'A story' about Atalanta's adventures in the Woods after she had been thrown out of her father's house on account of a rumour that she was a girl and therefore useless.
When Atlanta finally did snap out of her unusual daydreams … it was not in the surrounds she had always imagined. The feathery white drapery … luxurious white feather bed and voluminous white pillows … were notable … only by their absence …. as was the clarinet quartet.
Instead she woke up face down in a patch of moss. She woke with a start, the moss had got right up her nose. Not only that, she had inhaled some of it and nearly choked to death. For the longest time she could hardly breathe. Close to death and groping in the dark she found a cigarette packet … with one cigarette in it … and one small battered blue lighter from a previous epoch with just enough gas in to light it … and illuminate … for just a moment … the dark cave where she had lain for all these years.
Far away in another era a bomb exploded and she heard the howling of the wolves and the screeching of the owls for the first time. She remembered the last time she had been scared. The night the lions escaped from the zoo and went on a killing rampage in Queenstown. She could still hear the screams of the women … when she put her mind to it … which she didn’t ... because it reminded her of that terrible night when they had come scratching at her door.
She blew smoke rings and watched them as they faded into nothing like cinder from a heat haze … ‘The air icy and oblique … reclaims what was never mine to keep … the same scene replaying itself over and over again’. Did I write that?
Now … she remembered … the last three lines of a poem written by a dead person about stormy seas and jagged rocks … and railway tracks covered in blood.
It was not a poem about an affair of the heart or even a romance that had gone terribly wrong. It never was about her or about him and his pathetic attempts to woo the forest nymphs with tawdry Valentine’s Day Cards and empty promises.
The nymphs had been around long enough to know that is it better to hide in the shadows on Valentine’s Day.
In Atalanta’s world, Valentine’s Day is the day the forest children send their demons out into 'the world of deluded fantasies' to lure the lovelorn 'gentlemen callers' far away from them ... even if it means they had to slop around looking like Hobblers for a while.
By the time Atalanta had taken her last drag … the wolves had ambled off ... disgruntled to discover that the white plastic bag flapping on a fish hook sticking out of a tree was not the yummy white rabbit that they had supposed it was.
Later that evening Atalanta buried the cigarette but and the lighter under a heavy rock with a Kimono Dragon type of aspect to it … and said a wistful goodbye.
Goodnight Panther Puss! … Goodnight Blue Flame … Goodnight Kimy … Goodnight Kitty Kat … Goodnight Mizz WebWing … Goodnight Dickheads … Goodnight Stagger Lee … Goodnight Construction Agent 101 … she said sorrowfully. It was a solemn occasion that demanded nothing less than utmost solemnity.
Regardless of the fact that she had been asleep for such a bloodthirsty long time … Atalanta soon drifted off again … back to that other realm … the one she knew almost nothing about … the one she would return to again and again.
Sometimes she was there in disguise … as Adorabella … the Mystery Queen of the Black Sea for instance … or as Snippy … the scruffy little dog and sole companion of the scullery maid who worked in the kitchens of the Robber Barons Palace.
Once … and only once … Atalanta chased after a boy … not because she wanted to catch him and kiss him … because she wanted to catch him and kill him … and she almost did … chasing him down an alleyway late one night … she took a swipe at his foot and bit off his shoe.
The very next day, she went back down that very same alleyway … ostensibly to catch and eat some rats … and with any luck … find and eat the foot that belonged to the shoe … and stepped on wet cement.
A lioness saw a paw print that very next day and next to it … a splotch of pink paint.
Another night … another lion noticed the paw print and a shoe with tooth mark of a sabre tooth tiger on it… half buried in the sand.
A late at night visit to a psychiatric Clinic
A psychiatrist from one of the psychiatric clinics that was not completely in ruins had to arrange an emergency appointment when Atalanta’s situation re … the wolves grew ever more dire and serious.
“I know about these wolves Atalanta,” he said. "They are very, very dangerous".
“So am I” she says .
"I am warning you Atalanta" … he reiterated. "Do not have a nonchalant attitude about this situation Atalanta. This is a very, very serious situation. I have to tell you … I am quite scared for you Atalanta. You could be in danger”.
“Uh Uh … OK I promise I will be extremely careful … so as not to offend any criminals OK”
“They are not ordinary criminals Atalanta!" … he exclaimed loudly, banging his fist on the table and rearing up out of his chair. "They are the most depraved bloodthirsty creatures that you could ever imagine. I should know I was attacked by one when I was only a little baby boy. It was terrible".
