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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742194554 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 157 |
| File size: | 366 KB |
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QUILT
A Collection Of Prose
By Finola Moorhead
Sybylla Co-operative Press and Publications
Copyright © 1985 Finola MoorheadAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74219-455-4
CHAPTER 1
Confession From A GhostWhite Albino Skin
Found in a red brick comfort station.
'I cannot settle down. I am wriggling and wriggling but I do not fit. Tears have dried and my eyes itch. It certainly does not matter what caused the tears. My eyes are itching. I am irritated. I am annoyed by the irritation. I know there is a deeper reason for these things than they ascribe to them. They are all-powerful. They know what I am from the outside — that is what they see. They judge — my defence can be neither the tears nor the irritation. They will cast me out, dismiss me; I do not think (although it is the alternative) that they will ever gaol me but this is exactly what they want. They have gaols finer than cobwebs and stronger than steel. These gaols fit neatly into their wallets and when they reach into their pockets to pay, they deviously bring out the gaol they have woven especially for me. If their arms are around me and gentle as dew, I will have to draw in breath after breath of emotion, explode and tear off the skin and muscle to the bone, and then the bones must be snapped apart. That way they will not gaol me. That way I will be free. But at my trial, at the horrid moment of my defence, the tribunal will say with omnipotence that I have no more right to be free than they who have so many gaols on them their eyes are protected from the itch. I will have to say my eyes are free, and the tears dried leaving the irritation. All this will mean nothing to them. They will continue their ritual with kindness, and the timepieces (hourglasses, egg-timers, metronomes, grandfather clocks, watches, the bubble-handed round official clocks on the walls) will all tick until the courtroom falls to the floor. This is what I wish for — replacement of the courtroom by a paddock of hay or an enchanted forest of cabbage gums. All this is becoming impossible. They will not see that my eyes are sorely tried by a speck. If it would make them see I would willingly make the speck a beam and start it on a flamboyant circular course emblazoned with bright flags stolen from a bullring ... (How is it they shine their lights so bright? Why do they turn the loudspeakers up so loud? How is it the room is filled with the smells of unwashed orifices? Why do they bring the dentists in to drill the teeth just for sport? Why do they dress in starched cotton, so tightly fitting and so painful? How is it they move about tearing the nerves out of their skin with the points and corners of the gravel they mixed with the starch? Why do they drink and vomit with such glee?) I know I have only a minor itch in the eye, but I suffer so much what I see. Seeing itself is a pain, but what I see is more than pain. I take it into a ghostwhite albino skin I save for the purpose (pink eyes, quivering nose, soft licking tongue and ears sensitive to the flight of a leaf) and there it grinds, and glares, and groans. Inside me a little vulnerable shellfish me is exposed to all the agony they are inflicting on themselves. How I wish to leave the courtroom! They all have the choice to leave, but they will not. They stay to the final shaving of the dentists' virtuosity. I cannot leave, it is I who am on trial here. It is I who am in the dock. Two large guards prevent my escape — they stand with arms folded, lips firm and downturned, but I see their eyes slide anglewise to the arena with enjoyment as they watch the sport of drills, slowly licking their lips, as the dentists go faster and faster to the climax. And when it is finished they will start another sport, and after that another, leaving me here in the dock between dismissal and gaol. Always in this crowded room there is at least one glance upon me. Escape is impossible: I do not fit into this square ...'
CHAPTER 2So, Sandra
So, Sandra, you've written me a fan letter: if I don't choose to care at least you say you've registered your positive reaction to my story. Instantly I'm afraid of you. You are as egocentric as I, you sat down on the strength of your emotion and ambition and wrote to a stranger. It's just beautiful to feel the spring sun drying wet hair, unbrushed, uncombed. Also moss grows between the uneven bricks pressed down instead of concrete for the yard. From one window alone, mine, the full sight of a huge fountain of wistaria tumbling with blackboy roses over the tin. Come, Sandra, have some white wine with me while we smile and frown into the sun; and what will we talk of? Not me. I've said that now, I no longer want to tell you that — the big decisions that changed my life, nor the banal circumstances in which they occurred. Let people find those when I'm dead. Let's you and I talk of Virginia Woolf, incidentally mentioning Aphra Behn and Sappho — land a moment (you like the theatre and mime?) on Moliere's mistress and the one who was his wife. Soon I will invite you to join our troupe of jugglers and masked comediennes touring the countryside in a bright confronting bus — the feminist circus — al fresco salads by creeks and little bridges. Country stands at country shows and country general stores; we pick up bargains and take gifts of cast-offs with a smile. Or steal. This is the colouring in the scarf we knit and bring the revolution. Another garden of Eden. Another noble savage on the mountain where avocados grow on trees ... You sip white wine and frown away from me, you're thinking of the tiny not so glorious achievements of your own life — but your determination says, it happened yesterday — you wonder if I would be interested. You know how you felt and at least three or four very similar things have happened to me: will I cast aside the familiar, or generously emanate empathy? Suddenly I ask, do you see auras? You answer no, but if I have an ounce of proof ... this might be another thing which changes the world.
