Time capsule

At first, I didn't know exactly what to write. I just sat there staring at the blank piece of paper on my desk. The room was stiflingly hot and silent. If I had been any kind of writer, I’d probably have written something along the lines of, 'A heavy silence descended over the room as the students commenced writing their letters. The year was 1982……etc. Etc.’ But instead, I just sat there, my head buzzing in the silence as if I were taking a high-pressure exam. Anyway, take it from me, it was a hot, listless afternoon.

Mr Beaumont called it a 'time capsule’. And you would think a time capsule would look more interesting, like something from a science fiction movie. Really, it was just an old metal military ammo box with the ammo type stencilled on the side in yellow lettering and all the stuff inside wrapped up in plastic. You know, to protect it from moisture. We were going to bury the time capsule that afternoon. After completing our letters. At least that was the plan.

Beaumont told us, as soon as the box was sealed, we should imagine fast-forwarding to the year 2018. Imagine 36 years passing in the blink of an eye, he said.

Some of us were like, oh yeah? Great. And what’s the point of all that? You bury a box full of junk for thirty-six years. Big deal. Beaumont cleared his throat and told us this project was about time. About getting us to realise that time is a relative concept. He asked us to think about what time means to an insect. A common housefly lives for 28 days, he said. So, can we agree that, for a housefly, an hour, let alone a day, is a hell of a long time.

Okay, sure. Flies don't have long lives but so what? At this point, Mr Beaumont makes a mark on the very edge of the blackboard and says, this here is when the Earth began, 4 billion years ago, at this very point in time. Then Beaumont walked slowly to the other side of the blackboard, dragging the chalk with him, drawing a continuous line across the board. And when he runs out of blackboard, he makes another vertical mark, on the opposite end of the line. Okay, he says, this is us today. This very moment in time, do you see? This line, from end-to-end, represents 4 billion years. This is the history of the world. Everything beyond this mark, he says, indicating the end of the timeline, the edge of the blackboard and beyond that, the corner of the room....is the unknown future. Your future. And mine. Of course, I'm older than you people so I will have a little less time to play with.

Okay, now think about this line again, he said. 350, 000 years ago the first homo sapiens appears. Somebody in the back of the room sniggered at the mention of the word 'homo' but he was alone. No one else joined in. We all liked Beaumont, or at least most of us did. We'd been in his class a year now and he had earned our respect. Besides which, we were about to graduate so a lot of the shenanigans that went on in high school were starting to seem pretty immature by then. The adult world beyond the classroom window was beaconing to us. It was unavoidable. We knew it. We were about to be part of it. Whether we were ready or not.

So when you think about it, Beaumont continued, dragging his eyes away from our regressive, sniggering classmate, human beings haven't been around for that long. In fact, taking into account the scale we are working with here, I would say we have existed for a period of time which is less than the width of this vertical chalk mark, he said, tapping blackboard. See what I'm saying? Your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents and so on….all those lives are represented in this one tiny period of time. This chalk mark. So now, think about your own life. In relation to what we've been discussing, it would seem your lives are going to be a microscopic blip, right?

So when you go, "Thirty-six years buried in the ground…groan….what’s the point? It's such a long period of time…groan....how is this relevant to us?” I say to you, thirty-six years is a long period of time compared to what? A housefly? A glacier? The life of our planet?
And it is completely relevant to you. To all of you. The lesson here is….life. Is. Short. It doesn't seem like it from where you sit but believe me, it is. You people need to remember that your parents....your grandparents, your great-grandparents....your great-great-grand parents…..all of them were your age once upon a time. They also assumed their lives would go on and on and on forever. An inexhaustible number of days. Of course, they did.....we all do. Because it's impossible to accept the inevitable. Isn't it?
Beaumont was always trying to blow our minds with these kinds of displays. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. He wasn't arrogant about it. You could tell. He just read a lot. He was a thinker and he was genuinely interested in life. Unlike many of the other teachers I have mentioned, those individuals whose shells of self-preservation had grown thicker and thicker with each passing term until they had become entombed in their own cynicism and routines.
We all settled down and started writing. Twenty-five heads bent down to the task, pens wiggling as the nibs scratched across pieces of lined A4 paper. A one-sided letter: that was all that was required from us.

I don't know what 2018 will be like but I can tell you one thing for sure....I'll be glad to leave this year behind. I want to get out of this school. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life but I was tired of bells going off and rows of desks. As far as I was concerned, over the past year, this school, with its port-a-cabins, it's hot expanses of concrete divided by chainlink fences and it's drought thirsty palm trees had become something akin to visiting a bland factory five times a week. A place most of us had outgrown. Aside from Beaumont and Ms Jason, the other teachers were all neurotic basketcases who seemed to be barely in control of their own lives let along a class of adolescent students. Jesus. When I think about some of those teachers, the ones we psychologically broke, ever so flippantly, I can't help but feel a twinge of self-revulsion. We came at them without mercy like piranha attacking a cow that had unwittingly fallen into the Amazon river. We went right through some of them.

I looked out the window for a moment. The same view I've seen all year. The side of the auditorium. The gate. The traffic beyond on the main road. I had never written anything honest in my life. I liked writing but mainly I liked starting things. Notebooks. Little stories. However, I never got around to completing anything I'd started. That was the problem. I tried to keep a diary once but. I got about six pages in and then I gave up. It felt fucking ridiculous: secretly scribbling away in my bedroom. Dear Diary.....wank, wank, wank. I threw it away, embarrassed by the very fact it existed. I mean, as soon as you pick up a pen, you get the feeling someone is standing over your shoulder, watching you, judging you. And maybe what you're saying, or at least trying to say, will be misinterpreted. Or laughed at. It’s intimidating. For sure. And my short stories? Forget it. In my short stories, I came off sounding a bit like a John Steinbeck wannabe, all earnest and meaningful. Stoic beyond my years. And believe me, that kind of dust bowl stoicism just didn't jibe with the modern world.

To my left, sat Zoe Pritchard who was probably writing about how fucking fantastic her life would be from now on and how she'll marry some guy with a ridiculously square jaw. Some champ who plays tennis and wears Ralph Lauren underwear, who, in the long run, will probably turn into a fat slob and make her miserable anyway. Why is it that, at this moment when I am supposed to be soul searching and thinking about how short life is and how you have to make the most of every....blah, blah, blah.....all I can think about is....Zoe Pritchard's tits? See this is what Beaumont forgets: it's hard to live your life like Freddy Nietzsche when you have to walk around with a boner in your pants 24/7.
Speaking of which....from this angle, I can see that Zoe Pritchard's right boob is slightly squashed, pressed up against her desk. She is unaware of this, her face furrowed in concentration as she writes her letter to the future. Whenever she breathes in, her chest expands, applying more pressure to her already slightly pancaked boob. This creates an interesting swelling as her boob conforms to the space between her body and the desk. I can't see the right one but I'm pretty sure I prefer Zoe Pritchard's boobs in profile more than the straight on view (although seeing Zoe dressed in the school sports polo shirt tackling another player in a soccer match is pretty fucking amazing from any angle).
Now, as she sits back in her chair, tapping her pen against her lovely teeth, I can see that her boobs are being kept in place by a bra of undetermined colour beneath her preppy polo shirt. A bra that works to keep each breast immobile throughout the day but has enough engineered suspension and dynamic support so that, when her breasts brush up against something solid, like a desk or a chair, there is a certain amount of give.

This is the dual aspect of Zoe Pritchard's boobs: firm but adaptable. Adjustable even. They conform to the world but they also have a mind of their own. Once free of obstruction, they are quick to assume their original shape and position because they are moulded by elastic and spandex and cotton. This tension is a kind of magic to behold. Because of this suspension system, Zoe’s boobs seem to operate according to their own gravitational pull. They are like twin zeppelins tethered dreamily to her ribcage. Smooth, aerodynamic, suspended, balanced, streamlined, restrained but potentially explosive. Heavy but buoyant...all at the same time. Always straining to get free. Jesus. My parents talk about the Sistine Chapel...about standing in line to see it last summer and what an amazing work of art it was. In my opinion, Zoe's Pritchard tits are a far superior work of art. By a long shot.

