FROM SYDNEY WITH LOVE

I clip on his lead, slamming the fire door shut with the other hand and inhale remnants of cigarette smoke and urine staining the brick grout beneath my feet. I try to hold my breath but it isn’t long before I give up and let out the gust that had been held tightly in my chest, blowing onto the mass of black figures pacing.

Pacing quickly. Quicker. Quickly. Must not miss the bus. Must go to the gym longer tomorrow. Must get home. Must cook dinner. Must feed kids. Must keep working on proposal. Must get promoted.

I carefully shoulder through, beginning my path, weaving and winding against the pack. The muffle behind pushes my stride as sirens blare and P platers in cars with fully sick mags pump the bass until my ear drums feel as if they are about to impound from pressure. The sirens bully their way through red lights and add to the chaos. I look down at him and his ears prick up but he doesn’t stop moving.

Across the road large feathered creatures gather outside The House of Priscilla. They cluck around and fuss about something before letting out a jittery laugh under glitter glue makeup while their sequined head dresses dance around at seven foot.

‘Scuse me miss. Scuse me miss! Ya got fifty cents. I need to use the pay phone’.

I pull him away from the boy in a football jersey and dirtied baseball cap crouched in front of the convenience store. He scratches at the scabs on his face and smiles at him as we keep walking.
On the corner the old lady weathered an extra twenty years from too many nights spent sleeping on shop steps sips from a plastic cup. A silver crumpled bag leans against her torn maroon track pants as she calls out through missing teeth for a spare ‘durry’.
A middle aged man bearing at least ten centimetres of midriff taps me on the shoulder. His eyes almost pop out of his head as he taps his foot impatiently. ‘Got a light?’
We are going a little faster now. My breath is getting shorter.

Its getting late but there is still a bustle amongst the shops peppered in terraces along the side streets. Two girls carry at least seven paper bags, souvenirs of the trendy boutiques they had been spending up big in. They were the kind of boutiques where it was strictly ‘vintage’—i.e. second hand clothes marked up at ten times the cost. But of course it’s worth it to look like an individual. Their thick opaque tights, leather jackets and lace up brogues are so hip and happening just like the other thirty people I had seen wearing a variation on the theme just yesterday. They chatter, laugh and reach into their large handbags swinging off bent elbows and pull out two pairs of dark wayfarer shades.

In my head I run over what their conversation was most likely about. Being so fucked up. Getting so fucked up. Where they were going to get fucked up tonight.
We wait at the traffic lights. He sits on my right foot facing the curb. Ten other people stare down at him and anxiously wait for the man to turn green. I try to block out the rising sea of grot and turn down the street where the long thick branches filter some of the contaminated air. I tie him up outside and make my way in through the cold, stainless steel automated checkout gates towards the fridges.

The lady at the register barely speaks any English besides hello and receipt? Her thick Russian accent makes me wonder what she is doing here working in the supermarket day after day.
I put the coins back in my purse, the milk in my bag and we make our way home, soon sucked back into the sliding glass doors and air conditioned comfort. We step inside the elevator, I hit floor ten and we are swiftly lifted up to the cocooned apartment I wished I had never left.

ADAPTATION

"In order that any great amount of modification should be effected in a species, a variety, when once formed must again present individual differences of the same favourable nature as before; and these must again be preserved, and so onward, step by step…On the other hand, the ordinary belief that the amount of possible variation is a strictly limited quantity, is likewise a simple assumption". –Charles Darwin

She dipped her toes in the puddle of water one at a time, watching the dry desert heat suck them dry within seconds with amusement. Even her reflection in the metre wide water hole was blurrier in the midday sun. Morris slowly felt the euphoria rush through her blood like the diagrams they had often lit up at school, all of those two years ago, to show fluid paths in the human body. Her fingertips tingled. She closed her eyes and lay back on the dusty ground that graduated in colour from blood-red to a muddy brown, where hundreds of people had trampled and aerated the sandy desert.

