There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Yeah yeah, more boats. The other morning I spotted this scene and felt compelled to take a photograph.

Here is a really short story for you.

Footsteps echo on the path outside as another drunken group erupts with laughter. You hear a car door slam and an engine refuse to start. A wailing "Christ, don't do this to me now" and a "Shut the fuck up Darren" seems to blend in together with the faint aroma of the kabab takeaway up the road and the feel of rough edged polyester sheets; so you close your eyes. You think about where you are and where you possibly could be. You're shivering and wonder why it is that you can't get warm. Pressing your face into the pillow, you can still hear the noise of the street. And your mind wanders. You think about her and you think about you. The memories keep you awake. They entice. They tease. They bother your eyes when nights are cold and you know that you'll never sleep again.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Beautiful!

25 February 2009 at 11:05

Kris McCracken said…

Christina, thank you.

25 February 2009 at 11:27

Priyanka Khot said…

Amazing!

25 February 2009 at 15:31

Kris McCracken said…

Priyanka, it rained all day yesterday and for much of today. I fear that summer may have left Tasmania...

25 February 2009 at 15:40

KL said…

Kris, continue with the story please. It is really captivating and thus I want to read some more.

25 February 2009 at 22:12

Kris McCracken said…

KL, I figured that this would be a good ending to a story. Maybe I will do a Memento and tell it backwards.

26 February 2009 at 15:19

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

This will hurt me...

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