Words

Words flame out to fill the space and distance
between us....
i create the words,
and they create me.
The words escape, unheeded,
uncontrolled and controlling.
I let them go,
to flame you,
through the space and distance,
calling, arousing, carressing...
leaping from me to you,
maintaining your high,
and feeding your love...

They bind us, closer still, as i give life to
a new word, a phrase, a sentence
that forges another link to hold us together.
They bring you so close,
so close i can almost smell the skin of your neck,
see the blood pulsing through your throat.
Only words,
from me to you.

Delicious suggestions to promote a painless dinner decision.

Dinners


· BBQ
· Burgers
· Indian food
· Japanese Pancakes
· Lasagna
· Lingueeni and Rocket
· Noodles
· Omlette
· Pizza
· Roast (remember the gravy)
· Shepard’s pie
· Stir fry
· Mexican (taco,nachos)


Extras
Goats cheese salad
Pantomaca (bread, tomato, garlic, oil)
Jaffles

Dessert
Apple pie
waffles

What's your family's easy favourites?

Adults and Children

Differing view points

We went to stay with my dad's friend in Sydney. I was twelve.

I was an aspiring poet and while the 'adults' were drinking in the lounge I asked if I could have some paper and I'd write in the kitchen. That was fine by everyone and Malcolm (the friend) produced a typewriter.

'You can use this if you like.'

I smiled and lifted off the cover. It was larger than my one at home and it had a different font. After I had typed a couple of letters I realized the letters were all joined together in a very pretty cursive style. I was delighted. It added a new elegance to my name- Tiffany- right at the top of the page. Quite distinguished.

Malcom lingered in the kitchen and eventually sat down beside me. He wore a black beret, was thin and slightly effeminate. He was in the music industry and knew a lot of people, so my dad says.

'So what are you writing?' He leant towards me and there it was, the slack wet mouth pouring out that unenviable beer soaked breath.

'Just a poem.' I continually smiled. It was my only defense against personal attention.

'What's it about?'

I struggled to explain what was on the paper. But as soon as the words were out in the air, I knew the poem had to be read for itself, so he stood behind my chair, a hand rested on my shoulder, and he bent forward.

My step-mother came in to fill her glass and he didn't move his hand away. He actually patted me and I tried to grimace at her. But she wasn't interested in my reaction. She wanted his.

She spoke to him, tried to draw his attention, but he was only vaguely responsive and another woman came in to claim her bleary gaze.

Wilma was a fattish dyed blond with remarkably large breasts. I never developed beyond a 12B, and that was at my plumper stage of life. Allow me to say that from a small athletic girl's point of view, those wobbly bits of fatty tissue are intensely offputting. Frankly she revolted me and left me with an instinctive fear and facination of large breasted women. Although I’m disgusted, I can’t seem to look at these women enough... but that’s beside the point.

So Malcom went back to the gathering for a while. I finished my poem and drank fanta and tried to occupy myself without disturbing the adults.

Of course he returned. He was very impressed with my poem and wanted to speak to me about it.
It was entitled 'Reaching the top', an A4 length aa bb rhyming effort about walking up a mountain. To me it was that simple.

Malcom devised a sexual symbolism to the eventual rise to the summit that I admit, unfortunately, to having missed.

He was trying to get me to admit to his perception and as it began to sink into my brain what he was getting at, my face became as flexible as granite and my ears started to hurt. I tried to deny his meaning.

I discovered a problem. My denials or protests were of no consequence to either of us because I could not say no. I could speak the word but the power of denial had never been encouraged or respected in our house. What ever the adult wanted was his/hers without question. Dad was always right and what ever he wanted was unquestionable and may as well have been divine. There I was, seated with a self stimulated wanna-be paedaphile and he was demanding my submission and I smiled and quietly said, 'No, that's not what I meant. I didn't mean that.'

But Malcom saw and heard differently. He saw I was embarrassed about admitting to the meaning, he saw the smile and that's all he needed to visit me again later in the night.

They went out. I stayed in the flat watching TV and slept on the couch in their living room.

My heart woke me. The pound and thud of its pressure alerting me to his closeness at once. He was crouched beside me and shook my shoulder.

'Are you awake?' It was a loud whisper.