Above, a lone eagle swooped over the collaboration of naked, painted, chanting people. The only thing containing them was a border of green cactus, tufts spurting from the infertile land. She was now far removed from the leafy closes of suburbia, and she liked it. At night no longer did she have to secure the back door with three locks, close the blinds in her bedroom before she took off her clothes or even keep the noise down to a minimum. Black Rock city had sucked her in—sucked her in one circular street at a time until she now sat at the centre of the temporary town, watching, thinking about what was going to happen when she had to go back to reality. The reality of her job, the reality of living up to expectations of a successful job—most options the 8-6 kind.

Morris had arrived at Black Rock city alone, clutching only one backpack containing a tent and a change of clothes and at her first view of the vast setting had to take a deep breath. She sucked in hard, holding it inside for at least ten seconds while she surveyed the eclectic landscape before her. She was merely now a molecule in a Petri dish—a minute figure in a social experimentation attempting to generate some kind of spontaneous culture. Hundreds of people streamed through the entrance, ready to enter a week with no boundaries, a playing ground for those wishing to exhibit anything from their contemporary art to themselves.

The first large spectacle inside the gates was a globe the size of an average bedroom, and adjacent a human-sized cage filled with beach balls. Each coloured ball had been written on by participants and placed inside the giant bingo wheel. Every now and then a man dressed in a velvet blazer, most likely 20 degrees too hot for the desert sun, would call out a phrase belonging to somebody in the crowd. BINGO! In the foreground of the rising sun pole dancing workshops bustled, neon-painted bodies glowed in the evening sky and buses full of crusty hippies migrating from mid-western states continued to arrive. The heat continued to alter her mind more than what she was seeing or what was in her back pocket.

As the horizon faded further into darkness at the centre of Black Rock city, a fifty- metre tall figure of a man, his skeleton flesh and skin made from woods was set alight. Painted bodies danced under the burning effigy of a man until the fireworks stuffed inside ignited and the beast became alive. There was something so primal about what she was witnessing. It was as if all the individuals coming from all corners of the globe to strip themselves of any previous identity were reborn. A circle was formed and Morris’s hand slowly slipped into the one beside her.

After only days of roaming the festival, talking like old friends, discussing their lives, what they had escaped to try and find some sort of new meaning, Morris and the young man she had met on the first night had become inseparable. They walked around to see displays, involved themselves in demonstrations, and ate food from the carts.
‘So, I don’t even know your name,’ said Morris.
‘Ha, you’re right. Just call me Milt. What are you doing here anyway?’ he said in his thick southern accent.
‘Well, about three weeks ago I got fired from my first real job in the city. I wanted to get away, beyond Australia, and I read about this festival so just booked my ticket, packed up my things and did it. Figured I had nothing to lose. The smog was bad for my asthma anyway.’
You could tell she had been awkward her whole life. As she spoke, she looked down at the ground, wringing the bottom of her baggy grey T-shirt. She alternated this with the twisting of her messy red ponytail. For a few years she had tried to hide her natural hair colour with packet dyes, but after finally rejecting the notion she should make herself attractive she had come to accept it was too late to bother putting in any effort at all. Morris’s standard self was the most unusual thing in the desert. She was a myna bird in an aviary of tropical parrots. Milt on the other hand was fabulous.

On the last night he had taken her to the very end of the city. They hitched a ride with a transsexual in a glittering art car from their camping site. The car was an old Ute painted pink and decorated with much fervour. Morris and Milt rode in the tray, holding onto old disco balls that were perhaps going to be reincarnated into some kind of installation. She felt like she was in some kind of bad B-grade film with minimal budget and maximum story line. There was something about meeting someone in a foreign setting and the experiences you had—the romantic notion of running away and adapting to a new life. Perhaps it was the only way to survive in the rat race, she thought. Not the cliché of running away and falling in love in one week, but being open to any possibility.

At home, Morris would often sit at her office desk and get an overwhelming anxious feeling like she was stuck, stuck in a moment that would play on repeat over and over again for the rest of her life. There would be a rush from her stomach to her chest and she would be overcome with a fluster of panic. But somehow now she was at her calmest, with hundreds of what were classified as the most eclectic people in the world, and this man, Milt, in the back of a drag queen’s ride.
Before they reached the full lake bed they passed another three camps. The road was pitted with lamplighters; fully grown men who had designed their own metallic costumes and lighting devices, volunteering to act as guides for any vehicles after dark. Morris had almost nodded off to sleep when she felt the jerk of the glamorously dressed male pulling back the gear stick.
‘We’re here, my darlings!’

