"Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again." (E.M. Cioran)

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Dream Ordeal


A familiar street - Spring Street, Bondi Junction, apparently. Looking over it from one storey above - the opposite side of the road from where the supermarket is, but further down. I remember seeing the 'Comix' shop that used to be there.

I was anxious and frightened. Men in the streets were carrying guns and lurking, or looting shops. The streets were empty otherwise and looked shabby and slightly decayed - a hint of slum. Watching a few scenarios, with the men edging around cautiously and the scaringly real sound of random gunshots getting closer and closer. I'm on the streets one minute - totally freaking out - and then I'm one floor up again, in a room with large windows overlooking the street - an office. There are other people busying around everywhere. There are people comforting and/or counselling others. Groups of police are doing this.

I'm crapping on to someone about the suffering of the Palestinians in an awful, flippant and pretentious way, yet my experience of the events on the street is all the while telling me that I am actually in the streets of Palestine. At one point, I'm walking around, engulfed by loneliness - tortured and desperate because no one acknowledges my presence in any way at all. It's as if I'm not even there. I see a couple of beautiful Asian girls sitting at a table, and the next thing I know my current lover - of whom I can decipher neither their gender or appearance - is seducing them both in the Ladies Room, which I walk in on. Naturally, I'm horrified and scream and cry out hysterically, but no one notices I'm there. An extremely heavy atmosphere. Truly terrifying.

Next, I'm in `the office' again, blubbering, crying, tortured, upset - a circle of female police officers counselling me as they sit around me. One of them was singing a lullaby to someone else. My tears just kept coming. This was the first acknowledgement that I was present. I just poured it all out to them and actually began to feel comforted.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Lasse Braun - 'The King of Porn' - is such a yawn


Just saw a nostalgic TV documentary on this guy and, personally, I find it hard to see the tired old '60s and '70s porn scene as looking particularly sexy, despite the hardcore action, fun outfits and hilarity factor. It all somehow looks too silly and unconvincing and the actors seem wooden and reluctant - kind of lame. Or is it just that it's 'retro'? I guess there's more of a sincerity of intent - or, at least, a 'passion for the subject' and lack of irony - in the pioneering porn scene - a sort of quaint naivety (despite the corruption) - as well as the DIY, generally libertarian approach - ie not slickly and cynically corporatised. Lasse Braun certainly made a hell of a lot of money out of it at any rate.

But despite his experience and talents, let's face it. Guys like Lasse are just trying to get as much pussy as they possibly can and don't care to ask themselves why because they're sexual hedonists (and, probably, control freaks!). Sure, you can't blame him for that, but unfortunately the women hanging around the sleaze industry generally don't get off quite so unscathed and it doesn't help them to lay around - as they do in this doco - in provocative poses, dressed as strippers, whilst trying hard to give the impression that they're so into the self-empowerment of it all.

Intriguing, but generally unattractive.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Pigeon Lady


I guess most cities in the world have a large pigeon population, apart from those that see the creatures as pests and eradicate them with poisons. I actually remember being quite horrified upon discovering this had been done in Dunedin, New Zealand, when visiting the city sometime in the 1980s. And here in Sydney, it has recently become standard practice to instal rows of razor-sharp upright nails - of the 9-inch variety - along ledges of the outside walls or fences of upmarket buildings, particularly fancy hotels and apartment blocks, in order to keep the birds off these favoured roosting places. Bird poo has been outlawed.

People regularly refer to the maligned creatures as 'rats with wings', despite the fact that their scavenging says more about the excesses of human beings. Nonetheless, a fair sized population of pigeons still thrive, many of them hanging around Hyde Park, north-west of the fountain. This is no doubt due, in no small part, to the presence of an old, white-haired lady in black clothes, who spends her afternoons there feeding the birds with a variety of different grains. She sits on the grass and is immediately surrounded, talking to the birds all the while as she unzips her backpack and pulls out the knotted plastic bags filled with the grains and carefully undoes them.

The pigeons are patient with her as she feeds them and the seagulls don't even bother to try their luck. This is pigeon territory only. The woman talks to them kindly and also sternly at times, as if they are her children. When she has finished feeding them, she ties the plastic bags up and puts them away, spreads newspaper on the grass and lies down for a nap in the sun. The birds stay with her, still surrounding her and some sit on top of her. She allows them to stay. When she gets up again, she sometimes notices bird poo on her clothes, which she carefully wipes off, before leaving for the day.