I murmured but my eyes were wide. He spoke about a woman at the party who had been pursuing him. He hadn't wanted her at all and couldn't think about anything but me ect... I have long since realized the common content of his pre-pounce speil. I did not realize though, at the time, where it was leading until both of his arms were about me and he was pressing his mouth to mine.
My right leg came up and I tried to push him away with the base of my foot. His mouth was wet and sloppy and merely distasteful. His drunkenness was enough to excuse his behaviour to me. I had enough experience with the stuff to know how it robbed the drinker of responsibility.

Finally a light was turned on in the hall and I looked up to see my Dad silouetted in the light. Malcom immediately begun to mumble that he was merely talking to me about the night and Dad told him to go to bed. Once his friend had gone he stood there a moment looking at me. I don't know what he saw, but he turned off the light and left me with Malcom's tongue imprint on my cheek and lips and never spoke to me about it.

Basically this was the first real shove I had from the realm of adults. It was designed to stimulate independant thought and for the first time that I could remember I thought my father was wrong and felt distaste in my stomach. It was unjust, wrong, hateful. My vision of him changed and if there was one chink in his armor then perhaps there were others. I was too well trained to ever allow my thoughts out of my head. I was not the type of teenager to talk back to my parents. And there began my life as an actress. Hatred and bitterness in my heart while I smiled like a serpent. I was evil personified.

Then there was the discrepancy in opinion about my poem. I have had a lot of problems with accepting differing perspectives. I rode on a double wave of acceptance and incredulous 'how the hell can you see that' until I was 21. I felt it was my duty to explain my point of view, to make everything very clear, leaving no means for misunderstanding. My early literary training didn't help advance this perspective. We were moulded to be the perfect reader. We were taught the correct meaning of the symbols used, and we are taught not to take the symbolism too far. There is a fine line between symbolism and reality. We as mere readers were trying to discover the author's intention. We did not create the text. It created us or so I was trained to believe.

Now to my reaction to Malcom's misinterpretation of my mountain poem.

Firstly I was sure he was wrong and that my meaning was the only one permissable.

Secondly I did not admit that there could possibly be another brain (Malcom's) that would give my poem another framework to be viewed from.

Thirdly, who was right? Who is closer to the truth? Malcom, in his beer soaked limply lustful disguise or me, shrouded in naivety?

And finally, how can there be an answer to number three? The answer is there is no answer.

I have to admit to giving my dad several chances to clear his record and make himself pristine. Though finally the blind was lifted. I sat in judgement and fried in my bubbling bitterness. The loss of illusion was too much to comprehend. I moved inwards and remained there.


A move towards 'adulthood'

I was fourteen when we moved to Melbourne. We stayed with my grandparents for a few days. It was a spacious, white house. Very clean and tidy. My grandparents were okay, gave me good food to eat. Then dad and Wilma said they were going to a friend's house, there was a race meet up in the country, and it would be better if I stayed with the grandparents. That was fine. It was two weeks before Wilma called again.

'Your father and I have never been together before, without one of you kids. We thought it could be nice if you stayed with your grandparents now.'

'Its up to you Tiffany, you don't have to stay there if you don't want to.'

'Its okay. I'm sure everything will be fine.'

My foldout bed was in the second lounge room. I pressed my face into the pillows to muffle my tears. It was the last time I cried in self-pity. It was the last time I thought of them with any feeling. I felt the chains of paternal love fall away, leaving me at once a small spot of bitter energy, fermenting in my own tears.

Children relationhips

Me and the step-sisters

One year we went to the Brisbane exhibition. It was a day full of stalls, people, chocolate and fairy floss. The step-sisters were with us then. Marty and Sal. Really Martha Genevieve and Sallamantha Augustus.

What I remember is lining up for the dodgem cars. The burning electric smell of zapping power- the press of bodies in the que. I’d driven them before but always with someone else. Now I was big enough to reach the pedals and go by my self. A man in a blue T-shirt strapped me in and showed me how to reverse- just keep the wheel spun to the left or right and it would move backward.
At first I drove carefully, excited my the power and sense of infallibility. I was testing the moveablitity of the little red car.

And someone bumped me from behind. My body lurched forward. I drove on and again was pushed from behind. Cars were wizzing by on the other side- some cars appearing faster than others. I looked over my shoulder and saw a boy grinning insanely at me, pushing and repeatedly bumping my car.