The rain poured thicker and thicker from the open sky. The two bodies now lay intertwined under the Big Dipper and Milky Way. For the first time since she could remember, Morris was completely relaxed, beside Milt. Her mind flickered over the city, the week she had had with hundred insane strangers. The feeling of rigidity was gone. Now all she had in her mind was her new painter boyfriend who collected spare parts for a living. When he’d told her he lived alone in Texas as a sculptural professional, interested in visual communication of the kinetic form, Morris had felt apprehension to say the least. But now he just inspired her. Inspired her to leave her family home for good, like everyone else in her town had. Now all she could think about was her new life with Milt, writing children’s books from their travelling abodes. Having kids into double digits and living an amazing alternate lifestyle, letting them all roam around naked while they creatively made their living—anything would be possible. She looked at his slight body draped in a torn shirt and closed her eyes.

She awoke with the dry desert sun nipping at her cheeks, feeling as if she was about to hear a gentle sizzle. She peeled off one sock at a time, rubbed both eyes and moved towards the remnants of last night’s rain pooled in the red earth.

Milt secured his seatbelt across his chest and leant over, placing his hand on Morris’s knee. Neither of them could have been more content. She rolled down the window and stretched out her legs, looking over at Milt and then out the windscreen at their journey ahead. Morris tuned in the local radio station as they picked up a fuzzy signal on the beaten up transistor and Milt picked up the speed until they sat at a consistent pace. The double yellow lines stretched all the way to the horizon, parting the desert with perfect symmetry.

The ‘deluxe’ camper van was cosy to say the least. Although they only had one bag each Morris couldn’t begin to imagine living in the vehicle for the next part of her life. She would do it though. She would stick by Milt and traverse the continent, she thought, trawling through city by city, making ends meet by selling pieces of his art.

Behind them platforms of rubbish were being burnt away. Now everything had been disassembled, taken apart and packed up and Black Rock city began to disappear without a trace. As they moved further and further from the temporary town, the people dispersed in all directions until the desert was again just an arid expanse. No longer were there oversized moving sculptures, people dancing under the moon, or hundreds of coloured bicycles colouring the landscape.

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. — Frederick Nietzsche

INSECT FARM CHAPTER 1

Insect: • noun
1. A small invertebrate animal with a head, thorax, and abdomen, six legs, two antennae, and usually one or two pairs of wings.
2. A contemptible or unimportant person.

‘Bug boy, bug boy!’ The words swirled through Jack’s head as his lanky limbs extended and paced out of the wrought iron gates of school, clutching his backpack timidly and kicking the dirt with his head bowed. Sometimes he would just imagine he was Indiana Jones, about to head on a journey through the Himalayas charging down raging rivers until he reached the sacred stone, rescuing kidnapped children and discovering secret vast underground temples.

Today though, he was just Jack. The bus ride home, as always, was hell. They trailed the coastline as he peered outside the partly opened window onto paddocks peppered with livestock and old wise trees curling their fingers into contorted positions. Beyond them was merely a horizon of the coast, further than the parted landscape lapping water and cliff faces bordering the reef. Below the surface of the water was another world of beauty and colour. They had often taken field trips through the worn forest tracks, ferns parted, to the reef where they would examine all the different types of coral. The individual acid bright formations had a porous texture, fascinating to most in the way they inhaled and exhaled through the small pinpricks in their skin with gentle gusto. Jack hated science days because it meant he had to wear his swimming shorts, exposing thousands of tiny ginger freckles that covered his slight frame. It was just one more thing for the bigger, older and tougher boys to ridicule him for.

