A Clue and Some Strange or Sage Advice

I was dreaming – at a park in Berlin and Milan Kundera walked up to me, kneeling in a ray of sunshine and said:

“Von Esther, Use Your Powers for Good – not Evil!”

I said, “But I don’t understand–”

He said, “What you write is little bits of fluff floating on the surface of water. And not grand oceans or mighty rivers. Puddles and washbasins of water.”

“You mean my writing is like, ah, fluff? Belly-button fluff or–?”

“Not like fluff,” he reprimanded me, “It is fluff. Floating on the surface of puddles.” He fixed me with a stern stare. “This is wrong. Use your powers for Good.”

I was at a loss for words. This was the last thing I expected in a park in Berlin. Maybe Lou Reed in a drug haze. Maybe Marlene on a good day. But Milan Kundera telling me off for crimes against – what? – literature? He was now frowning at me with his forehead.

“Your fluff is Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm. Billy Boyd, and any derivative of him, paired with any other man – or beast – who takes your fancy. You are worth more than this. You could use your powers for so much more!”

Right at that moment, when Milan was getting all worked up, Eugene Hütz, who had been leaning casually against a tree, eavesdropping, plopped himself down next to me. “Don’t listen to him,” he whispered to me. “There’s nothing wrong with writing the Billy Boyd love.”

Milan shot him a toxic glance, but Eugene continued unafraid, “Lots of people want to be carnal with me and Billy Boyd happens to be one of them. Of course, it is because I am such a premium lover, but someone has to write it, otherwise it will burn a hole in your head.”

Milan’s forehead scowled and Eugene pouted in his general direction.

I pondered, “But Eugene, how do I know that this you-and-Billy-Boyd thing you talk of isn’t just a product of my own imagination? That I imagined you up here because I don’t want to hear what Mr Kundera has to say?”

“Firstly, one,” said Eugene, “Why is he ‘Mr Kundera’, and I only ‘Eugene’? He has the respect because he is all severe and displaced ex-Czech living in Paris with that forehead, and I am but a Ukrainian New York gypsy punk? Eh?” He blew air out of his mouth upwards so that his strange black hair flipped away from his face.

He sighed, “But no matter. Secondly, two,” he counted on his fingers, “Two, ‘A’, to be more precise. If I were just a product of this head of yours,” he tapped a finger against my forehead, “Don’t you think you would conjure up a Billy Boyd too? Me, and not him? Not likely. Both of us maybe. But I am here in just as much right as he is,” He shot Milan a look.

“Two, ‘B’, my dear little lady, is proof that you could not have just conjured me. If you conjured me, would I not be eating something you eat, some cheese you sell at that cheese-selling job of yours, something that has seeped into your unconscious? And what is it you see me eating, eh?”

“Actually,” I said, “What is that?”

“This,” he said triumphantly, “Is beef jerky!”

I looked at Milan, whose face reflected the same bewilderment I felt.

“Ok,” I said, “Right.”

Eugene obviously felt he had proved his point and fell silent, gnawing at strips of his beef jerky and looking at me with big dark eyes. This sure was one weird park. What suburb was this anyway, Friedrichstein? I don’t remember how I navigated here or where it was I had come from.

A small Japanese-looking man approached our little party, glancing between the three of us. “May I?” he said, indicating at the patch of sunlight we were seating in.

“Of course, please.” I said. I thought that maybe he would turn out to be a bit more normal and a bit less quarrelsome than Milan and Eugene.

“If you don’t mind my saying, I couldn’t help but overhear what you were discussing.”

“Beef jerky,” Eugene nodded sagely, “Yes, it is a premium food group.”

“No. I mean Billy Boyd and Roy Orbison Wrapped in Cling Film.”

He knelt down on a patch of sunlight between Milan and Eugene. “Before I go on, please let me introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Haruki Murakami. Pleased to make your acquaintance Miss Von Johnson, Mr Kundera, Mr Hütz.” He nodded at each of us in turn.