Next thing I know, Beaumont is standing by his desk, saying, alright guys, time to start finishing up. You guys have five more minutes. I looked down at my piece of paper and I realise that all I'd been writing about was Zoe Pritchard's boobs. It was too late to do anything else so I quickly concluded by writing some stuff about making a positive impact on the world...about being a positive influence on my generation, dearly hoping this would balance out the smut. And then Beaumont was gathering up all the letters and we put them in the time capsule along with a few coins, a few newspaper articles about the space program and the Olympics, a Star Wars poster, a cassette tape with some music on it (we'd all contributed one song), photographs of our class and some other items. All of it wrapped in plastic. Stuffed into the box.

Next, we all traipsed out to the sports field and buried the time capsule in a shallow hole. It was almost like a funeral for a family pet. A canary. A hamster. The caretaker came along and filled in the hole with a shovel and that was it. Big deal. You could see the sceptical look on the caretaker's face as he patted down the earth. Like, that's right Mr life lesson, liberal teacher. You have your fun but tell me this....when are you gonna get around to teaching these little bastards something useful for a change? Anyway, after we'd buried our letters, another bell rang and we all headed off to somewhere else. Lunch maybe. Or biology. I can't remember now.

After that, it was only a matter of weeks before exams and then the last day of school was upon us. The final bell rang and we all went our separate ways. The second to last time I saw my classmates was at our graduation. Our hats went up in the air. Proud parents took photographs. Then, a short time later, most of us gathered once again, this time for a party held at Todd's Huston's parent's house which was down at the beach. After this, our chalk lines frayed and separated, becoming individual strands as we began moving into unchartered territory. The temporal zone beyond the edge of the chalkboard. Some of us prospered. Some of us died along the way. There were accidents and hereditary diseases and tragic mistakes. For some of us, time mysteriously and abruptly ran out and the line simply ended.

Astoundingly, Mr Beaumont is still alive, almost like he purposefully defied the onslaught of time to prove his point at the unearthing of the capsule and in doing so, guaranteed himself an additional fifty years above ground. I guess he was younger than we gave him credit for back then. To us, everyone over twenty had seemed ancient. Now, on this day that hatched in our collective futures, this day that arrived as Beaumont had predicted, with unexpected and frightening speed, Beaumont appeared before us as an unnaturally healthy looking 80 years old. Smaller than I remember, no doubt, but healthy never the less. He still seemed a fair way off from the infirmity that overtakes people at that age: the quiver that becomes evident in the eyes and voices. The uncertainty in the balance. The paper-thin skin covering the hands. In fact, Mr Beaumont's grip, when we shook hands seemed more assured and firmer than mine.

We all used to talk about what it would be like to be thirty or forty. Like it would never happen. But it has. Did you hear? Brien Clarence died with his father and brother in a camper van. Tragic. One of them left the gas stove on. Simple as that. Gone! Poof! Danielle Smith made good. Started her own business. She's super wealthy now. A different level entirely. James....you remember James? Well, he peaked sometime around his third year of college. It was all downhill from there. Now that his motivational speaking company has gone belly up, he's a sad sack with a garage full of tapes no one wants to buy, his alcoholism offset by a new and vigorous interest in our Lord Jesus Christ. How did life have so little to offer James?

At the reunion, they dug up and broke open the time capsule, the same metal box we'd buried. The school looked different than I remembered it. Updated with new glass-fronted buildings and covered walkways. We milled around the main auditorium. Outside it was windy but warm. This wind was coming off the desert and it kept threatening to slam doors shut. The Clash played inside the auditorium. Should I stay or should I go? This followed by more songs off the mixed tape we'd recorded. Echo and the Bunnymen. Soft Cell. Some fucking dolt had seen fit to insist of Genisis. We all drank wine, ate and caught up. We balanced our finger foods on small, square paper napkins. We were given the choice if we wanted to read our letters aloud. Some did. Some couldn't wait to get up there on the podium and start gushing about how great school had been. Best years of our lives and all that. I declined for obvious reasons. Maybe I was a coward. I couldn't decide. I talked to a forty-six-year-old version of Zoe Pritchard. That was surreal. Very strange indeed. The passage of time had left its mark on old Zoe. Kids. A failed marriage. A career reboot to pay for a respectable retirement. All the usual. Just like in a movie, I'd fooled around with her at Todd's parent's beach house the last time we'd laid eyes on each other, all those years ago. It had been alright. A lot of panting and fumbling in the dark. Music playing down the beach. The waves crashing. Sand getting into places it shouldn't. I don't remember too much about it because I was drunk. I suspect it wasn't so great for her or me. And now, unlike a movie, thirty years down the track at this reunion, Zoe and I did not conspire to slip away, to escape off into the darkness and drive down to the beach for a nostalgic quicky. To have another go as adults and explore where it might lead. No, we did not. We barely knew each other. Then and now. I think that last summer, back when we were young, we made a point to catch up a couple times after we'd first fucked. You know the kind of thing. Overly sentimental petting in teenage bedrooms listening to Edie Brickell. Worry over condom breakage. Trying to figure out if we actually liked each other. And then she faded away. To college. Same with me. Somewhere else. And then I forgot about her.

Almost.

Mingling, I tried not to get jealous of the people who'd made it. Or even those who exuded the confidence of success, false or otherwise, without trying. When I told them what I did, for a crust, some of my old classmates humoured me while others were genuine in their praise and astonishment, which, in a way, was far worse. I couldn't do what you do, they said, with a kind of wonder in their voices that pointed towards either my fortitude or complete stupidity. Or both. I stayed on for a few polite glasses of mineral water and then I headed off. Depressing as it was, I had the other half of my life to get on with. And I had a flight the following morning.

I drove down to the beach for a quick look. There was nothing waiting for me back at the hotel apart from a bar fridge I could not afford and probably some shite movie on TV starring the Rock. Todd's house was down the beach a bit, near the water's edge. Todd must have been wealthier than I remembered. Although having said that, the area looks a bit more depressed now back then. Back then, the senior class had trashed his house during that final party. Shameful behaviour really. Someone had used his parent's wooden lawn furniture to start a bonfire on the sand. Someone else had broken a sculpture worth a hell of a lot of money.

I killed the lights and stayed in the car. I had planned to do something vaguely symbolic like go down to the water and stand ankle deep in the surf, staring out into the blackness. I had the time capsule letter in my back pocket. Ten or even five years ago, most likely inspired by alcohol, I would have certainly followed through with this kind of improvised plan. Without hesitation. But now? It was pitch black out there, the white foam of breakers rushing into shore, the sound of each wave overlapping, becoming a continuous roar. These days, I did not feel like I needed to live every moment to it's fullest. And besides, the walk to the water would lead me down a set of graffiti-covered concrete steps and across a wide expanse of sand, the pier to my left. And it all seemed like too much effort and even slightly dangerous. This was, after all, a place where the local teenagers hung out. Where I had hung out once. I had no business being down there. As such, I remained where I was, cocooned and protected from the wind inside my white, midrange rental. And when the time felt right, I started the engine and drove away.

In the rush to make my flight, I must have left the letter in the hotel or in the rental. Maybe under the driver's seat with a muesli bar wrapper and some lint. Maybe somewhere else. I searched through my luggage twice once I got home, spreading everything out on the bed. No letter. A shame really: that letter had lasted all those years only to be chucked away by an intern at the car rental place. Or maybe a chambermaid.

I tried the exercise out in my own class. Or at least a modified version of it. By then I was burnt out and running out of ideas so what the hell? I kept the whole time capsule thing theoretical because my school wouldn't do anything like that. No way. Besides which, everything was digital now. As I explained, it was simply a writing activity. I got a lot of resistance of course. No one writes letters anymore sir, they all moaned, pretty much in unison, with one of two of my lazier students genuinely horrified by the idea of being forced to express themselves on paper. Once we got past this hurdle, once I convinced them there was some value in this activity, they started writing. They actually got into it. I told them they could say whatever. I wouldn't penalise them for profanity. I looked at the timeline I'd drawn up on the whiteboard. I was pretty pleased that I'd managed to pull it off. This was the first time I'd actually managed to get them all writing something down.