I understood. I pressed the peddle down and zoomed by. I saw Marty in front and steady as an arrow set my course. But a little blonde boy drove in front of me so I rammed him instead.
He whipped his head around and grinned as if I’d done him a favour. The agression I could feel building up in me didn’t allow for smiling. I turned my wheel sharply and went after my target. I was in a radius of permissable agression. People were able to bump, crash, collide and try to demolish others. It was a release of perfect energy.

Marty’s head fell sharply to the side. I reversed quickly, swung my wheel and propelled my car forward. Her body jolted again. Her car was stuck in a pile up now. She felt the intent of my mission and sent me a quelling look.

But I scurried on, intent on ramming as many cars as possible with as much impact as I could muster.

Marty punched my shoulder twice for that. But that time I didn’t care.

Disguises

Clothes

Basically clothes help to disguise or highlight aspects of your personality. I felt my style changing in my latter teenage years. I knew I was different. I didn’t like the way the others behaved. I didn’t like their fundamental lack of grit. They seemed like marshmellow puffs. I was different. I didn’t fit in with them and I wanted to mark my difference. I didn’t like their soft hair, I didn’t like their neat clothes and I didn’t like their preordained existence.

Though nobody would hear me shouting about it. I didn’t discuss my thoughts with any of them. So I put on a pair of red sneakers, I changed one shoe lace to green, I didn’t pair my socks, I wore baggy coloured pants, loose ripped or stained tops. I coloured my hair and eventually put super glue in it to hold it off my face.

People at school still treated me the same. I was just a bit wacky. But sometimes cars slowed down and boys yelled obscene things to me, or grannies would hold their purses tighter as I walked passed or children would ask their mothers what had that boy done to his hair?

It was all the same to me. I was me. I could feel comfortable without thinking about what the rest of the teenage world expected of me. I had stated with my abdication that I wasn’t in the running for Miss Teen America.

Those clothes and my hair gave me a shield. I was an unknown entity. I was capable of anything, I was an individual who said fuck you to all the crap about looking good for boys, about walking on the trodden paths, about agreeing to the society I was living it. Because I didn’t like what I saw. Abuse, lies, dishonesty, murder, transgressions, violence, drugs, evil, evil, evil. And I wasn’t going to take it. I was not going to sit here and drink wine to this world and eat bread to our future or past. I felt that new changes needed to be implemented before I ever wanted to associate myself with the rest of humanity.

Me and influences

D H Lawrence

The prose of the early Lawrence was like a puff of breath on smouldering embers. I rejoiced. Here was somebody whom I related to wholeheartedly. It was like reading myself as another. The phoenix rising from the flames was a brilliant motif. His calm, his passion, his thoughts. This was the kind of writing that I would aspire to.

Then I pondered the unponderable. Why write if it had already been written? Everything was passing before my eyes, but in a different shape from what I was accoustomed to. But it was basically the same. The purpose of living became to devour rather than to produce. Learn.

There were the heavy foorsteps in the hall. I knew them. It brooked no good for any member of the household. There were the intense moments between friends, every movement noted, every breath recorded. I knew it all. I lived like this. I felt the intensity of the moment.

My senses were so attuned to the moods of those around me that I fell silent often out of fear. I felt their emotions more fully than my own. In fact, I discovered I only possessed one emotion. It was smouldering anger. It was internal, consumming me like a disease.

I read the world through broken lenses. And so, I knew, did Lawrence. Discovering his work gave me power. I was no longer alone. I felt united with the past and with the intangible force left by his written work. He produced in me a feeling of kinship. Anne with an 'e' of Green Gables would have said I felt him to be a kindred spirit.

Funnily, I'd never liked red heads before. But I soon learnt to think of Lawrence's ginger beard and hair as a living flame. He was a pillar of light.

He really represented the first open door to my suffocating brain. Anything that came before him was a minor awakening. Here was an outside influence, somebody who created out of his brooding temperment. I loved his absolute passion, his wholehearted, sincere submergence into what ever emotion had a grip on him. The drama! The intensity! He gladened my brain.

My second wonderful English teacher gave us D.H.Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Gerald Manely Hopkins, John Keats, Jane Austen, Silvia Plath, Emily Brontë, Joseph Conrad, Christina Stead and so many others who helped to sharped my focus. It was heaven. I loved literature. I loved reading. I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to open this window for people who were like me. Literature allowed me a space to exist. It recognized me and I lost myself freely. It was a mutual exchange.

