The Return of Personal Stuff

    The Illusion That Is Me

I know that I’m still handsome,

for an old bloke –

what a fucking joke –

and have wide shoulders,

a powerful voice,

and a strong presence,

but all this only gives

the people I meet

and even those I’ve known somewhat

for years

the wrong

impression.

I’m really

an insecure

nine-year-old boy

with no self-confidence,

low self esteem,

and no self-belief

who’s afraid of everybody,

and have been since 1955.

                      Vertigo

I don’t know if it’s all in my mind

or just in my middle ear,

but vertigo’s been a part of my life

for as long as I can remember.

It’s not that I’m afraid of heights –

I can enjoy the view

out of a twentieth-floor window or from an airplane –

but whenever I’m unsure of my underpinnings,

whether I’m walking across

the outside lane of a windy bridge

or changing a light bulb three steps up a ladder,

an icy sensation shoots back and forth

between my ankles and my knees,

I become dizzy, disoriented, or both,

my sense of balance seems to desert me,

and I have to fight to prevent myself

from lurching into a disastrous fall.

          I Am A Thing

Although some may find

things that I do

to be competently useful

or mildly entertaining,

I find it hard to believe

that anybody gives a shit

about what goes on in my mind

when I’m alone –

which is most of the time –

or about my feelings

or my pain.

My experience has been

that other people –

and even my dog –

behave toward me

as if I were a thing,

rather than a human being,

and I long ago came to accept their judgement.

                   Motivations Obscure To Me

I’ve observed these people –

on TV and when I’m out and about –

who have full beards and shaved heads,

and it’s beyond my capacity for empathy

to understand in any meaningful way

why they do.

It’s the same with elaborately trimmed-and-shaped beards

that require high maintenance,

and trendy hairstyles

that require frequent barbering

and expensive product.

Words come to mind –

fashion, machismo, vanity, narcissism,

obsessive affectation –

and I know what all those words mean,

but I’m incapable of knowing

what those things feel like.

Although I did experiment once,

extremely briefly,

with a goatee when in my early twenties,

I stopped shaving,

or allowing barbers to shave,

any part of me when I was nineteen

because I didn’t like to do it,

didn’t like the way it felt,

either during or after the process,

and could find no compelling, rational reason

for doing it at all,

and that’s it.

               A Brief Assessment

I’m just a psychosocially deficient old man

who occasionally churns out amusing words.

                        I Don’t Feel Ethnic

I don’t feel ethnic

even though I was born into a definite ethnic group.

Ashkenazic.

Eastern European Jewish.

Two grandparents from what is now Poland

and two from what’s now the Ukraine.

Still, I love most of the ethnic food I grew up with –

chopped liver and sour green tomatoes and kasha knishes

and sable, which is smoked black cod, and,

although I haven’t had any in many years,

gefilte fish with hot horseradish – comfort food, all,

but I also derive comfort from stuff from the hot bread shops,

and just about every other kind of ethnic food,

and when I cook it’s more likely to be

some form of Mexican or Italian or Indian or something

I’ve improvised

than Ashkenazic.

I don’t deny my heritage,

but the religion part,

and most of the in-group cultural stuff of it never stuck.

I guess the thing is that although

I’m a member of the tribe for sure,

I just don’t dance with the rest of them

around some metaphoric campfire.

I don’t dig klezmer,

and I didn’t dig it when another member of the tribe

came up to me at a recent function

and told me an ethnocentric, ethnic-stereotype joke,

having lost my ability to appreciate

humour based on ethnic stereotypes – except Australians –

many decades ago.

I didn’t feel simpático with that landsmann,

to mix my Spanish with my Yiddish.

What I felt was alienated from my roots,

just as I do from the wider culture.

   My Own Confirmation Bias

When I don’t feel confident

about being able

to do something competently,

but have no choice but to do it anyway,

and it comes out okay,

this result has no effect

on my underlying lack of confidence

at all.