A difficult friend

I was eating in a restaurant in Darlinghurst. A cafe really. Actually, I was about to eat, having ordered a chicken salad with arugula lettuce, pine nuts and feta. Although 'about to eat' might have been an optimistic assessment of the situation because the kitchen staff seemed to have fallen into a malaise brought on by the end of the lunch rush. The kind of malaise that results in overlooking small details. Like the docket for my chicken salad which was still hanging on the metal rack in the pass. Not that it mattered. Not really. I had all afternoon. For me, it was more a case of switching out of a particular way of thinking. I am, what you might call, a professional schadenfreude. I write an opinion column for a newspaper here in Sydney (if you're a young person, they used to print the news on big bits of paper, fold them up and distribute them on a daily basis. Yep, one of those things. They still exist. Just). I've been doing it for fifteen years and at this point in my career I write about whatever I feel like. A running commentary on how our city has changed over time. Continues to change. Topical issues. Local issues. Observation pieces. I have an audience.

You have to understand that it takes a particular kind of pithy cynicism to pump out 500 hundred print worthy words five times a week. A cynicism that doesn't just switch off or go away when you submit your copy. It stays with you and it tends to eat into your enjoyment of life. It can corrode your sunny disposition. So the trick is to find a way to switch gears. To stop seeing the world through jaded eyes. To this end, I have discovered yoga. Yes, yoga, my new dirty little secret. My new drug. Shameful because in the past I have largely ridiculed yoga as being a time filler for self-indulgent hipsters and eastern suburb housewives. Vacuous types. But now, I too have seen the light. I have converted and becomes one of....them. No more alcohol and no more drugs. It was difficult. I had to get through the rehab and the therapy. But now I have found my inner smile through bodily contortions and deep breathing.

Yoga. God help me. You should hear me dribble on about it. Yoga-I have found-is the only way to stop my mind tearing everything apart in slow motion. I write all morning, my heart a distressed little dog in my chest, trapped and overstimulated by coffee. And then afterwards, I leave my apartment and attend my daily yoga session in the Cross. Five days a week. In other words, I have finally found 'balance'. Pithy, caustic me in the morning hammering away on my laptop. Followed by blissed out, enlightened me in the afternoon. No more afternoons of self-destruction in the pubs. No more gleeful sabotage of my marriages and other relationships. No more substance abuse and lies. God help me I've achieved balance.

Anyway, I was sitting there, my patience beginning to get thin, as I tried not to fixate on the order docket hanging unnoticed, swaying in the light breeze, ignored for the better part of 10 minutes when these two fellows sat down at the next table. They were urban types. Corporate. Healthy of body and white of teeth. They were some new evolutionary stage of metrosexuality, heavy reliance on social media, alternative economies and services, superfoods, hot room yoga, pedicures, Byron Bay weekend retreats, flexible sexual attitudes and all the rest of it. Both of them deeply, deeply cocooned in their own special existences.

One of these 'fellows' started talking. My immediate and lasting impression? The speaker was a dower 'fellow'. A bummer. A killjoy. In describing him, I certainly couldn't use the word 'guy'. No way jose. He wasn't relaxed enough to be a 'guy' or a 'dude'. Calling him a 'man' or a 'gentleman' was a stretch. He wasn't fully grown. These words denote a level of maturity he didn't possess. 'A bloke'? Nope. 'A boy'? 'A chap?' No and no. The 'C' word? Certainly as Australian as Vegemite and beach cricket. And multi-functional (Your worst enemy or your best friend could be described using this part of the female anatomy. Love and hate in one handy word....ah hell, I'll nip this in the bud right now. I was plagiarising the past again. Something I was exposed to long, long ago by an angry girlfriend who was perpetually fired up and enraged by university feminism. Even though she herself came from a stable background. Part of the price I paid for securing her favours was listening to her rant on about these inequalities.....the things we do for our feminist girlfriends eh?).

Anyway, this 'Fellow' had a completely ridiculous posture, like a dancer. Even when sitting down it was like someone had fused all his vertebra together. In all other regards, he was taunt and drawn. Comically constipated. He had a withered, exasperated expression on his face. As soon as they sat down, he began talking. He talked for 45 minutes straight, only taking a short break to order coffee and a kale salad. He talked exclusively about himself.

While this was happening, the friend, who was more predominately in my line of sight, listened with varying degrees of attentiveness. At first, I tried to blocked it out. The speaker's voice. The listeners perky reactions. The problem was this fellow just kept on going. On and on he talked. Me, me, me, me. Eventually, my food arrived and I ate it while this fellow droned on about his mother, his lover, his therapist, the lady who he worked for, his proctologist, his personal trainer....etc. etc. All these people who were merely the bit players in his central drama. As I said, the sympathetic friend listened dutifully, tilting his head to one side, nodding, lacing his fingers together, raising an eyebrow in a concerned way, as I forked springy lettuce and chicken into my face. I began looking for a crack in his demeanour. An indication that he was on empathetic autopilot. Then, after fifteen minutes, I began to think, what is your deal? Your problem? Are you into sadomasochism? Is this how you get off? Absorbing this guys woes?

Anyway, I ate my meal and listened. You really couldn't really avoid it. Their table was directly next to mine. The speaker reminded me of a guy I knew once. Justin. A good friend of mine who, at the time, was incapable of casting himself as the villain or the asshole in any of the stories he'd tell. He was always the tragic hero. Everyone else? They were out to get him. Everyone else was wrong. Don't misunderstand me, Julian was very entertaining. He would tell me about all the usual run-ins a person that age has with drinking, drugs, sex, carousing and crazy jobs. All that. And the whole time he was talking, telling me all about his misadventures, I'd be seeing things from the other person's point of view. So for example, maybe Justin would have an argument with someone on a bus and things would get out of hand. He'd tell me about it and I'd reflexively side with the antagonist of the bus tale because I knew exactly what Justin was like. I couldn't help it. It was interesting at the time because Justin managed to get himself into a lot of fucked up situations. But like I say, I knew what he was like. Justin just naturally got under other people's skin. He did it without even trying. And it wasn't just that he identified with the incorrect characters in his stories. He incorrectly identified the genre as well. In Justin's mind, everything was always cranked up to high melodrama. As such, he would tell me everything with Rasputin's eyes. Eyes like two burning coals. And he would tell me these stories with exasperated hand gestures like he was playing an invisible piano. It was operatic. It was rock and roll. But the problem was....it always seemed like comedy to me. Unintentional comedy. In this way, he was a serious thespian unaware he was actually stuck in a farce.

I finished my chicken salad and I paid the bill. I got up, made my way through the clutter of tables and chairs to the front entrance. The waitress thanked me and I said, no problems. There was a little tip jar by the register but I felt no compulsion to leave any money. The service had been friendly but basically incompetent. I left those fellows-the talker and the listener-as they continued to sludge through the problems of the speaker's life. What has happened to us? That we all need all this attention? Why do we feel our voice need to be heard above all the other voices? Does it really matter? Why do we think our experiences, every single one of them, are worthy of an audience?

I went down the stairs of the subway station. People were knotted around the barriers, swiping their cards, consulting the timetables and checking their phones. A few minutes later I was sitting on a train, watching the sunny eastern suburbs slide past as I headed back towards the beach. And sitting there, I thought about you. I mean, I really got swamped by memories. I thought about the way things ended between us and some of the unfortunate things that were said. I imagined myself telling a stranger about our relationship....only this time I would try to explain things from your perspective.

I took some notes on my phone. Later on that afternoon, I fleshed these notes out into a short first person narrative. All explained from your perspective. It was an....interesting exercise. And now I want to use a word I don't think I have actually spoken aloud or written down in perhaps 30 years.

That word is sorry.

I'm sorry. That is basically what I want to say to you. Take it or leave it but just know this is a sincere apology.

I am truely sorry.

For everything.

All ears

(The distant sound of traffic, a door being closed, a chair scraping across a floor....) 

Okay....I'm ready....(clears throat)...I'll just start...I mean, I should know the drill by now right?....(laughs). Jesus....Here we go...