Living is hardly more or less the ego trip. Take the pool of the moment, the present, a whole cycle of events and organisms wound together in the seemingly haphazard pinpointing of a minute, or an hour, bound by that pinpoint; take it and see it as a simple round millpond, placid and welcoming. A child is playing by the millpond. She has discovered that she can fold paper with nail-sharp straight creases into a kite that flies like a miniature sailplane. She has been making paper aeroplanes all morning, inside the house, and has air-trafiic-controlled their arrivals and departures on the couch, mourned the tragedies and repaired the aircraft, within two hours. It had been a speeded up radar screen which, mysteriously, she has been both without and within. The planes became paper, quite accidentally, when she found a pen behind the door. On her favourite — this one sits in the air like a superbly designed Danish glider and dives to its destination like an eagle, landing always belly down — she wrote a secret message. She has come to the millpond holding her delicate creation in two hands. Suddenly the purpose became clear: with all her energy she shoots the paper glider high into the air and watches its path breathlessly, and, yes, it lands almost perfectly in the centre of the pond, sending subtle ripples out circle after circle until the first circle reaches the shore, then she looks back to the piece of paper. It's limp and like a stain of rubbish but the words of her secret message dissolve and become part of the pond and the tiny ripples keep occurring. And yet, I say the pond is a moment. It has produced a disturbance which is, strangely, not chaotic. A nonsensical note thrown from somewhere outside the present, and circle by circle tries to lasso ... a chaos. Which leads me to the persona of my clown. Who throws a handspan into the light, finger by finger finds the spot, mimicking the nothing, pulled her face around the corner, grins, twinkle in the eye, winks, strutting the parody of a learned type with a lecture. Of course it all boils down to dream and reality, which is a totally different dichotomy from illusion and truth, which is again distinct from fantasy and fact, and that again from fiction and history, and again and again from play and work and so on and on, and so on. And on. My clown beams tears of frustration, sits down and shouts, why me? I only know a little bit, but I want to entertain. I played, Red played as a child, with paper aeroplanes, and later in my life I was a student pilot flying an Auster in the sky, looked down on the earth and said, From here I can see over hills and round corners. I can see cars and trucks going from A to B, and I will return to the same 'drome. I thought at that altitude I had discovered the action simile for poetry ... St Exupéry came to mind. Comes to mind, now. Poetry is fact, he actually did that flight from Arras. My clown slumped in her spotlight, says in a petulant whine, there are no dichotomies, so there! I piloted a paper dart to the middle of my own chaos ... whatever is wrong with going around in circles?
CHAPTER 3Clown Pieces
1
If you asked me why, I'd shrug and smile. This week they complimented me for the capital I, and then began to attribute to it autobiographical significance, but I grinned like a clown, making the paint on my face work ... strange designs begging laughter. Please. Prostitute yourselves in laughter. There. In front of me. The poor clown is drunk. Trip. You ask me why I cry and step high in movement too cruel to be merely selfabuse. Working like a shitbeetle in South Africa. 'Boneseed was bad enough, when they introduced that from there it was a crime,' he said, then frowned into the sun along the coast and fingered Melaleuca, family Myrtaceae, paper-bark, teatree; but truly I have forgotten that man. Even when I speak to say hello I have forgotten him and his long legs which strode one step to six of mine, jogging, and his impatience when I decided to dawdle. He wasn't at all like my brother, except. A man's a man and there are similarities that hit you right away. And they said to me, 'Well, sister, have you ever been raped?' And I said 'Oh no, not me.' It's like I've forgiven all rapists. And the men lean back and relax like roosters when the hens are not, well, asking for it. Hens become a ball of feathers, and wait, you know ...
So trots conversation.
South Africa has me thinking of Bjelke Petersen and his junket round Tasmania talking about the flag and the Commies coming down and infiltrating and snipping off your balls when you're not looking. I was in Tasmania once and know a thing or two about balls, have seen men pinch each other in cruel sport. And she said to me, patting a puppy on the head, 'Well they're all outside you know, so vulnerable ... A man can never really be tough, not with that fragile piece of flesh hanging, in a way, defenceless.' 'Oh, yes?' I said. Women have a certain pride when they start thinking about things, well, that could drown you. I see a great big iron jockstrap surrounding Australia like a string of warships and I'm afraid Old Joh is trying hard not to be too defenceless. It's absurd I know but the clown's grinding her teeth outside the window, leering in. They think the machinery's gone bung and employ one hundred men for six months to fix it.
If you asked me why, I'd grin and smile, or grit a smile. Give me a drink. I'll tell you a joke only it's got to be on me, I haven't any talent for the other way around. You said I'd learnt to dance and that was great, last time I refused you thought it was too hard for me. Especially as no one ever knew the topless woman in the David Niven mask and Charlie Chaplin trousers was me at the Bad Taste Party. Diane Arbus wasn't there which is a pity because I'd dearly love to be in a book of freaks, be inside the horror, and glare out from the pages at the discomforture. But Diane joined the ghost train with a suicide ticket ... just beyond Luna Park in the rain. 'Bit of a freak herself,' I heard someone say. Of course, she indentified with twins and dwarfs and giants and clowns. Oh yes, Diane must have known what it was to be a clown ...