Mr Stewart
Mr Stewart said the word 'fuck' in class. He challenged my expectations. The others thought it was pretty wanky and who did he think he was impressing, but I thought quite a lot about it. For me, a girl who never swore, who ate correctly at dinner, who tried to withhold rage at all costs and always ate everything off her plate (or no dessert), it was a revelation. I can see his expression, his blandness, waiting, not anticipating our reaction. He was marvelous, entertaining and I adored him.

He had lovely sparkling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humour. He was really too intelligent for our school and I felt the first of a long succession of doubt about enjoying literature. If this man was so smart, what was he doing here? Was it really challenging enough for him to help us unravel the language of Shakespeare , year after year? Was it really interesting for him to mark our grammer and spelling and paragraph construction? Is that what I wanted? Was there nothing else?

Alcohol and children

Alcohol

Alcohol is not the culprit. The alcoholic is. Where is the responsiblity? Where is the awareness of the self? There's nothing.

Alcohol merely increases the state of carelessness. There is no real confrontation. There are only little turbulances, little puffs of trouble. Each time the large issue is skirted there appears another dozen little hassles to get through. Why face the big issues when you're concerned about the importance of Self in the relationship, the loss of youth, the missed opportunities that now look so good, the fact that he/she didn't squeeze the toothpaste in the right place, that you spoke down to me in front of my friends... Where lies the responsiblity?

As a teenager
I was living in an agressive, alcoholic household that alternated between repressed and unleased violence. The emotional currents that had helped conceive me, raise me and feed me reached a peak that lasted several years. My emotions became increasingly inward and although I was abandoned by the source of many of my problems (my father had dropped me with my nana to live), I was delivered into the hands of one ill equipt to sort my brain out. Namely myself. My life seemed pointless and intense and and turgid and muddy and yet the sun shone, the trees were caressed by the shifting zephyrs and the moon passed over my head at night.

And there was D. H. Lawrence.

I didn't drink with my friends. I tried a couple of times but after one or so glasses I'd begin to feel nauseous. I figured I must have been allergic to the stuff.

I didn't smoke cigarettes. I was athletic, jogging, aerobics, weight training. Putting smoke into my lungs seemed a pointless and distructive activity.

I didn't do any drugs (prescription drugs not included). I wasn't in a drug crowd when I was younger and by the time I was offered differing stimulants I had already formed my own philosophic barrier against drug taking.

I believe my mental state broke down because of the internal stress I was putting myself under with so much hatred in my system. I was totally unhappy. I felt that life was painful, torturous experience. I didn't know of an avenue of escape. I couldn't see out of my life.

I stopped seeing most of my school friends. They were boring, thinking only of money, jobs, possessions and boys.

I wore baggy relaxed clothing.

I sported what my Grandmother called anti-social hairstyles.

I ate a block of chocolate every day.

I drank eight cups of coffee a day.

I was in my first year of university when my vision changed. I saw things hiding in corners. I'd moved into a small unit in Auburn Road and the bathroom frightened me. It seemed to close in on me when I was in the shower. I felt victimized.


My first adult friend

The only real defect was his alcohol dependency. But it wasn’t like drinking every day, first thing in the morning. It was more about needing alcohol to relax, to socialize, to have a decent weekend. Obviously, I resented his need.

One night I came home and he was lying on his side by the toilet bowl. One of his friends was standing by his side. My heart was frozen. If anything I felt like kicking him where he lay. John was wary, he knew I didn’t aprove.

‘He’s had a little too much to drink. But he’ll be alright in the morning.’ He was whispering loudly. That beer scent oozed out of his mouth towards me.

‘And you brought him home?’

John nodded looking down at the unconscious body. I went to my room, leaving him to rot.

I didn’t like my friend Ivan to go out without me. He would always come home totally bewildered and so full you couldn’t get a straight answer from him. He never remembered anything the next morning. But I did. I couldn’t wipe the images and anger from my heart.