....okay, I've met a lot of people in my life, that's the truth of it. Many, many people. From an early age, I found myself always in the position of the 'listener'...um....I'd sit there and listen while people talked. And that was always the way it went. I have been told I have that kind of face....the kind that says, "Go ahead...tell me all about it. No really...I'm all ears."

I take my seat on a plane....buckle up, flip through the magazine to see what movies I'm gonna watch and I'm telling you....9 times out of 10....the person next to me will start talking...and I don't mean a conversation. I mean they will start talking...you know?....telling me about their day....their year...their life. And like I say, it's been this way since...since before I can remember....when I was a little kid in Canada, living with my mother, I clearly remember adults talking to me, telling me about their messed up, chain smoking, baby boomer lives. Things I was probably too young to really understand.... 

(An indistinct, muffled voice) 

Yeah....some people will talk. I mean on tape....others aren't interested...maybe they get weirded out by the offer? I would say on average it runs at 40 percent who say 'yes'...and the remaining 60 percent who say 'no thanks'. And look....I never push it. Not anymore....if you want to talk then fine....if you don't want to talk, well I respect that as well. Talking is one thing....but.....um.....when the tape recorder comes out...that's a different story....and I have learnt that the hard sell won't work...the harder you try, the more suspicious people become...

(An indistinct, muffled voice)  

....um...what I do is I interview people. Pretty straightforward....I mean, I get them talking...about their lives. I will ask questions....to get the ball rolling, but mainly what I do is, I try to get out of the way and let them speak for themselves....I like hearing about other people's lives. I like the....I like being on the edge of some else's subjective experience....if that makes sense?....you listen and it's like you're briefly on the same ride with them....you know?...because everyone is on a different ride. Okay? All of us....We're all locked into our own little existences. Even those of us with high levels of empathy...at the end of the day....our individuality is our final, hidden agenda...that's what I'm saying here. When all is said and done, you can only be you. And I can only be me. That's the truth, isn't it? We can try to bridge the gap in many ways...talk, fall in love, become business partners, friends, enemies...whatever....at the end of the day....can you ever really know what goes on inside another man's mind? Another woman's mind? I mean, you may know a great deal but you can never know everything....

(The sound of a glass or a ceramic cup being set down heavily on a table top)  

....sorry....there is pollen in the air today...stuffs me up.....(coughs). These tapes of mine...in some situations, they allow people to be about as honest as a person can be...it's that confessional-therapy thing....you'd be surprised how many people are out there, dying to unload. 

(Pause. An indistinct voice....) 

....the bigger picture?...um...I tell people it's a hobby-art-project thing but really it's not...I don't plan to make something out of it. A book or whatever...(short pause)....or maybe I do? Honestly, I haven't thought that far ahead...about what I intend to do with all these recordings. Maybe the true purpose of this project will become apparent once....once the time feels right? I mean once I have enough recordings....which...well, I'm not sure when that will be...

(Coughs. The traffic noise in the distance continues)

The problem is...I can't tell you when this will happen because...for me, it's still about the act of recording. It is about capturing these people on tape. Being there in the moment when they finally drop their defences and tell the fucking truth....the moment they purge....you can clearly see the relief in their eyes....

(The indistinct muffled voice....)

The original idea? Apart from recognising my innate listening abilities?...(laughs)....I had this book by a guy named Studs Turkel. He travelled around the United States interviewing people....like that...only he was a print journalist....At first, but then, later on, he started recording people....I'm pretty sure he did....although I've never listened to the recordings. Anyway, that book was on my parent's bookshelf when I was growing up, along with all the other writers of the day...reading it was like opening a secret door into people's secret lives...amazing. And over the years, I have always been drawn to interviews on the radio...people talking...the intimacy of their voices....just talking about whatever. It was like hearing someone's thoughts....

So yeah....after college, I got myself some equipment and I started interviewed people...It's been that way ever since. Last year I interviewed about 95 people.....give or take...I don't put any pressure on myself and I don't set myself a quota. When the opportunity arises, I'll take it. Like I say, I know how to approach people and put them at ease. And I know how to get them to talk...um...I just have that..."thing"....what ever that thing is.... 

(Indistinct, muffled voice)

....yeah....so the situation is...what you do....is you explain to them that the little cassette tapes...the ones I use...have a maximum recording time of 60 minutes...thirty minutes on each side...and that is it...60 minutes to say whatever you want to say. Now you don't have to fill up the tape but you can't go over time because the tape will just stop...and it's strictly one tape per customer....and the reason for that is....time constraints or limitations are good to keep people on point...otherwise...well, it could go on all day...you know? 

(Pause, clears throat)

Yeah....as I said, I have lots of stories. I listen to them once or twice before I archive them. I have a few favourites, which might sound a bit weird....I know....but it's not. No, at all...I'm not sitting there... jacking off while I listen to these people talk....um....It's not like that in that James Spader movie where the guy...and the video tapes and...he's all....Anyway, to date, I have hundreds of lives on tape. Hundreds of stories. People in rooms talking away. Dull stories, true stories...once and awhile a truly fascinating story....and everything in between. I have travelled a lot, lived briefly in many places...many cities...listened to many people's lives.  

....um.....for example....I lived in a residential hotel for twelve months in the United States. Little rooms all the same with the same crap furniture, the same leaky basins. All those people stuck in there being admirably optimistic. Or crazy optimistic....What did Steinbeck say? Something about the poor in America considering themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?...It's true. Totally true....I came across a lot of that. Don't get me wrong...I think Americans are great because they like to talk about themselves so much...and they....generally speaking....they have interesting lives. Or at least they think they do....and sometimes that's all that counts.... 

...so....I did that for about five years....living in hotels.....working here and there when I needed to...and once I got tired of hearing Americans talking, I moved on....tried different countries. South America. Then Europe....where I met a lot of freaks....then down into Northern Africa. Cape Town. Australia. New Zealand. Up into South-East Asia....I had money...if that's what you were wondering...enough to keep going for a while. 

Yeah so...I approached these people and some of them would take me up on the offer. That being the case...we find a quite place and I hit the record button....and once it's done...once they have finished....I offer to send them a copy of the tape...by mail...if that's what they want. 

Finding these tapes over the past couple of years has become a bit of a challenge because....as you can imagine....digital technology has taken over. So...um....the company stopped manufacturing these cassettes, a while ago. Before they did, I stockpiled a supply....I have enough to keep me going for a few more years at which point I'm going to have to go down the digital road I guess. I'm not sure why the cassettes are important....they just are. Maybe it's the tactility? Or the time limit thing I mentioned? I don't know....

The upside of all this is I get to meet new people all the time. The downside is....I get to meet new people all the time. Look.....I try to stay objective about it....I came to understand....a long time ago I came to understand that you can't like everyone in the world....

....as you can imagine, it has taxed my ability to sustain friendships and relationships over a long period of time....It has damaged my existing ones....because, well...because I put most of my energy into finding new, temporary relationships. I can't help it. For me...people are like crack. I'm always chasing that new high, that new personality who will reveal something I haven't heard before. That unknown entity...

....um....look, I don't know....the drug analogy is a bit misleading....I don't believe in altered states of consciousness. I never have....You know something? It just occurred to me....all these things I've been talking about? You're actually quite good at it....at getting people to open up. You must be. I don't usually go into this much personal detail with people.... 

(Coughs)

...anyway...I guess that's all I need to say about this. I mean that's all there really is to it. It isn't complicated. 

Shit....(laughs)....did I even make it to the end of side one?.....really? No?

(End of recording)

The Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide

This man in Beijing was once standing on an assembly line in an enormous factory. Picture it. A vast space lit by dangling fluoro lighting strips. He is a normal Chinese factory worker...or what I imagine a normal Chinese factory worker to look like....and he is doing his job.

And thinking about this man's life makes me feel a little guilty because he most certainly earns less money than I do. Maybe he is separated from his family who live out in the sticks somewhere and he sends his wages back to them regularly. And each night he goes to sleep thinking of them. His wife and his daughter who beckon him in his dreams to come home. Forget about the big city papa and come home, they call. But he can't because there is no work in the country. My Hollywood conditioned mind sees this scene quite clearly. Perhaps before he goes to sleep each night he looks longingly at a beaten up photo of his family. My imagination could have used a voiceover in this scene to explain the anguish this man feels but any scriptwriter worth his salt will tell you 'show....don't tell'.