“Yep.. uh …That would have been awful”, said Atalanta genuinely shocked by the thought of it … "no wonder you are so scared about my extremely dangerous situation".
'Yes I am scared about it Atalanta . It’s very serious and a very, very dangerous'.
Naturally Atalanta was scared walking all night through the forest after what the psychiatrist had said. …. and it was extremely dark and extremely menacing. ‘I know I should be a lot more scared about this than I am… she thought. The wolves were howling and howling and snarling terribly. She tried to remember the last time she had to run away from some dangerous criminals. It was in a city.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Same Day but Later ...
Lillian,
I don’t know how to wind this story up … more and more weird coincidences like this and I swear I am going to go bananas.
In the briefest possible way I shall outline three near scapes for your perusal because I have to record them.
First off there was a colossal mould and dust invasion from a passing planet that had blown apart eons ago. I worked like a Trojan for three days pouring plaster of Paris all over the place and other cleaning agents. My whole personage and my abode nearly suffocated. …
A couple of weeks later ... horde of funnel web spiders invaded the entire building. I discovered numerous large holes and cracks in the masonry of the stair well that did not resemble normal wear and tear. I tried to plug up the holes with a concoction of Plaster of Paris and Spice and slopped it on the stairs. When I ran out of that I used modelling past. I sprayed Duck disinfectant on the top of the doors and in some of the cracks and holes. I found an unusual key in one of the holes.
Mellissa the receptionist must have seen me on the security camera because she turned up, demanding to know what I was doing … I said Melissa, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you”. I assured her I would clean up the mess.
I had to go back to my apartment to get more plaster spice mix and when I got back … and I was only gone about five minutes … all the mess had been cleared away and entire sections had been plastered over by professional plasterers …a lot longer than five minutes ago … the plaster was dry Lillian.
One day soon after that I got it into my head that I had to feed the spiders before they got to the top floor … so went to Coles Supermarket and bought a tray of chicken necks and put them into a type of walled up unused store room.
Of course I understand that the smell up there would have been horrendous and eventually discovered and that Max would be pissed with me … which he was when I passed him by in the foyer a few weeks later. He gave me one of those ‘raise one eyebrow and shake my head type of looks’.
The smell would have been terrible.
Oh apparently I am a really bad person because I wreaked havoc on an entire ancient civilization once … as it happens I had made a big mess of the lawn area in front of the space base area because I didn’t clear away the plaster spice concoction that I scraped off the top of it. Wow … End times for microscopic me!
By happenstance I had inadvertently purchased some extremely dangerous and lethal weaponry … possible explosive devices no less … from an enclave of the Hidden Dragon … a while ago now …
One of them flew apart and I saw what it was … and extremely powerful magnetic type of anti gravity bomb and … I had eight of them. I had stuck them on my fridge. It occurred to me that were serving some kind of nefarious purpose that turns abodes like mine into shit magnets … maybe something even worse …
That night I dumped all the magnets that I could bear to part with in various locations, down the toilet … down the garbage chute and in Griffin Lake … specifically … the wild plains zoo dam and a hospital for the infirm.
The night we dumped the magnets … Bandyhoots and me … was a night of danger and excitement and secret fears. Bandyhoots nearly drove the van into the blue zone and I had to scream at him to stop. I jumped out of the car… ran back towards the bridge and over it …
I can’t say exactly where I dumped the magnets … but by the time Bendy caught up with me in the van … I was running either towards a tyrannosaurus rex or away from it. I jumped in that van real fast I can tell you ...I was panting for breath … coz I don’t have a lot of it … to be honest.
I said “Did you hear it?” … he said no … I tried to describe the type of roaring noise they make and he said it would have been a lion from the zoo. It was not a lion Lillian! … apart from anything else … it was close enough to smell me … but not see me …
I heard it. I did not see it and I did not smell it.
We were observed by spaceships all the way to the hospice. I am absolutely positive they were being drawn there by the magnets so you can imagine how glad I was to finally get rid of them.
The End
Dear Miz Parker
March 4 2014
I understand that Marine and Dabios and Miz Forkner would probably be shocked and upset by my observations of their apparent selves on my side of the fence and probably with good reason too … being one step removed from my situation they are either innocent of their supposed transgressions or unaware of them and vice versa of course. Maybe not!