I was called late one night. Ivan in hospital, the car having run off the road. He’d been sleeping at the wheel. John was with him. Nobody was seriously hurt. Police had been driving behind them when the car had run into the side of the road and the nearest tree. He had to go to AA meetings as punishment. His lawyer told him to look spruce, intelligent and they would talk about his brilliant academic career ecetera. He lost his license for two years, but there was no cash paid out and Ivan didn’t suffer. He drove when he had to, daddy would have paid what there was to pay.
I made him promise never to drink and drive again. Threatening him with my absence.

I was unhappy though, dreading the weekend.

A packing list for Jett

Leaving for the weekend.

Jett is 8.

He's old enough to read.

I am a mother who fosters independance in my child. The benefits are for his self esteem, and for my ease of mind (I know he can take care of himself).

I wrote up a list (with his help), for stuff he was going to need for his weekend trip to his Aunty Linda.


This is the list -


Jett’s Packing List for Linda (8th February 2008)

· Toothpaste and tooth brush
· Two pairs of underwear
· Two pairs of shorts/pants
· Two T-shirts
· One jumper
· Crocs
· Glasses
· Hat
· Watch
· Give Aunty Linda a drawing
· uno

I printed out the list. Then Jett found all of the things on his list and layed them out on his bed.
I ckecked off the list and he packed his bag and had it ready at the door for when Aunty Linda came by to pick him up.

He took the list with him, and ckecked it off when he came home.

why?

If you're a mother, you already know why this is a good idea. If you are not, then the benefits are numerous.

The child learns independance. He feels capable and in charge of his life. He feels more secure in his relationship to life.

After a few trials, Jett will be able to modify the list.

He'll be able to print out his own list and pack his own bag and be responsible for his own things.

He's on the way to becoming a responsible adult.

(Every time I create new ideas for Jett, I think about if its going to create a person (particularly a male) I'd like to meet in the future. And if the answer is yes, I put the idea into practice.)

What kind of adult do you want your child to be?


post script -

Today (Friday, 22nd Feb) we went for day trip to a national park.

We didn't have enough water. We forgot a rubbish bag for the picnic and our binoculars.

The next list I'll be making is a 'day trip list'. But that is for another post.

What Happened to Jesus?

This is an excerpt from a previous post entitled 'Living with Revelation'.

(absolutely controversial and if you know you will be upset about a different point of view, please don’t read any further. The post is open to comment if you want to share your opinion)


Jesus

What actually happened to Jesus?

Jesus was baptised in the river Jordan. This event marks the beginning of Jesus' visions. He then went up into the mountain and disappeared for 40 days (please correct me if I’m wrong) and ‘spoke with god’. He underwent 'tempation'.

Once he had been through the experience (and what really happened, who knows?) and tried to formulate a way to express what he had been though, he came down and started preaching.

What language did he use to express his experience?

He used the language of his religion.

He used the vocabulary of his forefathers.

He used the language of Prophets.

Jesus had a revelation of some sort that guided him.

He viewed the experience from his upbringing – he was born a Jew.

The only thing that made sense to him at the time, was that he fulfilled the great prophesy.

The experience changed his relationship to life. Let’s say, almost over night, he became a man with a vision. He didn’t hold the same view of life as he did before. He was willing to put his ideas out there, regardless of the threat to his life. He KNEW that what he had to say was more important than anything else. He was driven.

What does Jesus say?

Love everyone (your neighbour) as yourself. (IE – we are one and the same)

Love the Lord God with all your heart and all of your mind.

LOVE. What does love do? It breaks down barriers and brings people together. It promotes compassion and forgiveness.

Memories

The first memory

I have one memory of my parents together. I was about five years old. It happens to be my earliest memory. The vision comes to my head with the noise of raised voices, the tension alive and vibrating in the house, within my heart.

They were in the hall, it was dim, it must have been late afternoon. I could hear the panic in my mother's voice and I came around the corner to see them. He was on top of her, straddled across her waist, pinning her arms above her head. I saw a two person battle, locked in a familiar ritual.

They couldn't see beyond themselves. Trapped.

But Dad turned and saw me, his brown hair hanging over the crease of his face.

'Look,' he said, answering my expression, 'I'm just holding her down. She wants to kill me. Its for her own good. Look.' I looked and saw the helpless frustration of my mother. She was pitiful and in my child's eyes was the weaker of the two. Her struggles were barbaric, animalistic, twisting desperately on the floor. She did want to kill him. I carried that image with me for many years before I reviewed it.