Anyway, this factory worker is counting silver wing nut bolts that go into a small plastic bag for the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide. And on the day I am referring to, the factory worker must have spaced out and accidentally put fifteen of these galvanised bolts into the plastic bag instead of the required sixteen. An insignificant mistake, correct? Look, we all have our off days, right? I can't even imagine what it must be like to work in a factory like that. The tedium! My god! Can you imagine? This man has real world problems and here I am, banging on about this missing wing nut bolt. This poor bastard has to live in an over-industrialised, filthy-ass-air, substandard medicine-and-education, injustice-in-the-form-of-an-ineffectual-lingering-communist-regime-county.

And me? I have Australia problems. Which is to say, no real problems. Not really. Not by comparison. A patchy internet connection. A parking ticket now and then. A co-worker who talks a little too much at work. Other than these small complaints, it is clean air and sunshine all the way. So all things considered, my life is pretty good.

You know how they talk about the butterfly effect? How a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the world and this causes a chain of events which, following an intricate pattern of cause and effect, result is a hurricane on the other side of the planet?

well....

Anyway, the bolts and all the other parts of the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide are put into the cardboard packaging. This flat pack unit trundles along the assembling line, with the other flatpacks, moving through the echoing space of the factory, before being loaded into a shipping container which is shipped to Australia where it is eventually stacked on a shelf in a large retail shop. Another vast space lit by artificial lighting. And this is where I entered the picture with my shopping cart. I selected the swing set up and heave it onto my cart assuming all of this boxed swing sets would be identical. I paid at the self-serve register and go outside, where I find the sky is covered with dark clouds and I notice fat summer rain drops are just beginning to slap down on the warm pavement. By the time I'd reached the car, it was raining heavily and the first thunder clap cracked the air open, sending people scurrying for cover.

I bought this swing set because we had been telling our daughter Jessica all summer to go outside and play. And her response? Basically, our daughter reached for her iPad to google how to play outside. When she did this we knew we'd let things get too far with the screens and the devices. We were understandably concerned that we were creating another fat little screen zombie. You should see her cousins.

Anyway, I loaded up the swing and drove home feeling victorious. And once the storm had passed, my wife and I went outside and set to work. We decided on a suitable spot, near but not under the jacaranda tree. We pulled all the parts and components out of the packaging, at my insistence because when it comes to assembling items like this, I'm always methodical in my approach. I laying all the parts out, making sure they are easily accessible. After this, I skimmed through the instruction book getting a sense of the overall steps involved before starting properly. Melissa, my wife, started getting impatient. This speaks to the kind of person she is. My wife Melissa will jump right into a venture feet first whereas I will take my time and gather the information I need to complete it properly. This has been an ongoing bone of contention between us since the second year of our marriage when these personality quirks came to light. Mel is of the opinion that too much caution impedes life. That it sucks the very life out of…..life. This from a woman who has had (last time I counted) 11 car accidents in her short driving career. Most of them minor scrapes granted but still….A person who seems allergic to any kind of preparation or forethought.

Anyway, the instructions were easy enough to follow. You taking your time, work step-by-step through the entire process and you will be fine. (As I say, I am the kind of man who believes in taking things step-by-step. Melissa….not so much). At various points, I would look up to find her walking around aimlessly, holding a random part with no idea where the bloody thing goes. Not a clue. In other words, being counter productive.

Despite all this, we got this swing set about three-quarters of the way complete but then...then we reached the point where we needed that crucial sixteenth wing-nut bolt and it wasn't there, was it?

This necessitated a return trip to the store which wasn’t at all successful because, even though I’d remembered the receipt, the manager decided he wasn't going to play ball. He stood by some ridiculous store policy that required the swing set to be returned in the exact same condition it had left the store. That is, it should be ready for resale which, in his mind, it wasn't because the cardboard packaging had been compromised and would probably need to be bound up with tape with a little sign attached which read, 'sold as is'. It didn’t matter that his company had sold me a swing set which was missing a part. No. This knucklehead couldn’t get past the fact that either he or one of his underpaid staff members would have to deal with the headache of returned item. As such, he stood by this petty police which everyone knows is usually sidestepped to keep the customer (me) happy. I made the usual threats to write a letter of complaint to his supervisor. In response to this, the manager (A blindingly bald man, hence the nickname ‘knucklehead’. It was like his head was a large stubby thumb with eyes and a mouth) smiled and said, go ahead. Be my guest. And that was the end of that.  
So I drove out of the useless chain store parking lot, cursing and composing the letter of complaint in my head, with the faulty swing set still jammed in the boot of my car. Still minus the crucial part. I decided to find a similar screw at the local hardware shop. I spent another hour wandering around the isles, consulting with staff members (ask me a question! I’m an expert!). At the end of my search, it was determined, there was no comparable bolt. For some reason, the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide had highly specific parts. What I am saying is a generic part would not do the job. The homeware assistant rattled on, providing me with a solution which sounded like committing to further complications....something about widening the hole with a drill so I could jam another bolt in there, after bending it with pliers to follow the curved shape of the metal support tubing but being careful not to…..blah blah blah. I began to wonder if the smarter move mightn't be to buy a ticket to Beijing that night. How long would that take from Sydney? 9 hours? Anyway, I could fly there and go straight to the factory by taxi where I could pick up the part. And maybe have a word with the Chinese factory worker. Something like 'I appreciate you're under duress but maybe you could pick up your game a little.....' Actually no. That is just the anger and frustration talking. I am not that guy. What I really should do is talk to the factory Manager and say, Mate! where was the quality control in all this? Eh?  

So you can probably see where this is heading. The swing set never was never properly completed. I had another attempt using a substandard part. Jump forward four, five months, the metal supports will have sagged, collapsed and will eventually be claimed by weeds. The plastic swings and the bright decals on the slide of the swing will become faded in the harsh UV light that assaults Australia all summer long.

But before all this, my inability to erect the swing set, to take care of the situation, resulted in series of arguments with my wife, each on getting progressively worse. Essentially, these were the same argument over and over again with slight variations. And of course, these arguments weren't really about the fucking swing set. They were about the reservoir of minor resentments and tensions and bullshit that build up in any relationship. The swing was only the catalyst. And I'm not saying I blame the Chinese guy in the factory. Maybe this humble worker doesn't even exist? Maybe they have a machine that spits those screws into the plastic bag? I don’t know.

In any case, the Action Dynamo Swing Set with Monkey Bars and Slide would make an appeared in most of Mel's future accusations and diatribes against me. And predictably I would take the bait. Time and time again I would take it, rising from the peaceful depths to bite down on the sharp hook of our mutual unhappiness. The swing was emblematic of the fact that, despite all my planning and caution, I had failed to make my life work. Failed to make my wife happy. Failed to keep my kid from becoming fat. I had failed.

Eventually, Mel and I separated. A trial separation which turned into a longer separation. Our lives became a series of angry encounters in doorways and through car windows. The cracks would become fissures that would run through our lives. The damage was too vast to describe in detail (Although having said all that, one day, years later, I was stuck in a hotel room in Malaysia during a monsoon with a half bottle of duty-free Bushmills and I did attempt to make a flow chart on a napkin.  A flow chart to show how all the cracks formed and connected and eventually separated us. I used a heavy felt tip pen which bled ink directly into the thin napkin as if were a vein had been opened up and black blood was flowing out of my hand. And there was no way to stem the flow).

Note to self

My mentor, a man named David Kreel, told me that periodically I should write a letter to myself. Do it yearly, he said. Or monthly. Whatever you want. The point is, do it regularly. These letters will serve as a marker. A personal contract. You can set yourself goals. You become accountable to yourself. Write down what you are currently doing and what you want to accomplish during the coming weeks and months. What you need to change to accomplish these goals. If it's in black and white, dated, signed...well, it's difficult to make excuses around something like that. This is one way to take more responsibility for your life, said David.

