.

G_M: Jesus Dean. I'm fine, thanks. Can probably sort that on my own.

I secretively signal to Dray, catching his attention. I then give him the ''fuck you'' sign.

DEAN: Are you married or something?

G_M: No, I just think...

DEAN: (interrupting) You're a donut puncher, right? I fucking thought so...

G_M: Jesus, Dean. I was just going to say that I'm not sure if I trust your dating services, dig? I want some quality guarantees, and I'm not sure if you're capable of fulfilling them.

DEAN: Sure, man.

G_M: Why was it you came here?

DEAN: Well, you know, it's all good, right? Small breasts, pointy pelvises. It's all good.

G_M: You came here to teach because of sex?

DEAN: Hell no! I've gotta girl back home, d'you know what I'm saying?

G_M: No.

DEAN: I came here to see something new. Expand my comfort zone, see? You have to see new shit to expand, right?

G_M: Sure.

DEAN: Well, I came here to expand and...

G_M: What?

DEAN: Well a girl was pushin' me up for cash back home...

G_M: Alimony?

DEAN: Yeah, acrimony, geddit? Okay. Nah, alimony, yeah and I'm tellin' 'ya -- don't knock up any girls, okay?

G_M: Sure. But listen: this expansion thing. Are you expanding? Expanding how?

DEAN: Confidence baby. You know, coming here, alien environment, a country that just doesn't know what time it is; I've come here and negotiated all of this independently.

G_M: Independent of what?

DEAN: Anyone or anything I've known.

G_M: But you've used sex as a bargaining tool, and sex is obviously something...

DEAN: YOU WEREN'T LISTENING! The girls here have small titties... small...

G_M: Okay. But what about the job? Teaching? Is this something that's helped your expansion?

DEAN: Maybe. It's expanded my fucking patience... I fucking hate kids.

G_M: Have you had any experience with kids?

DEAN: Aside from my three kids? No.

G_M: (taking a large swig of beer) You were saying earlier, Dean, that, quote ''this country's fucked''. I wasn't satisfied with your explanation. Can you give me anything more; an different response to why ''this country's fucked''?

DEAN: Ahh, shit, man. I'll tell you something, okay. Back home I used to like, you know, bang around -- yeah? I climbed towers and picked flowers and then some girl would go and grow a foetus and I'd have to leave the state. Yeah? So I leave that shit behind. I move to places where I can expand...

G_M: Expand the number of girls you've fucked?

DEAN: Shit man, don't get self-righteous, I'm going somewhere with this. So I move to China and then here and you know what? Korea just doesn't understand climbing towers and picking flowers, they just don't. I climb hills and what do I see? I see designer-jackets and designer cars, but no-one knows what time it is.

G_M: I think I understand...

DEAN: D'you know what my degree's in?

G_M: I was just about to ask...

DEAN: Philosophy. So if I can't lay these abstractions on you, then I can't help you -- look, I'm lost and maybe I can be found here, by myself, in a country certifiably crazy and that'll give me some help.

G_M: Hope in what?

DEAN: Hope in myself. Maybe the world. Maybe if I can negotiate alien places I'll have the ability to negotiate peacefully with myself. Shit, I've had a few to drink now. But, fuck it, yeah, you understand.

G_M: Yeah, I do.

DEAN: D'you know what the other foreign teacher I work with said about me?

G_M: No.

DEAN: She said I have an ''extreme social dementia borne from irregular priorities''... tell me, how the fuck do I negotiate that?

END SCENE

Posted by Martin McKenzie-Murray at 12:50 PM

The Bar

Scene: Small, smoke-filled pub.
Characters: Attractive, twenty-something man (M) & attractive, twenty-something woman (W).

M: ... so we're just animals; animals who elaborately repeat history.

W: angrily And our love?

M: dismissively That's independent.

W: Of what?

M: Of animals.

W: So humans aren't just animals?

M: No, we are. This haircut, this (pointing) watch; it's all the Emperor's clothing. We're base, but we have complex distractions like the myth of science and complex abstractions to prevent us from seeing this.

W: So love's a giddy, distractive abstraction?

M: Yes.

W: angrily Why are we together?

M: Because I love you.

W: abrasively sarcastic But I'm a thread of the Emperor's clothes.

M: But that's only repulsive if you don't see yourself as just an animal.

W: Is love important?

M: My love is important.

W: Why am I still fucking with you? Huh?

M: Because you love me.

W: Don't get fucking presumptuous with me. Why am I with you?

M: I've eaten watermelon & drunk vodka to that question & I still don't know.

W: Neither do I.

M: Look, as humans, we're constitutionally, genetically bound to service base history --

W: interrupting Oh, you're such the fucking optimist --

M: Listen. My clothes, music taste, diet -- it's all perfunctory. We're animals who have a highly evolved ability to tell ourselves that we're not. The Beatles, yeah? ''All You Need is Love''? John was shot by an unhinged virgin because John couldn't deliver that gift. The humanitarian aid package of universal love and acceptance. When the trip ended, people realised that there were much more powerful figures than Lennon & Leary. It quickly became ''All You Need is a Market'' and Lennon's kids got lost or got powerful.

W: Chapman was a nut. And you're a piece of shit. You're also only answering your questions, answer mine -- why am I still with you?