“How does he know all our names?” Eugene murmured to me under his breath. I tried to shrug without Haruki noticing.

“I don’t know about this Billy Boyd you speak of,” Haruki said, smiling pleasantly, “But I just wanted to say that I think the points made by both Mr Kundera and Mr Hütz have value. You shouldn’t dismiss one because it disagrees with the other.” He looked at me earnestly and paused before continuing. “I think Roy Orbison Wrapped in Cling Film has a place in your writing. If not Roy and Cling Film, then someone else and something else. Wrapped or not. Do you see what I’m saying?”

I looked into Haruki’s encouraging eyes, which flitted with hazel sparks in the sunlight. I looked from him to Eugene, who was sucking on a piece of jerky and gazing at me with surprising seriousness. Then I turned to Milan who appeared slightly put-out but at the same time curious with what Haruki was saying.

“Your writing is leaning towards what it could be. You can feel it. You can almost touch it, almost taste it to write it.”

Milan shifted his legs. “And my point?” he piped up, “It doesn’t sound much like you agree with my point?”

“No,” said Haruki, turning to look at Milan. “I do agree with your point. Powers of any kind should be used for good and not evil. I would only disagree with your use of capital letters – I don’t believe in an ‘Evil’, capital ‘E’, any more than I believe in some universal force of ‘Good’, capital ‘G’.”

From the look on Milan’s face, I guessed he wasn’t quite sure how to take Haruki’s statement. It was like an editorial suggestion he knew he should adopt but which tasted sour in his mouth.

“And the Billy Boyd luuurve?” Eugene chimed in, snapping a piece of beef jerky as he did so. “There is nothing finer in this world, so what better thing to write about?”

“Yes and no.” Haruki said (to which Eugene rolled his eyes), “Love and sex are perhaps some of the best things in this life, and so of course she should write about them.”

“Ha-raar! Points to us!” Eugene exclaimed, slapping me on the leg as he did so.

“Mr Kundera, here, himself writes about love and sex. In fact, most of his books seemed to be preoccupied with the subject.” Eugene looked crestfallen and Milan suddenly more interested.

“It is not the subjects she should let go, but Billy Boyd.” Haruki was now looking straight at me. “I know you can do it,” he said quietly. He took my hands and in them he placed an object. I was vaguely aware of Eugene hitting his own head with the piece of jerky, and Milan looking at Haruki and me with something akin to – was it? – respect. I held Haruki’s gaze while he gently closed my fingers over the object. As I looked down towards my hands I felt the scene, the sunlight, the park in Berlin, all of them fading away. The last thing I remember was opening my hands to look at the object I held. It was a double adaptor.

In my own bed, Toby was snuggled up to me, deep in his own cat-dreams, a gentle Melbourne winter light filtering in through the cotton blind over my window.

“You know, he was wrong about the Billy Boyd,” a voice said next to me. I looked over to where the voice had come from and Eugene winked at me. “Don’t believe everything those writers tell you,” he said, tossing something onto the bed. “I’ve got to take a piss. I know you’re a lady, but I got to say – I’m going to piss like there’s no tomorrow.” He left the room and I looked at what it was he had thrown on the bed, what is was Toby had got up to investigate.

Of course. You guessed it.

A piece of beef jerky.

Roy and The Split Personality Cat

It was a clear winter Monday, the sky a faraway blue, the sun a teasing promise. I had spent the morning enjoying friands and the fashionable addiction of the time, caffeine. It was twelve o’clock noon exactly when there was a knock at the door and I opened it to find Roy Orbison standing on my threshold. Bedecked in his trademark all black, black sunnies on his nose, he greeted me with a nod, saying, “I don’t go in for these newfangled technologies. Doorbells! What use be them to me?”

“Roy!” I said, “Do please come in!” And he did.