My mentor was in his late 50s when he gave me this advice. He was sitting at a large wooden desk, dressed in a pair of tennis shorts and a shirt with the Adidas logo splashed across the chest. David told me he kept his letters in a lock box in a bank. That he would go to the bank and read them from time to time. To remind himself what he had done. What he needed to do. For him, it was the act of writing it down that counted. As long as he had put these his thoughts down on paper, that's all that mattered.

For me, it was different. As David had suggested, every couple of months I would feed a clean piece of paper into an electric typewriter and knock out a short letter to myself.  I felt foolish addressing these letters to myself so I would start them with a generic 'Note to self'. As soon as I got these words down I'd have no problems filling up one side of an A4 sheet. Single spaced. I stuck to my typewriter for a long time, a large IBM. The kind you might have found in an office building during the '70's. I only began to change with the times when it became difficult to purchase ink ribbons. Then, slowly, hesitantly, I began working my way through a range of different laptops, each one growing lighter, faster, sleeker in design and more powerful. Laptops I mainly inherited for other people. I still kept the typewriter. Out of a sense of nostalgia.

The point was, I always printed these letters out because...because I need to mail them to myself. It wasn't good enough just to get the words down on paper. I needed the letter to leave my possession. There was something gratifying about dropping it in the mail slot. Feeling the letter slip out of my fingers and drop into the dark belly of the post box. And there was something equally as exciting receiving it three or four days later, complete with a postmark. Even though it had only been out of my possession for a short period of time, it had been handled by someone else. It had been sorted. It had moved through the Australian postal system. And like a boomerang, it had been returned to me.

I would open my returned letter, read it and be genuinely surprised at encountering my own words again. Just that little bit of distant made the words resonate with me all the more. I am not entirely sure why but there you have it. I would read the words aloud and think, I have to at least attempt to do what I've written. It was like receiving a direct command from the best, most virtuous, most optimistic version of myself. And so, after absorbing these"command", I would put the letter in my filing cabinet, the one in my office, and forget about it until some later day when I may of may not read it again. The point was I knew this promise to myself was out there. And as such, I was obliged to get off my ass and do something with my life. And this was fine for awhile. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I actually followed through on the promises I made to myself. And sure i could have emailed this same document to myself but it wouldn't have been the same.

Then something disconcerting happened. One of my letters came back altered. Changed. I was standing in my hallway, wearing a dressing gown, having just received the little jolt of pleasure I usually felt when I heard the mail slot flapping and the postman's footsteps receding along the path. And I sliced open the envelope and started reading it, as I always did. It began the way they all began. Note to self.....etc. etc. But by the time I got about two or three sentences in, I realised something was different.

You're not happy, said the letter. You cannot sustain the life you are leading because it is a sham. You can fool yourself only so long with these tiny, insignificant so-called-goals but eventually, you will need to make a real change. I hadn't written these words. I examined the letter back and front. The envelope it had come in. It looked like the one I'd mailed only three days before in the city but it wasn't. Clearly, it wasn't. In that letter, I'd mailed out I'd resolved myself to cleaning the rain gutters and visiting my father at the home.

I didn't need this. I mean….I really didn't need some kind of batshit crazy fracturing of my psyche. If that’s what, god forbid, this was. I didn't have a bad life. I had a wife, child, career (job), house (money suck), car (oil spot on the driveway. See house.), dog (vet bills. Exploding piles of sun hardened faeces when I mowed the lawn), a fridge full of food, garage for tinkering, small group of school mates for the occasional catch up (Erroneous social connections. Tiresome competition. Nicknames from a different life), gym membership (bouncy eye-candy on next treadmill over. Look but don't touch. And don't get caught looking), walks around the local park (see dog), peace (arguments with wife all but abated as a result of correctional relationship therapy. Or as Gerald would crow, “The inevitable acceptance of being pussy whipped my son”. See small group of schoolmates for……etc, etc), the latest phone (until the next one comes out), a music (Vinyl. Yeah, I know how that sounds) and a wine (a monthly delivery in styrofoam and cardboard) collection, annual holidays (Vietnam this year. Next year talk about a beach house in Queensland. Shoot me now), a bedside Kindle (Intimacy avoidance tactic), online streamed television series (vicarious living through the lives of edgy fictional characters. Something to talk about. Filling in the gathering silence. Banging on about the masterful character development and gratifyingly sustained narrative arks. See wife and small group of school mates for……etc.), online pornography (closed loop gratification. A monkey with electrodes attached to its genitals and head), medication (yes please), up-to-date dental work (keep smiling sunshine), a middle bulge I couldn't quite get rid of (see gym, fridge and wine), work colleagues (I could just about stomach on a daily basis. See career. See filling in the silence with catch up conversations about edgy tv characters), an extended family (kept at arms length. Are you kidding?), over-priced ballet lessons (see daughter), insomnia (see medication), mild depression (see medication and a crushing sense of nostalgia and the feeling that time is passing too quickly. See LP's and wine collection), an espresso machine, steady neighbours (freaks), fourth high school reunion (Seriously. Shoot me now. In the face.), daydreams (pipe dreams more like), media-stoked fears of global environmental and socioeconomic collapse. And all the rest of it.

Okay, I wasn't entirely happy. Sure. But who is at this age? I certainly wasn't ready for some kind of mental collapse. It did occur to me that I was exactly the same age as David when I knew him. It also occurred to me that those five years I knew David was very important to me. Formative. My parents….in fact, my entire family were background figures during that time. But David? David was clear and present. He was in focus because what came out of his mouth seemed real. He had been through the Vietnam war. He had real stories.

Anyway, this letter…..I knew what I'd written and it wasn't this. At first, I assumed it was a joke. Someone had found out what I was doing and they were having me on. Fine. And please don't worry: I do not intend to become the unreliable narrator of my own life. There is no raving loon in the wings of my subconscious mind playing cheap mental/story games with A. me and B. you. So fear not. Besides, hasn’t all that silliness already been thoroughly explored in our culture? You know, how at the end of the story, the main character reveals he had some hip form of schizophrenia or some other neurological malfunction all along? How it subverted the telling of the story? I get it. Everyone wants a Mr. Hyde for their Dr Jekell.

The letters kept arriving. One after the next. It was like being my own pen pal. Now each time the mailbox flipped open and I heard the postman, I felt a sliding sense of dread. I didn't want to be unhinged. I didn't want this paradox existing in my life. I started to see these letters were all basically external observations, descriptions of my life from distance. As if written by someone watching my daily routine unfold through a pair of high-powered binoculars.

Creepy right?

You bet it was.

The fifth letter was different. It was a detailed plan, with clearly laid out steps, each one numbered and in neatly formatted paragraphs. I read it twice. It explained how to set up an online account under a different name. How to falsify the documents I would need. The names of the people who would help me in the coming weeks. How to prepare myself physically for the swim. How they would find nothing other than my wallet and some clothes on a beach up north. My car keys.

It was ridiculous. I had no intention of following this plan. There was no way. Not in a million years. I folded the letter....the plan...up into a tight wad, shoved it inside an empty tomato can I found in the recycling, took the can outside and put it in the bin.

I fell asleep that night with the light on, my wife snoring lightly from her side of the bed. When I woke up, the sky was just beginning to lighten. Morning birds were chirping from the trees. My wife hadn't moved, or so it seemed. She was still snoring away, her hair spilt across the pillow, her back to me.

I lay there for quite awhile and then I heard the garbage truck moving along the block, getting closer. I slipped out of bed, wrestled with the lock on the front door for a few moments, then ran outside, catching the garbage man just as he was about to wheel my bin over to the compactor scoop.

Knees

Hey Chucklehead,

I understand what you were saying before about ageing...You get older and it seems like the laws of physics change. You stand directly over a plastic bin at work (just as I just was this morning) and you drop an ordinary, balled up sheet of A4 paper (the first hopeless attempt at the quarterly report) into the bin. The bin in the corner of the room, by the photocopier. And somehow you manage to miss!