Take Marine for instance, Dabios too, and Miz Forkner in the early days … none of them are the heinous characters that I have painted them to be Marine for instance …she has been what you would call a normal grandma on more than one occasion … and I have sometimes detected a certain fondness for me from Dabios and camaraderie from Miz Forkner.
The problem is … they keep on morphing … and I … stupefied and transfixed by their shifting personalities’ … I can’t see the wood for the trees …and I am virtually a sitting duck. Marine is the main one that comes to my mind … she would morph into this other character and not only in her behavior also in her appearance.
In this other mode her eyes which are normally hazel in colour turn black and become like slits .… she appears cold, alien, malevolent … I don’t really understand it …
Peter changed.
I’ve heard it said that dabbling in the occult world of séances and trying to contact the dead … is like handing out invitations for a whole bunch of ghosts to take up residence in your abode and create havoc.
For another ghost familiar only with astral shells of old friends and family. It can be a foray into an alien and more often than not a hostile and sinister world … and I am not going their way.
Sometimes I try to imagine things from their perspective … totally fed up up with the weirdo who keeps turning up on all their doorstops and ruining their plans and generally being a burden and a nuisance.
One day I went around to Marines house in the morning and sat on her bed and began chatting with her the way that mothers and daughters are wont to do. She awoke with a start. She was obviously frightened. I don’t think she recognized me …maybe she thought I was a vagrant or a miscreant … … Strangers
Khalil Gibran wrote of children … and their parents
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not of you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Rosie changed … during that time when we would spend endless days hanging out with Mitch and Owan Dean at his parents house in Beauchamp Street listening to Beatles records and smoking …
Rosie stopped being Rosie … if someone were to ask me to describe her behavioral characteristics without reference to her outward visage … I would have to say that she had the demeanor of a grumpy old man and a very sleepy one too … because that was all she ever did.
Having being sequestered by this pair … a couple of old chooks … I would have to say if a character analysis is appropriate here … how can I describe this situation ? … slowly but surely we were being monopolized … it was always like that … these boys were the not like the ones I remembered … they were too old for that.
And Peter changed … who was he …there was a moment in the control room at the television studio …it was a passing moment because I never saw that Peter again.
What happened to Rosemary deBorge ? … the metamorphose kids and the kids from the establishmentarians? The gatherings in the dark woods …the road statues … the girls all in black and their theatrical street theatre performances … Agatha’s billowing black dress … the empty streets and forlorn maidens in distress pantomimes.
As is the way , whenever one of them ‘men’ attaches himself to me and this happens so insidiously that I often don’t notice until it’s too late and I am trapped like a fly in a spiders web … I begin to acquire mass and my appearance starts to change … and I lose whatever it was I had before they came into my energy field. I become immersed in matter and I lose myself.
Ok so where was I going with this … I had to leave Dean in the Hallway after Zac died … I changed … Rosie told me I broke his heart when I left him … I was indifferent … I didn’t care. I just wanted my old self back … my androgynous youthful self … not this dreary old women I had morphed into within a matter of months I was only 22 for goodness sake!.
I lost weight fast … I got harder in all ways … I became addicted to exercise … I rode my bike everywhere and worked out in the gym. I became vain about my appearance and reveled in my new found appeal. I lost my mental spark … and I was ambushed again …
During those brief halcyon days when I hung out with Zee in her Dad’s house while Chris Owen prowled about outside …before Jack came onto the scene … just before the end. We used to meet up the uni bar on certain weeknights to drink and play pool with some of the Maori boys.
One day Lulubelle swung by I hadn’t seen her since I left Sydney three years before. She arrived expectantly. She was angry and hostile towards me. She literally demanded to know how I had lost so much weight. I was so naïve … I should have wondered about that.
She looked like she did when I last saw her about two years ago … middle aged or thereabouts … I didn’t notice these weird age discrepancies in those days … like why did my mother look so old by comparison to other women of her supposed generation. I should know I had worked in two nursing homes by then and I know what real old age looks like. She has always looked ancient to me … virtually from the beginning.
I have deduced that I have still my things … my treasures … a physical self to shelter in … because I was born and I did live ‘a life’ albeit a shadowy sort of half life … but a life nevertheless … I still have my roads … my portals … but for how long … in that other life … the one I had to forfeit … I was not born … I did not exist … as I move from one life to no other will these things that I have …fade into nothingness … like the aports and engravings and the strange new buildings and weird sculptures that just appeared out of nowhere so long ago now … so too will the other stuff disappear … the stuff that never was … the dust. I am not being morbid about this Lillian ... I am just wondering what the future holds on this side of the fence … this city for instance. To some folk this is a jungle … I just can’t see it.