Watching in Silence

My father put James and I onto the vacant lot beside our house. We had been fighting viciously, so as punishment he placed us side by side and watched from the front door. I was in primary school. James is two years younger and he was laughing, his skinny legs tucked up and his arms making a hoop over them. I was beyond rational thought. I was hysterical and undisciplined. I began to push at him and tell him to shut up.

Shut-up!!

I yelled it over and over until my pushes turned into punches while James laughed, his body rocking, his face creased. My screams were loud, hoarse, making me dizzy so that I fell back into a daze of wide eyed hysteria. I ended by thrusting myself into the grass and rubbing my arms vigorously and violently until I was pulled up from the ground. I was immersed in the swirls of my mind. There was nothing beyond the void surrounded by wavering, pulsations of violet and red. There was no pain. That emptiness was sacred and gave me a glimpse of the meaning of peace.

It is the first time I can recollect moving outside of my physical body. Freedom. There was no demanding self. Just a disengaged, unattached soul, watching in silence.

Or some might just call it shock.


Flames

She was in the front seat. We were waiting for him. He was in the TAB. I don't know where my brother or sister were. I was quiet, waiting.

Its the 70's and the woman has an afro hair style, a fluffy sparrow coloured haze around her face. Her cheeks are sunken with drunkenness, her wet lips slack.

The two were in the white panel van, with his easels and paints in the back. He has had the lot stolen a couple of times. He took it in his stride though Mum felt the invasion like rat's claws over her skin when she saw the mess they made.

The woman has a black top and a long flowered skirt. She wears a black band around her wrist. Her body is hunched over, her hair falling forward. And then she began to light a cigarette, flick, flicking, the light flaring up in front of her face. The flare turns her skin warmly yellow for a moment. The cigarette is dangling from her partly painted lips. I watched, leaning over into the front seat. I knew what to expect, my hands were ready.

Then her hair was sizzling, frizzling up, the smell instantly bitter and ashy in my nostrils. I screamed her name, pure fear piping the word out, my hands grasping the fired hair, trying desperately to stop the lightening-quick barely seen attack.

Her head jerked forward several times but the woman really had no perception of her state. Flames or none, there was only one reality available for her.

I pressed myself back into the seat and felt the cold upholstery. My body was overheated with confusion. I turned so I could still see her bowed head.


She told me this one

He tore her books up in her face. It was her only secret pleasure, something that could take her away from the here and now of his needle sarcasm and deliver her.

I don't remember it. She says i was five or six. He'd been away a couple of weeks on a job. My older sister whispered that he was visiting his other family.

"There are three of them, we're the second family."

She had beautiful brown eyes, long brown hair parted down the middle like any 70's child. The cut of her hair emphasized her large eyes, the doe expression.

I didn't feel anything about what she said. I don't recall thinking. It was acceptance and adjustment and listening and waiting. I wasn't the little kid that suffered in silence and looked cute doing it. I smiled a lot. I was a girl. Cute enough to learn the fundamentals of female charm.

Mum was reading on the lounge, her feet elevated. He left the car around the corner; one of his tricks, so she didn't know he was in the house. Her surprise can only be guessed at. He was like living with a taut wire across your throat. The tension he created by being in the house was enough to rip your breathing to shreds.

She would have felt the air change before she heard him. He was light on his feet. He would have been watching her for a few moments, possibly minutes, before she became aware of him. Her throat tightened, her eyed widened. Her pose is fixed, the glare of his presence pinning her.
Only after tense and definite fear had caught hold of her would he begin to speak; low, sharp, his body deceptively casual, the coy lowering of his eyes drawing the moment to its peak with studied drama.

She wouldn't be able to avert the scene. It was impossible. She knew him and feared him and felt her stomach clench in horror at the thought of him. And he stood before her. Accusing her when he had been away for days...

He drank to get away from the spirit of wasted and befouled genius and she drank to get away from him. He drank to forget his life and she drank to live. They balanced each other by being Mummy and Daddy and pretending to the world out there (of school and dance classes and cannabis parties) to be a family.

So they argued and threw things around the room and there is nothing, to me, so harsh as an Australian man and woman screaming at each other. Its the accent, the stress they put on the words of abuse. The same cruel taunts came up every time. The same words, the same tone, the same screeching the wild whothefuckcares stance of both partners that ticks inside our heads. We heard the words a million times, but the desperate way she sometimes screamed his name shot straight into my stomach.