What happened? Your fingers opened, releasing the ball of paper. It fell as it should, straight down, pulled by gravity towards the centre of the earth yet somehow it bounced off the rim of the bin or swerved off to one side at the last second, its path altered by some unforeseen office draft perhaps? Or some aerodynamic anomaly which could be attributed to the object itself? Anyway, it ended up on the floor. On the carpet. In other words, disposing of this wretched piece of paper has turned into a two-step operation. A. The first failed attempt and then B. the bending over, the retrieving, joints creaking because elasticity has faded, grunting in an unseemly way, to pick up this defiant ball of paper and place it back in the bin.

It now seems like 4 out 5 times I miss the target. I am talking about dead drops as mentioned above, casual tosses, victory spikes, rebounds, deep three-pointers...in short, every way there is to dispose of waste paper, used teabags, scrunched up receipts, screwed up Post-It notes, orange peels, apple cores, cellophane packaging from food products I have just eaten, stickers, folded up envelopes, empty paper coffee cups, banana skins, dental floss, used condoms (not at work of course), instruction manuals, snot clotted tissues during the cold season, old magazines, used up prescription drugs packaging, shopping lists, old airline boarding passes.....all of these items and more. 4 out 5 times they end up on the floor next to the intended target-the garbage receptacle.

And if they don't swerve off at the last minute, their trajectories mysteriously altered by god knows what, then they will happily bounce out of the bin, ricocheting off some other item, even when thrown directly and decisively down into the bin. The point is, this simple task now inevitably involves extra bending, stooping and lifting. Meaning there is extra strain put on my joints. Extra twinges in the lower back, displacement of blood from the torso as it suddenly rushes down into my head. Black diamonds spinning in the corners of my vision when I straighten up. Ligaments stretched in unpleasant ways. Bones grinding. You get the picture.

Now I seem to spend half my time bent over my own gut, trying to touch the floor as I pick things up. After sixty-three these kinds of callisthenics are demeaning and like I said before....unseemly. What I don't understand is....why? Why do these malicious pieces of garbage refuse to cooperate? Refuse to make their way to the landfill? This is the reason I have decided to become an unapologetic litterbug. If you will excuse the pun, I have given the proper disposal of these items my best shot but now, in the name of preserving my knees and my dignity, I must littler.

Andrew Myers.

Cruise Ship

Dear Isaac,

So, as you know, we decided to treat ourselves with a cruise around the Pacific. You know, to see all the islands before they became completely submerged by climate change. We booked online and from the website, it all looked pretty terrific. And it was definitely affordable. The price included all your meals, entertainment and some drinks coupons. An amazing value.

As you know, we left Sydney harbour on Thursday morning, waving goodbye to You, Shaz and the children. We all stood out on deck as the ship went through the Heads and out into the open sea. And at first, it was fantastic: great service, lovely people, etc. etc. But then, once we crossed the International Dateline, everything changed. The crew became very surly and uncooperative. I remember the night they cancel the show. This was a show I'd really been looking forward to. A sort of raunchy circus production with magicians and singing in the main auditorium. Anyway from that point on, the quality of the food deteriorated noticeably. Put it this way: the buffets became less opulent, less fresh. Complaints were made but it didn't seem to make a lick of difference. It got to the point where the crew became downright unfriendly and uncooperative. One morning it became apparent to us they had all disappeared deep into the bowels of the ship, locking themselves away behind a series of steel doors, so that it was only us, the passengers wandering around, trying to understand what was going on and why we'd been abandoned.

And then we went into the fog. It was a very thick and white fog. You would go out on deck and stand at the railing. And you couldn't see anything. Just a solid wall of white, the ship completely enveloped, as it pushed onwards. And it was cold as well. Too cold for that part of the Pacific Ocean. Being so close to the equator, it should have been hot. Balmy. Anyway, We'd stand at the railing and look down, and you couldn't even see the water. Nothing. It was like standing on the edge of a mountain. A mountain covered in low hanging cloud.

Your father and I mainly talked to the Canadian couple and the couple from Western Australia. As you might well imagine, we were all quite concerned. We'd meet up in the main dining hall and assess the situation. We couldn't contact the outside world. Once we'd gone into the fog, none of our devices worked anymore. This went on for six days. Can you imagine? Six days completely cut off from the world. I'd look out the porthole and there was nothing out there. Solid white. It was very disorientating. You had no sense of time passing. Finally, when your father had enough- you know how your father can get when he is pushed- he and Mr Dwight found and bailed up a porter. We demanded some answers! We got nothing. No information. Evasiveness. More open hostility. "Go back to your cabins", snarled this horrible little man. A man who, only days before, had been so friendly. So nice.

The restaurants and the buffet stations were all empty by the fifth day. Picked clean by the scavenging passengers. We-your Father and I- found a box of crackers and some cans of tuna. Much to my shame, we concealed it from the others. We had no idea how long this would go on for. We had to look out for ourselves.

The next morning we came out of the fog into bright sunlight. On the horizon, we could see what turned out to be a coastline comprised of very tall, very imposing limestone cliffs. Mr Dwight had a very good understanding of geography and he was completely confused. This continent had no business being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It certainly wasn't the American coastline. Anyway, the ship turned and for a time we followed the shore, running parallel to these endless cliffs. Then, at noon, we docked. It was very hot and there was no one there to meet us. We were all very hungry. The ship's gangplank automatically extended and aligned with a natural cave opening in the cliff face. Then a polite announcement to 'abandon ship' was broadcast over the PA followed by a siren. It was repeated again and again. "Abandon ship. Abandon ship," the voice repeated. This was not at all what we'd been expecting. We thought it would be all lovely white sand beaches and palm trees waving in the balmy breeze. This is more like the coastline of....I don't know.....Africa. We talked about remaining on the ship but there was no food left so that seemed like a pointless idea. We decided to leave. Carrying our luggage, we went along the gangplank and into the mouth of the cave. We trudged along in the dark for a short time. , a keyhole of light grew in size until we came out into a vast canyon, a natural amphitheatre.

A group of very tall....people.....were waiting for us. As we drew closer, we could see just how tall and unusual in appearance these individuals were. On average, they were almost double our height. They had a long, muscular limbs and thick, semi-translucent skin so that you could just make out the organs that kept them alive. It was a shock to be standing in front these beings and truly comprehend the difference in scale. We all felt like a group of toddlers compared to them. And I say 'beings' and not 'human beings' because they certainly weren't human. That was obvious from the start. They were aliens. For what seemed like a long time there was silence. Then Mr McAndrews from the Gold Coast nominated himself as the group's spokesman. He stepped forward and demanded to know what the hell was going on. We had paid good money for this cruise and there was no mention of this.

These Beings did not open their mouths to speak. They put words directly into our minds without sound...and not only words. Images and symbols. It was quite overwhelming at first. Until you got used to the sensation. It felt like your own thoughts had been crowded out, forced into submission. We actually saw this concept visualised as a series of diagrams. A human brain inside a box. The key to open this box in the palm of hand. The hand belonging to one of these creatures. The hand closing, fingers with five joints becoming a fist. Some of the passengers fainted. Others vomited and dropped to their knees. I had to lean again your father for support. Mr McAndrews started hitting the side of his head, demanding that they 'get out'! We were told that our lives, as we had known them, were finished. We saw more diagrams of what lay ahead. What role we would play. These images unfolded like an instruction manual. It was like seeing the future. Some tried to run back to the ship. They brought back word that the gangplank had been withdrawn and the ship had already set sail, leaving all of us stranded.

We soon learnt the name of this alien race. They were called the Tralfamaphamians. That afternoon they transported us to a very clean and orderly internment camp. We had to stay there for several days while we were interviewed and sorted into groups. A few of the passengers from the ship tried to resist and others even tried to escape. They were quickly rounded up and returned to the camp. The punishment was swift and unpleasant. The Tralfamaphamians were a very peaceful race but, as we soon learnt, it was best not get on their bad side. One of the escapees was flogged in front of us. The sonic whip cut through the flesh of that poor man's back like....a hot knife through butter. Muscle and skin came away with the ease of a well-cooked pig on a spit. Images of this disciplinary action were fed into our minds like the evening news. He only lived for another couple of days after that.

They took us off and put us to work. Behind the cliffs were snow capped mountains and a desert. At the edge of this desert stood a city. A vast place of citadels, public squares, private homes and apartments, parks and theatres.