Heavy I know but it's hard to live with a clown in your head. I spend my time trying to find something pretty. Took a camera to the Chemist this morning and bought a film to take some pictures. The roll was gone on garbage cans and bricks and things before I reached the corner. Show a little discipline, kiddo.
No, all that I want to do is participate in a democracy of clowns who understand my freakouts, and well, shrug and smile a bit and let things pass. But they don't, of course. Things do terrify us as they pass. The clowns keep the laughter roaring, the pathetic prostitution gnawing into honey-soft flesh of humourlessness, while mortar and shrapnel fall on the fall-out shelter. All courage and cowardice flattened to one desert landscape. Well listening to Bob Dylan from end to end of the string of days can affect the way you write and where you think. I don't think you should ask me why.
2
Eve was keeping her, you understand. Keeping her out of trouble. The story goes something like ... yes, it was another time in the past tense. The tense or calm past of Ariadne Boston, possibly both. A pedestrian, Ariadne, of the tortoise type which beats the cars and is fleet of foot in the end, having learnt entirely what she learnt along the road. That was how she became famous, by being practical not brilliant. If a butterfly she wished to have did cross her path, she caught it. Then wore it, a clearly deserved trophy on her lapel. Preserved moments, indeed, were like solidified rungs on the ladder to her success, her memory and movement one. When Ariadne enters a room, all have a tendency to deride her clothes and manner and even the content of her speech. Ariadne lurches forward regardless, too sensitive to care for compromise.
Ariadne embarrasses me. She is another clown. Even Eve has forgotten how she kept her, jester-wife. But Ariadne owns her life, entirely.
3
Will I wait for you? Will you come to me, or will I go to you? What will either of us do? Why I know you're as clownishly scared of blushing as I am. When we're together there's laughter. Whatever we do we're covering pains with face paint, making wanting games all over again. Wary of watery grooves and slippery wishing wells. Well kick your shin and wait around, down under the street lamp where I might be passing soon on my way to visit you.
4
Henry and Bob, of course, made an impact on the world that I could not take seriously. Because neither of them, had I happened to share the same block or circle as either at any time, could take me seriously. So for me they were clowns, providing entertainment when my personal plans were far too serious to be really considered worthwhile at all ... laughable, simply laughable. To the world, Henry and Bob aren't clowns at all. No no. (The feet walk through Cliche on quiet days and shout from the mouth, The whole fucking civilisation needs a bloody great dose of V.D.' and with friend companion does laugh.) What's funny? But the women mothered them, listened, took the butt-end of jokes and loved them. Around the time she slept with Ferlinghetti, she was fond of Miller's energy, honesty and the absoluteness of his cunt envy! Well, of course, said Joan, women have something to live for now, any cause to put your body where your mouth is. It's not worth it, said Bob, won't make no difference. Real clowns aren't haunted by hundreds of hungry eyes; that's a person at the foot of the human race. Walking to toughen my feet, I find the soles are the only part of me feeling matter, all the rest of the skin touches air. She watched him practising for the next gig. I've seen indolent girls sitting on their hands soaking up and sure of their deserts, their cunts being free that evening. Henry says Wow and Bob says Get Out! So choose. There are criminals around and they vote conservative, vote to keep the world corrupt, boys. Oh hell what can a man do? I'm going insane. (Henry, you're cute, the way you make love makes me feel liberated! Super Social Studies chick Sorbonning it for greater education, but Henry then gives her the slip) ... who would have believed that Ariadne Boston led the world in '67? And not one good thing was said. No one saw Ariadne take refuge in the caves. I came late and viewed her etchings in an intellectual light. That's good, I said, that could lead the world. I backed back through the hollow doorway, needing a bit of bilious coloured sunshine. This clown is drunk and no one laughs. So see me down the road of a Paul Gallico ending, waving hi lilly hi lilly hi low, off in search of humour, juggling one blue and two silver balls in clumsy patterns.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from QUILT by Finola Moorhead. Copyright © 1985 Finola Moorhead. Excerpted by permission of Sybylla Co-operative Press and Publications.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Confession From A Ghost-White Albino Skin,So, Sandra,
Clown Pieces,
Five Finger Exercises,
Conversation Without Inverted Commas,
Jillian Arbus,
Seven Abortions,
Bloomsbury's Son,
Moreton Bay Fig,
Twenty-four Hours From Tulsa,
Goodbye Prince Hamlet: The New Australian Women's Poetry,
Sketches,
Screarns From A Primal Quarter,
Bella,
Prose Looks At Photographs,
The Room With A Mirror,
Black, Silver And Grey,
Three Men In A Boat,
A Nightmare Leads To A Scandal,
Where Are You, Ellen Spalding?,
The Rubbish Tin Outside Federation Café,
Rooming House,
A Book Is Launched In Soho,
Who Cares About The Sentence?,
Nun,
Happening Upon A Character, In The First Person,
A Bit Of The Learning Bit,
Novel In Ten Lines,
The Illusive Quality Stories,
Appendix,