Jack pulled out his stick insect Charlie in its special ventilated carrier and carefully placed it upon his knees. ‘Bug boy, bug boy!’ they yelled as two classmates threw remnants of their lunches until they hit the back of his head and rebounded onto the dirty synthetic floor. Lucky their weapons were never too severe, it was mostly just crusts from vegemite sandwiches and the odd chip packet. The bus continued on, around the winding track as he closed his eyes as their now silent shouts began to drown, muffled beneath the blowing wind from the old sunroof above. When he opened them again he was the last passenger as they pulled up to the rusty letterbox at the top of the kilometre driveway. A metallic emerald beetle flew onto his shoulder, changing colour as the sun hit its hard exterior to a deep blue then plum. He lifted it onto the fence post, brushed off the food scraps and packed Charlie back into his bag.
‘Thanks driver’.

"Something in the insect seems to be alien to the habits, morals, and psychology of this world, as if it had come from some other planet: more monstrous, more energetic, more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than our own."- Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

When Jack reached the end of the dirt driveway there was another tour group huddled around the bottle green shade cloth enclosures out the back of the kitchen. He could hear his father in the middle of the suited men, the ones that often came to talk business. They always attempted to give his father undivided attention but often paced up and down with impatience, careful not to dirty their patent dress shoes while continually pulling palm pilots from their blazer pockets fearing that the city may have collapsed before their return. ‘The Hercules moth is one which is not only native to Australia, but at serious threat of becoming extinct if we cannot continue with our breeding throughout the winter months. And as we have discussed over and over, without sufficient funding our work cannot continue’. Inside the enclosure, they peered up at the huge female moths, hanging aimlessly from the ceiling on their newly vacated cases. Once a year they would follow Jack’s dad around the farm to observe new species—from the flower beetles to water bugs and oversized tree crickets. When he picked up an insect with his large, worn and wise hands a smile would subconsciously appear across his face. As his hair grew greyer and wirier by the day he would always strive to find more and more species on weeklong trips to remote gulf regions, climbing mountains and camping beneath the Southern Cross. Jack wished he could be as strong and brave as his father, descending into narrow gorges with nothing but the heat of the forest above, discovering giant bird eating spiders living in boulders at the feet of towering worn trunks. Jack had found a new obsession with the Scorpions that were held at the very bottom end of the farm through seven gates and walkways. His mother had a borderline obsession with cockroaches and the nine different species they bred. Her hair like his fathers was also growing greyer, the loose straying from the tight plait that hung down to her waist. Jack can’t remember the last time he saw her with her hair long and flowing. ‘They aren’t just a pest’ she would say to Jack. Her excitement was uncontrollable when the giant burrowing cockroaches reached breeding time, hatching hundreds of tiny babies scrambling for food scraps and new life. Their army tank exterior almost the size of an adult hand convinced his mother they were the perfect pets. So perfect she would always keep two in a large glass case next perched on a mahogany table next to the television. They would scatter around for hours, digging trenches in the shallow layer of dirt.

After dinner and a poor attempt at homework Jack would sneak out through his bedroom window, wandering down through part of the 80-acre block to the Scorpion enclosure. On his way he would check up on the blue-banded butterflies. Their silky cocoons had to be kept at optimum temperature for best breeding. Jack would never forget the moment he peered in through the glass observation window to see hundreds of wings emerging from their white silk blankets. For the first time ever their royal blue pattern was covering only half a wing, with the other blood red. He remembered the photos in the local paper with his father and the proud look he had on his face standing inside the butterfly enclosure with each small creature gently flapping its fragile wings whilst perched upon his khaki shirt. Jack was fascinated by the way in which the Scorpion ripped apart its prey with its sharp pincers after stinging it to death slowly with no remorse. At feeding time would spend hours sitting and watching the game of natural torture. Afterwards he would just listen to the harmonious buzz coming from all around him, hundreds of tones humming as one, an ever present drone from feeding time sunrise to sundown. He would often just lie outside beneath the stars, arms and legs spread in angel position smelling the mixture of mulch and eucalyptus and feeling as if he was encapsulated in this other world—a world beyond the classroom of algebra sums and literary analysis. In his mind he was an Indiana protÈgÈ. As he slipped off to sleep Jack thought about drinking the blood of Kali Ma, a mind-control potion putting him into a black sleep, awaking only to find himself in a giant water reservoir, crossing roped bridges clinging to magical stones with fear of them plunging into the fierce canyons below.