So why should I be surprised or even upset that the pearls my mother gave me for my 21st birthday … have disappeared into that ether as did my pearl earrings and my silver charm bracelet , my poems and other writings …a pink nightie and the photograph that never was.
I don’t know how to wind this story up … more and more weird coincidences like this and I swear I am going to go bananas.
In the briefest possible way I shall outline three near scapes for your perusal because I have to record them.
First off there was a colossal mould and dust invasion from a passing planet that had blown apart eons ago. I worked like a Trojan for three days pouring plaster of Paris all over the place and other cleaning agents. My whole personage and my abode nearly suffocated. …
A couple of weeks later ... horde of funnel web spiders invaded the entire building. I discovered numerous large holes and cracks in the masonry of the stair well that did not resemble normal wear and tear. I tried to plug up the holes with a concoction of Plaster of Paris and Spice and slopped it on the stairs. When I ran out of that I used modelling past. I sprayed Duck disinfectant on the top of the doors and in some of the cracks and holes. I found an unusual key in one of the holes.
Mellissa the receptionist must have seen me on the security camera because she turned up, demanding to know what I was doing … I said Melissa, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you”. I assured her I would clean up the mess.
I had to go back to my apartment to get more plaster spice mix and when I got back … and I was only gone about five minutes … all the mess had been cleared away and entire sections had been plastered over by professional plasterers …a lot longer than five minutes ago … the plaster was dry Lillian.
One day soon after that I got it into my head that I had to feed the spiders before they got to the top floor … so went to Coles Supermarket and bought a tray of chicken necks and put them into a type of walled up unused store room.
Of course I understand that the smell up there would have been horrendous and eventually discovered and that Max would be pissed with me … which he was when I passed him by in the foyer a few weeks later. He gave me one of those ‘raise one eyebrow and shake my head type of looks’.
The smell would have been terrible.
Oh apparently I am a really bad person because I wreaked havoc on an entire ancient civilization once … as it happens I had made a big mess of the lawn area in front of the space base area because I didn’t clear away the plaster spice concoction that I scraped off the top of it. Wow … End times for microscopic me!
By happenstance I had inadvertently purchased some extremely dangerous and lethal weaponry … possible explosive devices no less … from an enclave of the Hidden Dragon … a while ago now …
One of them flew apart and I saw what it was … and extremely powerful magnetic type of anti gravity bomb and … I had eight of them. I had stuck them on my fridge. It occurred to me that were serving some kind of nefarious purpose that turns abodes like mine into shit magnets … maybe something even worse …
That night I dumped all the magnets that I could bear to part with in various locations, down the toilet … down the garbage chute and in Griffin Lake … specifically … the wild plains zoo dam and a hospital for the infirm.
The night we dumped the magnets … Bandyhoots and me … was a night of danger and excitement and secret fears. Bandyhoots nearly drove the van into the blue zone and I had to scream at him to stop. I jumped out of the car… ran back towards the bridge and over it …
I can’t say exactly where I dumped the magnets … but by the time Bendy caught up with me in the van … I was running either towards a tyrannosaurus rex or away from it. I jumped in that van real fast I can tell you ...I was panting for breath … coz I don’t have a lot of it … to be honest.
I said “Did you hear it?” … he said no … I tried to describe the type of roaring noise they make and he said it would have been a lion from the zoo. It was not a lion Lillian! … apart from anything else … it was close enough to smell me … but not see me …
I heard it. I did not see it and I did not smell it.
We were observed by spaceships all the way to the hospice. I am absolutely positive they were being drawn there by the magnets so you can imagine how glad I was to finally get rid of them.
The End
Dear Miz Parker
March 4 2014
I understand that Marine and Dabios and Miz Forkner would probably be shocked and upset by my observations of their apparent selves on my side of the fence and probably with good reason too … being one step removed from my situation they are either innocent of their supposed transgressions or unaware of them and vice versa of course. Maybe not!
Take Marine for instance, Dabios too, and Miz Forkner in the early days … none of them are the heinous characters that I have painted them to be Marine for instance …she has been what you would call a normal grandma on more than one occasion … and I have sometimes detected a certain fondness for me from Dabios and camaraderie from Miz Forkner.
The problem is … they keep on morphing … and I … stupefied and transfixed by their shifting personalities’ … I can’t see the wood for the trees …and I am virtually a sitting duck. Marine is the main one that comes to my mind … she would morph into this other character and not only in her behavior also in her appearance.