She didn't buy herself another book for about twelve years. Then I inadvertently brought her a book on hiking and heard the reason she only had a few magazines in her book shelf. I remind her of him, but I can't help it. There is nothing I can do to plug the memories she has. She's like a different person now, but it leaks through every now and then. A taste of bitterness, a tightening of her eyes.


Dad

My father used to take us fishing. Camping trips all around and sleeping all together in a tent or the back of the combie. He sat me on his knee and let me hold the fishing rod. I mostly remember warm sunshine and seeing mutilated and scaled fish in the bottom of the bucket. Or squiggly worms, still alive, being squeezed onto hooks. Right up their arses, he said.

He used to lay traps around the house so he would know what we had been up to. His room used to have invisible bits of string showing him if someone had been into his closet or had opened a draw. I never touched his things so this part of his life didn't concern me directly. Unless it was the threat of being falsely accused. Though this never happened.

I felt Dad managed his drunkenness better than many I have seen. He did have an explosive, violent temper. He brooded a lot. He was melancholy, distrustful and generally a foul personality.
But he had a warmth about it. As if he was lit up inside by a glowing flame. He was generous, he laughed a lot and his hand was comforting on my shoulder.

He used to wake me up in the middle of the night to perform tricks for his friends. I had to show my legs, they were athletic and he was proud of them. Wiggle your ears, roll your stomach, flare your nose, press your elbows together. Freakish circus tricks. Dad performed the finale by lifting James and myself up off the ground by holding a handful of our hair in each hand. The secret was gripping the hair close to the scalp. And he would raise us up, using the strength in his shoulders. Then we could go back to bed, to lay and listen to their laughter and the sound of glass bottles filling the corridor.

His mother is a compulsive cleaner. I mean, totally fanatical. Everything is cleaned and re cleaned every day, possibly three times. And vacuuming went on at all hours of the day. I have a theory that people tidy their houses so ferociously because its the only domain in the world they feel they are in control of. They feel the limitless expanse of the world, and in defense, so as not to fall off, they make sense of their house by buying things for it and tidying the little rooms and dusting and wiping and vacuuming and it goes on and on in circles, because circles are contained and any lateral movement might let them fall into some void of crazed insane possibilities. And so, she cleaned.
She's a neat, straight as a pin lady with not an ounce of fat on her. Not particularly a cuddly grandmother and not particularly kind. Though she did her duty by her husband and son.

When he was ten his father won some money in a lottery and left her. He took the boy, Daniel, my dad, and they travelled to the bigger cities. The money fled into the hands of pub-owners, hotel rooms, party-girls, and sure pals. Empty of pocket but with memories that were going to have to last the rest of his life, he returned to his cage. The door opened and my grandmother let him back in, where, with her silence, she never let him forget his wayward prance into the great unknown.
Grandad worked, came home, ate his dinner and sat in front of the television. He gave what money he earned to her.

She cleaned.

She took care of the boy.

My father told several stories about his childhood, but I think they were mostly made up moral tales, with a severe punishment in the ending. The things he said, in retrospect, couldn't possible have happened. That must have been my grandmother's input into his personality.

My mother actually believes that evil dwells in that house. Its a pretty horrific thought.

I've seen pictures of him when he was a boy. Dressed neat, like a little man. His hair parted severely to one side. He was in short pants. His face is so serious. I felt a genuine movement in my heart when I first saw that picture. It seemed to embody the beginnings of a life. A life seemingly capable of moving in many directions, yet only moving in one.

But he craved a warm family, a child to hold.

Though he couldn't do it. He tried, several times.

The family would begin, and his heart would be hardened and he would enforce his personality upon household until it couldn't breath.

There was a disease in his mind, holding him back from life. It was the disease of memory, of life experience, of upbringing. He didn't see the greater good. It passed him by while he dreamed life in bitterness.

School

The first full length memory I have of myself sprouting my individuality was in a tantrum I threw about going to school. I said I wouldn’t go, I screamed it, I cried and frowned and my face was red with unhappiness.

‘You don’t have to go. Don’t go. But you’ll have to go and get yourself a job if you stay home. I won’t have a pack of loafers in my house.’

I went to school, slamming the door as I left. Tears of rage, my feet in brown strap sandals.