I was surprised, as you may be too, to find Roy Orbison a sudden visitor to my house. But from five months of living so close to Moonee Ponds, Zombie capital of Victoria, I was, by this time, used to all sorts of things rising from the grave and making surprise turns among the living. And Roy looked pretty spritely, I must say. There was no odour of rotting flesh, nor paleness of the pallor – in fact he didn’t look a day over 52, which, strangely enough, was the age he was when he died. Or so I thought.

We had seated ourselves in the living room and I had offered him a cup of tea and was just about to suggest the eating of some cheese. He was admiring the screen that covers our fireplace. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice the gaping hole in one side of it and point out the potential fire hazard. But I was prepared to counter with the newness of our smoke detectors, though I was not sure if Roy would know what smoke detectors were, if they had been around in ‘his time’ and even if it was insensitive to mention them at all. At the time I thought it was lucky that The Cat chose this moment to come bounding in – though, in precious hindsight, perhaps luck had nothing to do with it.

For The Cat who had come hurtling into the room was not Sweet Toby Johnson, as he is eighty-two-to-ninety percent of the time, but instead was his alter ego, the dangerous and deranged Slasher McTook. Roy could not even draw breath before Slasher started doing what his name dictated he does – he took one look at Roy and attacked him with a whirl of claws, yowling his Xena-warrior-cry and ripping shreds into the poor timeless crooner. Where there was flesh there became bloody flesh-strips, where there was black clothing there became shredded, bloodied black clothing, exposing yet more bloody and shredded flesh underneath. Roy’s glasses became askew and all he could say was “Oh!” as the tornado of stripes and claws wreaked its havoc.

It all happened so fast, that I could hardly call my own usually-dear animal off him, before it was over and Roy was left standing, bleeding by the fireplace. Slasher McTook withdrew to wherever it is he goes to think up his schemes of mayhem and violence, all the while listening to Beethoven, The Best of. Again Roy said “Oh!” and I was worried he was going to bleed on the carpet and we wouldn’t get our bond back. Then the more pressing concern came to mind that Roy Orbison would bleed to death and I would be responsible for the second death of a beloved icon. With that, I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed an industrial sized roll of cling wrap that I had been hiding under the sink, not quite sure why I had been treasuring it so, but knowing that one day my life would depend on it. And the day had come! It was today!

I hurried back into the lounge room and set to work on Roy, carefully wrapping layer after layer of cling wrap around him to stop the bleeding. I started at the feet and worked my way up. I stretched the cling wrap tight; as I was practised at doing at work when wrapping cheese, though never in my wildest cheese-dreams had I imagined I would one day do the same to Roy Orbison. The cling wrap formed a silky cocoon over the man in black and I could see the colour returning to his face – that is, before I wrapped his entire head in the life-saving plastic film. Of course, I left an airhole so that he could breathe! What do you take me for?

After a time, my work was done. Roy Orbison was completely wrapped in cling wrap. Crisis diverted! “You are now completely wrapped in cling wrap,” I told him. His black sunglasses gleamed at me from under all the cling wrap. I knew that now he felt safe.

He looked slightly unstable, so very carefully I lowered him into an armchair. Not that the cling-wrap cocoon allowed him to bend enough to be seated, he was more propped diagonally over the chair. But I think he appreciated my efforts. I then went into the kitchen to fetch some Prima Donna I had in the fridge, an aged Swiss-style cheese, with a delicious, slightly sweet, nutty flavour. I broke small pieces off and fed them to Roy through his mouth hole. I found my breathing and heart rate increasing, and it seemed like both Roy and I fell into some kind of cheese-trance and drifted away onto a higher plane of pure bliss.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I felt a small furry creature nuzzling my hand. The sky was now a twilit purple, Roy still in his cling wrap, and Sweet Toby Johnson looking up at me as though to tell me those approaching sirens had some mysterious thing to do with me.

“Ok, Roy,” I said, “It’s time.” I didn’t wait for his response. I quickly got him back onto his feet and spun him round and round to free him of his silken wrap. When all the cling wrap was just a sad pile of glittering silver on the floor, a slightly tottering Roy stood before me, looking down in alarm at the small tabby that was circling our feet.