            I Come Last

One of the many things

that I internalised as child,

having learnt it within

the dynamic of my family,

that my life in general reinforced,

and that became solidified during the years

when I was primarily a spouse and parent

is that when I am involved or engaged

with one or more other people,

my interests, my preferences,

my feelings, my desires,

my needs, my time – my life,

definitely have less importance

than those of the others.

I accept this as natural and inevitable,

but I don’t like it.

         Early in the Morning

For a long time now,

the worst part of almost every day for me

has been that early-morning moment

when I grudgingly have to acknowledge

that I’ve awakened and am unable

to get back to sleep.

From time to time, however,

things become worse,

such as when I’m at my desk before dawn

and am unable to distract myself sufficiently

to maintain mental numbness.

       Without When Within

It got to the point

at which even whisky gave no comfort

from my rattlings about in my own absurdity;

I had no children, or old men like myself,

around to connect me

with card games or dominoes

and laughter about nothing.

I no longer had even pathetic congress

with the plants in my pots.

No new facebook notifications.

No new emails.

No phone calls or text messages,

as usual.

No hugs and cuddles.

No cosy time-passing.

No sharing of secrets.

No enthusiasm or expectations

that the courage required to hit the world

would result in reward.

Of all the music in the world,

much of it at my fingertips,

I didn’t know what to play –

something that would reach me

but not really touch me

would have been most appropriate for the situation,

but the situation seemed incurable, anyhow,

even with jazz fusion.

           Within When Without

Fear afflicts me

most of the time.

It afflicts me the worst

when I’m away from my hole.

All sorts of fears afflict all sorts of people,

but – except for vertigo –

most of the common ones,

such as the fear of death,

bother me little or not at all.

What terrorises me, of course,

is people.

Okay, most of the people who take my money

in the shops and so forth

are like balm.

But when I venture into

the world of people

who may give a shit

or should give a shit

or pretend to give a shit

or who I want to give a shit,

I’ve learnt to keep my defences up,

and let the performer hide the child,

being highly suspicious of what is actually there.

My form may be within your range of vision, y’see,

but I’m not there.

Love, As It Were, Goes On

             My Days

I now survive my days,

as I’ve survived most of my life,

enveloped by

Absence-of-Love,

shimmering about me

like a mist.

As with every human being,

though, I suppose,

I’ve always wanted

love to be present, instead.

Tough shit, aye?

          Three-Thirty Pee-Em

I was:

sitting in my plonk-book-music chair,

the image of her face

close to mine

filling my mind’s eye,

not knowing when I’d see her again.

I almost cried.

Tears actually made it to the edges of my eyes

– both the inside and outside corners.

I hate being pathetic.

                 Custody

I told her that we’d stayed together

through fifteen years of lovelessness

for the kids,

but when thinking about it later

I realised that that I’d used

an incorrect word.

We hadn’t endured a loveless marriage

for the kids, but because of the kids.

We’d remained in unhappy cohabitation,

each for ourselves,

neither one of us

willing to give up daily contact with our girls,

or to turn custody decisions

over to some court.

       Morning Into Afternoon

The longer I knew her

the more I understood

how little I knew her.

She told me once

that she considered this

to be a good thing.

I was just an accessory to her life,

anyway,

not an integral part of it,

which was definitely how she wanted it.

I was never in any position to complain.

        A Brand of Corn Oil

When I was in my twenties

I used to hear accounts,

reported third-hand

and even more remotely,

about an activity called Mazola parties,

after a popular brand

of cooking and salad oil

made from corn.

The party-goers, I heard,

would cover a room’s floor and furniture

with rubber or plastic tarps,

get naked,

pour Mazola all over themselves and everything,

and then slither around together,

engaging in promiscuous, if slippery,

multiple sexual hi-jinx.

They say that whilst waiting to die,

people who are old and terminally ill

never tell those attending upon them

that one thing they regret

is not having bought heaps more cool stuff.

I imagine that one thing

that I will regret, though,

is never having participated

in a Mazola party.

           Too Amazed

It seemed so unlikely.

It seemed so unlike me.

I’d completely given up.

I’d been comfy

seeking oblivion daily.

Oblivion had been my friend.