ENTOMOPHOBIA:[Insect phobia; includes acarophobia (mites: scabies)and arachnophobia (spiders)].

The Greyhound made its way through empty fields and leafy suburbs until it blurred into the thick of boxed apartments—100 to a floor, until it was slowly swallowed and sucked under by the hungry underbelly of the cross city tunnel. As it emerged, gliding towards the glare of the city lights, Jack slowly opened his eyes, staring out into a bustle unfamiliar to the dirt tracks of Fallsville. The wet warmth of home was still beaded on his forehead and his stomach knotted tighter and tighter as the motion slowed. Nerves swelled up and down crashing against the lining of his stomach with ferocious force. The worn palms and hardened fingertips, only found on the hands of a country boy sweated profusely as he clutched the paperback novel until its cover began to crease. Since school ended he hadn’t finished one book besides The Catcher in the Rye. He could read it over and over reciting opening sentences of each chapter. The day they came to shut the farm down he remembered sitting on the wrap around porch dangling in the canvas hammock with the same book in hand, lost in Holden’s mind, lost in alien New York City. Goose bumps formed under his pale skin and he leaned forward to stretch out the pins and needles in his legs. Blood rushed to his toes and his rib bones protruded from his sides under the three layers of clothing. He tightened his red striped tie around his neck that belonged to his Dad, becoming restless in his seat. He had only ever seen him wearing it once, in a photo upon the mantelpiece—slightly strangling Jack he understood why.

As he stepped out onto the station there was no riotous sounds of scrub hens calling through the flora and insect melody, just the encapsulating hone of sirens and horns, muffled bass beats from the underground clubs and careless chatter between the corporate silhouettes, striding so fast nothing could get in their way.

Jack saw the sea of black workers like the thousands of green ants covering the fallen material in the last storm they saw on the farm. Each scampered over one another to create a moving layer of bodies and legs, not one distinguishable from the next. The two-tone grey of the grid of towering buildings overshadowed the commotion beyond the station. He re-adjusted the handle on his leather suitcase and attempted to make his way through the congregations. A weathered old man with widdled down legs so frail each and every vein was visible like a million tributaries stood against the archway near the taxi rank. Dressed in only maroon shorts and an oversized tweed blazer with holes in each arm, he took one hand off the crutches he was resting on and lit up, blowing the smoke directly into Jacks face. His next breath took the mix of nicotine, stale urine and the unfiltered city grime through his airways and into his lungs.

I'VE watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

‘You’re here for the interview?’ said the girl behind the oversized marble counter.
‘Um, me? Yes…yes I am’ Jack replied.
‘Great well just have a seat and they shouldn’t be too long’.
Jack swallowed hard and looked up and around at the biggest artworks he had ever seen—one for every couple of metres. The largest reminded Jack of the engraved sandstone bordering the reef back home. Two dark black figures danced amongst repetitive brushstrokes. Rather than taking a seat in the single throne like chair that looked like it might have broken if he had sat in it he wandered over to the window and curiously gazed beyond over the harbour. It seemed as if everybody was always going somewhere, doing something. Even the boats darting one another, saluting the bridge as they made their way full steam ahead seemed to be on a tight schedule. Passengers were getting on, getting off, getting on, getting off. Tourists snapping. Tour guides talking.
‘You nervous?’
‘Yeah, kinda, never really done this before’. Jack was now more nervous of her than anything. Her loosely fitted black blouse gaped at the cavity in her chest where you could see the bones lining her breastplate. Since he had arrived nobody had spoken to him unless his wallet was open.
Now waiting with not much to say he couldn’t stop looking at the tiny beauty spot above her lip and dirty blonde hair, slightly too messy for such a sleek room. Without acknowledging him again she smirked to herself and shook her head, almost like a giggly schoolgirl with hidden secrets. The phone rang and she politely muttered a few words through the line.
‘Jack, he’s ready’.