“Don’t worry, Roy,” I told him, “That’s Sweet Toby Johnson. Slasher McTook, your attacker, is gone now. For the time being, at least. You have nothing to fear.” I smiled. I was amazed to discover that his slashed black clothing had mended itself under cling wrap, his terrorised skin also now perfectly healed.

But I didn’t let Roy show me his appreciation, or even admire my record collection – which included a number of his own albums. Instead I hurried him out the backdoor, down the back ramp and over the back fence. No point in ceremony, I thought.

“I’ll always remember you, Roy,” I whispered, as Toby and I watched his receding black figure disappear over the hockey grounds and into the creek. “What a day!” Toby blinked at me in agreement.

What a day indeed!

Too many good things, not enough rant space

Good things:

1. Haruki Murakami. Why has it taken me so long to read any of his stuff? I now have to make up for lost time and read everything he has ever written. 'Jagger Unauthorized' will just have to wait.

2. Doctor Who. Of course, to me, a self-confessed Whovian, Doctor Who is always good. But the first episode of the new season, which aired last night, was *gooooooooooood*. Now I am all conflicted as to where my loyalties lie: with the 'scrawny-but-sexy' (as my mother put it) previous Doctor, Christopher Eccelston, or with the new Doc, David Tennant, who could be anything at this stage, but most of the things he promises to be are gooooood.

3. 4-cheese pizza. Or pizza de la fromage quatre, as we know it in more civilized circles. The cheeses in question were: English Applewood (that is, a delicious smoked cheese), Caprakaas Goat's Gouda (a mild, firm goat's cheese), Grana Padano (the younger, more mild of the 2 Italian parmesans we have at the shop) and Roquefort (and yes, eating it again made me travel back in time to the 60's, but that's another story for another time). So delicious. So good. So cheese.

4. Getting out of the shower or a bath and wrapping oneself in a warm towel that has been hanging over the heater for the duration of the shower/bath - anything from 7 minutes up to 1 hour, if the bath be hot and the reading be all talking cats and strange libraries (thank you, Murakami). I find, the longer the better the warmer the towel. Ah, to be wrinkly like a prune always.

5. Red Square. Sorry, this is another cheese one, but it is good and this is a list a good things. A light washed-rind, soft, ripe, just reading for eating. Slightly stronger flavour than a regular brie, as I tell my customers. This on a biscuit with a bit of quince paste and a nice cup of tea. This is good.

6. Talking to Erin on the phone, calling from Thailand. Crackly but good to hear her voice, possibly the least depressed she's sounded since the breakup with Julia - which might not sounds like much, but it is good.

7. Writing a list of good things, putting good things into words, black on white, squiggly little characters with dots and lines and funny things. There, solid, in existence. To remind oneself of these things. And that it doesn't matter that one's boss leaves a bit to be desired, that one hasn't even really begun the so-called novel one is meant to be writing this year, that the look of one's bank account means no serious travelling for me when most of my friends seem to be jetting off to exotic places - even housemate Kate is this weekend in Adelaide (yes, 'exotic', ha!) Because you don't have to go far to find good things and when you have them, you should notice them. You should say 'If this isn't nice, what is?' And sometimes that's enough.

8. Realising that should the novel one had planned to write this year take longer to lift off the ground than one had hoped, there's always National Novel Writing Month. Which is November. Why write something over 12 months, when you can cram it into 30 days!? And anyone can do it! So get thee to a nunnery. And go to their website on the way. This is my back-up plan. Nun, novel, November. Nun, novel, November. Good, no? I think so.

9. Eugene Hutz. Gogol Bordello. Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike. I know most of you won't get the pure joy that this refers to. But it had to be said. Nothing rocks like crazy Eastern European drunk gypsy punks rock. As he puts it: In the old time, it was not a crime.