But then I put my faith in absurdity,

knowing that I was being foolish,

but somehow not thinking that I was.

               Reality

That’s the way it was –

she hurt me all she wanted,

but that was okay,

because she was precious,

and I wasn’t.

               Okay, I’m Shallow

The weather woman on Aljazeera has me going.

There’s just something about that

skinny, toothy, flat-chested,

working-class-Pom-accented woman

with limp, straight, colourless blond hair

that does something to me.

        Dishonest Fantasies

I’m not really close

to anyone,

even my daughters.

The deal is

that I can’t even imagine

being close to anyone any more,

not really,

although I do have an active imagination,

and have repeated fantasies

about achieving closeness

with women, real and imagined,

or one or the other of my daughters,

but I know that these fantasies

are dishonest,

being based on premises

that don’t exist in the world –

at least the one in which I reside –

just like my fantasies

about zinging shrivelling put-downs

onto people who get up my nose

or do me wrong.

I’m too fucking timid on both counts.

                      Better Living

I apologise for being sexist here,

but I really can’t prevent myself

from wondering what

that wholesome blond

TV pitch-bitch for Glad products

can do with plastic cling wrap in bed.

Please forgive me.

           Pussy Riot & Me

I’m hopelessly in love

with every member of Pussy Riot,

and it doesn’t bother me

that they have their own husbands and lovers

and that I’ll never meet any of them

because it’s not that kind of love.

The Return of Dog Stuff

     At the Park on a Rainy Morning

My dog may have enjoyed a few things more

than drinking fresh puddle water,

but after the drought in 2010

it became more of a rare pleasure for her

than chasing sticks in the shade,

sleeping in the sun,

or chewing on bones, I think.

                 Practical Intelligence

My bedroom has a glass-wall ranch slider

leading onto a narrow balcony

facing east.

My fox terrier likes to lie there

in the glass-amplified sun

on winter mornings.

As I’m composing this

on a winter morning,

she’s sleeping by the heater

in my west-facing home office.

I think she knows

that the sky to the east

must look like a fast-moving,

grey watercolour video

with no direct sunlight

because of the occasional sound

of rain on the roof.

    Another Transition

My dog,

at age twelve,

no longer wanted

to be on my lap,

preferring to take her ease

on the floor.

I supposed the floor

didn’t keep recrossing

its legs.

About six months later

she fell sick and died.

                          The End of Stick

On the last day of 2009,

when I was taking Rhonda, my fox terrier,

on her afternoon walk around the neighbourhood on her lead

we were cruising along Sale Street in Fairfield

when three other fox terriers

zoomed off a house’s front porch barking wildly

and attacked her, one with its teeth.

In less than a minute the father of the dogs’ owner

came running out and forced them to retreat.

The owner of the dogs did the right thing

and reimbursed me for the emergency New-Year’s-Eve treatment,

but Rhonda was forbidden to run

for the next six weeks,

until they took the stitches out.

Before that incident,

I’d been throwing sticks for her to chase and return

for a half an hour every morning at the park.

After it, and the long hiatus,

she started giving up after only short games of stick,

rarely being up to it for as long as ten minutes,

and within a year rarely as long as five.

Then three minutes became a long game.

By the second anniversary of the attack

it had become more a matter of just two or three throws.

One morning in mid-January she chased the first throw

but didn’t bring the stick back.

Then, after a two-day layoff I tried again,

but she didn’t even chase the first stick.

Playing stick or ball had been a joyful part of my daily life

for about twelve years,

generally the only one.

The end of stick was a sad day indeed for me.

My newly adopted dog doesn’t chase sticks at all.

               Death and the Dog

Other than some sensory pleasures,

my entire life has been crap –

hardly worth the time it’s taken up,

for me at least.

Every day now when I wake up

I wish that I hadn’t,

and start counting the hours

until I can drink myself to sleep.

Every day when I finish work

I suffer from an inner conflict

between my body and my mind –

my body craving survival and food,

and my tortured mind craving

ascetic self-destruction

through self-induced anorexia.

It’s nip and tuck.