We spent the rest of our lives in their opulent apartments and homes, cooking and cleaning and taking care of Tralfamaphamian children who were, at the age of seven, our size. The longer we served them, the more we learnt about our captors. We came to understand that the Tralfamaphamians were more graceful, stronger, more intelligent than we could ever hope to be. Their culture, their society, their technology: it was all far more advanced than ours. You came to miss hearing voices. Human voices. As the Tralfamaphamians couldn't abide the sound of human voices, we were required to learn sign language to communicate with each other.

We were their pets. Their valets. Their slaves. We watched the Tralfamaphamians enjoy their lives from the wings. We scurried beneath their feet and we did as we were told. The low hum of their thought chatter existed in our minds at all times. There was no rest from it. Not even when you slept. It got so you lost track of who you were. This communication was broadcast down from the head of each household. We were all 'tethered' to him or her. Us humans, the smart ones at least, realised it was better just to let go, to allow it to happen. If you fought....well, the penalties were unpleasant. But, if you towed the line, your life really wasn't that bad. If by some miracle this letter manages to reach you, what I'm saying is, this life of servitude hasn't been that bad. when they capture you, my advice to you is, don't resist. It won't take long for you to realise that the Tralfamaphamians deserved a dominant position in the universe.

Your father passed away last Christmas. I am still working every day. It's difficult to know what has happened to the rest of the world. I......


I was stirring, waking up, the plane cabin coming woozily into focus as I lifted my head. A dimly lit tube lined with people and TV screens playing the same three or four movies. Please forgive me. I never usually dream in this much detail. And never on planes. I could literally count the number of convincing, detailed dreams I have had in my life on one hand. And furthermore, I never explain my dreams to other people. Not in any great detail. Anyway. God. Wow! That was....I mean, I was really there. On that ship. In that woman's life. I was that woman. Anyway, the flight attendants were pushing the food and beverage carts down the aisles. It was a discount airline so they were discount flight attendants. Lamb curry or chicken? They asked. Tas opted for the curry. I went with the chicken. Hot food in a small disposable tray. Plastic cutlery.

We landed three hours later, the engines roaring in reverse on a foreign runway. We walked along the access skyway into the main terminal. I could feel the humidity. The 'Tralfamaphamians'. Is that what they were called? The name popped into my head as we walked through the new extension of the airport. I couldn't exactly remember. Anyway, the baggage claim came next followed by immigration and customs.

Our holiday was good. It was fine. A resort on the coast. A pool. A bar fridge in our room which was restocked every day. The local beer tasted better here even though I could find the same beer at home in the imported beer section. Crisp white sheets. Air conditioning. The decor modern. A picture of carp swirling around each other on the wall. Tas complained she was too plump for the two-piece bikini she'd bought obliging me to provide compliments. Which I did. We had a week of sun and cocktails. A week of grilled jumbo shrimp. It was nothing remotely challenging. When we'd been younger we would have taken local transport to cheaper, more down-to-earth locations. The kind of place where young surfers and fire twirlers hang out. Backpacker beaches. We were of an age where this didn't seem appealing anymore. Right outside the resort restaurant they had these large, white statues. They were all in the same pose. Their heads bowing slightly, these solemn figures were about 4 metres in height and they held bowls from which water slowly cascaded into a long infinity pool. At night these statues were under lit by spotlights. I'd look up from my deck chair and instantly start thinking about the dream on the plane. Why I'd been dreaming about aliens....I don't know. I hadn't read any science fiction since high school. Nor did I enjoy science fiction movies or tv shows. Frankly, I found them either too immature or too formulaic. And why had I assumed the character of a middle-aged woman in the dream? Why had it seemed so natural? I could clearly remember the city we'd lived in as slaves. The oversized architectural structures, the baroque details of those structures, the walls covered with hieroglyphic language. The fountains in the main square. I remember that woman's entire life-a life spent in servitude. The holiday week went quickly. We had some excellent meals in the resort. We thought about going into the little town one night but decided against it at the last moment. We had sex twice. We saw five magnificent sunsets.

Before I knew I was back home. Back in my cubical. My hand moulded around the mouse on my desk which controlled the cursor on my screen. I worked as an insurance claim adjuster. It wasn't the most exciting line of work but I knew it inside and out by that point. And there is a comfort in familiarity, isn't there? The money arriving in the joint bank accounts on a regular basis. Taz was back at her job in the city. In other words, the routine had been established. Even my tan was beginning to fade. I had a picture of the resort as my screen saver.

How was your holiday? asked Bryce. I told him it was great. I told him it exceeded our expectations....blah blah blah. But then I complained a little bit about the cost. And while I was at it, I complained about how quickly the time had gone. And I finished off by complaining about how strange it was to be back here, sitting in my cubical, in the office. How my only reprieve from all this was the weekend. How the weekends were little islands of peace and tranquillity. How I swam across the five days of work, not unlike a sea of shit, barely making it to Friday afternoon. Was this my life? I asked Bryce. I mean seriously?

Bryce still had his smile fixed in place but his eyes looked unsure. Unsettled. I could see that. He had not bargained on this level of detail in my response. I was still talking, twisted around in my seat, my take away coffee from earlier forgotten and having gone cold, my elbow on the keyboard, pressing down on the 'Z' key, sending a trail of 'Z's across the word document I was working on. I just kept talking without an end in sight. And poor Bryce was caught in this one-way conversation. You could plainly see he was desperately trying to extract himself and that he was berating himself for instigating it in the first place. I just kept going, talking, explaining and over-explaining everything about the holiday until Bryce backed out of my area. I continued to behave like this in my office. In fact, my behaviour intensified. I cornered people and annoyed them talking endlessly about the holiday, the holiday, the holiday. It got to the point where people stopped smiling and they just looked at me, their mouth hanging down with dismay. The stronger ones would say "You have told me all this before". The weaker ones would make excuses. Eventually, my boss called me into his office and told me to cut it out. To keep my personal life at home.

A few weeks later, Tabetha told me she was also having problems gearing back into her own work routine. She was having the same kind of problems I was having. We talked about it for about two hours and drank a bottle of terrible red wine. We decided to book two tickets for another vacation. Immediately. We didn't tell anyone. We didn't bother to go back to work the following morning. We packed out little rolling suitcases and the big one. The taxi took us to the airport. After jumping through the usual hoops, we were in the air. When I checked my emails I saw one there was one from my boss. I replied, telling him that something terrible was happening to a family member in the United Kingdom. A grandparent....No, a parent who was teetering on the edge. I kept things vague. Let them fill in the details, I said to Taz.

We went back to the same resort. They didn't give us the same room but the staff seemed happy enough to see us again. Why were you back? They asked. We didn't really have an answer. I don't know, I said. And then I laughed. Anyway, it felt natural to be back in the resort. I don't know why but everything was backwards. The resort felt like our home. In returning to our real lives, it felt we had travelled to a strange country. A place which was dull and didn't feel quite right. A place where the locals weren't too interesting and the culture was a bit of a disappointment. But anyway, we were back and that had been remedied. After a week it was like we were part of the staff. They were our extended family. We did nothing but swim, lay in the sun, sleep, eat and watch movies on the cable channel. Tasman was happy and so was I. we were happier than we'd ever been. At night I sat on the veranda and watched geckos run along the walls and ceiling of the balcony.

A month in the resort had put a huge dent in our shared accounts. More than I had expected. But as long as we paid, the staff smiled and greeted us and made us breakfast and cleaned our rooms. We just kept on going, day after day. In fact, it was the same beautiful day over and over again. But then one morning I found myself standing at the reception counter, embroiled in a silly argument with the manager whose smile had vanished. I kept swiping my card and it kept saying 'Decline'. I laughed and tried another card. Decline. Decline. Decline. I laughed again and shrugged and scratch the back of my head. This was all very inconvenient. I told the manager everything was fine. That I'd be right back and that this situation was ridiculous. I went back to our room and locked the door. Tasman was outside by the pool and when I stood out on the balcony, I could see her through the screen of foliage. I lay back on the king sized bed and looked up at the ceiling. A short time later there was a knock on the door. A quiet respectful one at first. The knocking continued, becoming more insistent. And the phone kept ringing.