In this other mode her eyes which are normally hazel in colour turn black and become like slits .… she appears cold, alien, malevolent … I don’t really understand it …
Peter changed.
I’ve heard it said that dabbling in the occult world of séances and trying to contact the dead … is like handing out invitations for a whole bunch of ghosts to take up residence in your abode and create havoc.
For another ghost familiar only with astral shells of old friends and family. It can be a foray into an alien and more often than not a hostile and sinister world … and I am not going their way.
Sometimes I try to imagine things from their perspective … totally fed up up with the weirdo who keeps turning up on all their doorstops and ruining their plans and generally being a burden and a nuisance.
One day I went around to Marines house in the morning and sat on her bed and began chatting with her the way that mothers and daughters are wont to do. She awoke with a start. She was obviously frightened. I don’t think she recognized me …maybe she thought I was a vagrant or a miscreant … … Strangers
Khalil Gibran wrote of children … and their parents
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not of you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Rosie changed … during that time when we would spend endless days hanging out with Mitch and Owan Dean at his parents house in Beauchamp Street listening to Beatles records and smoking …
Rosie stopped being Rosie … if someone were to ask me to describe her behavioral characteristics without reference to her outward visage … I would have to say that she had the demeanor of a grumpy old man and a very sleepy one too … because that was all she ever did.
Having being sequestered by this pair … a couple of old chooks … I would have to say if a character analysis is appropriate here … how can I describe this situation ? … slowly but surely we were being monopolized … it was always like that … these boys were the not like the ones I remembered … they were too old for that.
And Peter changed … who was he …there was a moment in the control room at the television studio …it was a passing moment because I never saw that Peter again.
What happened to Rosemary deBorge ? … the metamorphose kids and the kids from the establishmentarians? The gatherings in the dark woods …the road statues … the girls all in black and their theatrical street theatre performances … Agatha’s billowing black dress … the empty streets and forlorn maidens in distress pantomimes.
As is the way , whenever one of them ‘men’ attaches himself to me and this happens so insidiously that I often don’t notice until it’s too late and I am trapped like a fly in a spiders web … I begin to acquire mass and my appearance starts to change … and I lose whatever it was I had before they came into my energy field. I become immersed in matter and I lose myself.
Ok so where was I going with this … I had to leave Dean in the Hallway after Zac died … I changed … Rosie told me I broke his heart when I left him … I was indifferent … I didn’t care. I just wanted my old self back … my androgynous youthful self … not this dreary old women I had morphed into within a matter of months I was only 22 for goodness sake!.
I lost weight fast … I got harder in all ways … I became addicted to exercise … I rode my bike everywhere and worked out in the gym. I became vain about my appearance and reveled in my new found appeal. I lost my mental spark … and I was ambushed again …
During those brief halcyon days when I hung out with Zee in her Dad’s house while Chris Owen prowled about outside …before Jack came onto the scene … just before the end. We used to meet up the uni bar on certain weeknights to drink and play pool with some of the Maori boys.
One day Lulubelle swung by I hadn’t seen her since I left Sydney three years before. She arrived expectantly. She was angry and hostile towards me. She literally demanded to know how I had lost so much weight. I was so naïve … I should have wondered about that.
She looked like she did when I last saw her about two years ago … middle aged or thereabouts … I didn’t notice these weird age discrepancies in those days … like why did my mother look so old by comparison to other women of her supposed generation. I should know I had worked in two nursing homes by then and I know what real old age looks like. She has always looked ancient to me … virtually from the beginning.
I have deduced that I have still my things … my treasures … a physical self to shelter in … because I was born and I did live ‘a life’ albeit a shadowy sort of half life … but a life nevertheless … I still have my roads … my portals … but for how long … in that other life … the one I had to forfeit … I was not born … I did not exist … as I move from one life to no other will these things that I have …fade into nothingness … like the aports and engravings and the strange new buildings and weird sculptures that just appeared out of nowhere so long ago now … so too will the other stuff disappear … the stuff that never was … the dust. I am not being morbid about this Lillian ... I am just wondering what the future holds on this side of the fence … this city for instance. To some folk this is a jungle … I just can’t see it.
So why should I be surprised or even upset that the pearls my mother gave me for my 21st birthday … have disappeared into that ether as did my pearl earrings and my silver charm bracelet , my poems and other writings …a pink nightie and the photograph that never was.
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