My dog knew nothing of this,

only that she depended on me completely

for all facets of her life.

I worried about

what would become of her

if my mind triumphed.

After she died

and I had no responsibility

for a helpless other

justifying ongoing, daily

psychological, emotional, and spiritual suffering,

I wondered why I spent time

thinking about boiling pasta.

Adopting a senior dog three years later

did little to change this.

                       Dogs In Bondage

They’re not up there with taggers and tailgaters,

but people who bring their dogs to the dog exercise park

and keep them on a lead

get right up my nose.

Okay, maybe they have valid reasons

for keeping those poor pooches in bondage,

but they should do it somewhere else.

It’s just plain cruel

to restrain their movements

when they can see heaps of other dogs

running and playing and swimming

and chasing balls and sticks and birds and each other

and engaging in natural canine social interactions,

all of which their masters deny them,

and cruelty to animals – especially to people’s own companions –

is simply wrong.

          Tandem Observations

One conclusion that’s become inescapable

after a lifetime of observing both

is that dogs are better at dog stuff

than people are at people stuff.

     The Desirable and The Desired

The cruelty that factory farming inflicts

on sensitive, intelligent individuals

tramples on my deeply held values

about the ugliness of indifference to terror

and therefore about what behaviours are desirable

for those engaged in food production.

When I saw that ham bone

in the meat-scraps fridge at the supermarket, though,

I bought it for my dog

without remorse.

I wanted it.

I craved the flavour and texture

of the bigger chunks of ham

still attached to it,

and I craved the vicarious pleasure

of watching my dog enjoy the hell out of it for weeks.

The Devil made me buy it, I suppose,

if that’s what the Devil is.

           Guapito

He’s such a prettyboy.

People notice

and comment

every day

about his looks.

Oh, he’s more than just cute –

he’s a real, catch-your-eye

prettyboy.

But when I look into his eyes

I can see a hint

of the depths through which

he experiences his world,

as himself,

distinct from being a schnauzer,

even distinct from his enormous talent

for just being a dog.

I mean, he’s an expert

who’s mastered most of the skills

involved in dog stuff.

I don’t think he knows

that he’s a prettyboy, though,

just that random strangers walking by

often stop to make nice to him

and coo.

He likes that.

I can tell.

                   Seasoning For The Season

Winter is what it is,

and the morning was wintry;

a nasty cold and wet southerly breeze

accompanied my adopted old dog and me

as we made our way around the park

for the first time that day.

It made me feel chuffed about myself –

I felt righteous;

I felt noble;

I felt heroic;

I felt, uncharacteristically,

almost worthwhile even –

for taking the Little Fella into my home, at his age,

and walking him twice a day,

whatever the weather,

even when none of the park’s other dog-walkers

were braving the inhospitably windy iciness.

I comforted myself with thoughts of hot soup

and maybe some slightly warmed wine

for when we returned home

but when, after completing the circuit,

I had divested myself of my top two layers,

doled out a packaged dog treat,

and gone snuffling around in the kitchen,

I decided instead on a summery cold seafood salad

and a fridge-cool tropical rum punch.

The inside of my house is, after all, warm and dry

without the atmospherics of a wood fire.

It was a good call.

                     Reality And The World

The world is what our nervous systems tell us it is.

Reality, unlike the world, is reality,

no matter what we sense and feel.

My dog and I occupy the same reality,

but we live in radically different worlds.

I’m unable to imagine what it would be like

to have a sense of smell a thousand times more sensitive

than the one I have now

– and I have a fearsome imagination –

and conceptualising a world dominated by odours,

in which I’d identify and remember people and places

more by their distinctive, individual scents

than by the configuration of their faces and landmarks,

is well beyond my mental capabilities.

Eagles, earthworms, dolphins, bats, bees, trout …

so many discrete, finite worlds we ourselves can’t know

in the reality of just this infinitesimal but ordinary

corner of the cosmos –

it’s all so incomprehensible that it’s no wonder

that people invent so much intricate codswallop

to convince themselves

that they understand what’s going on

and have actually made sense

of it all.

Uh-huh.