Max Davine's Blog, page 7

Moons and Stars

Some of us are stars; they shine their golden light and warm the faces of all who care to bask in them, and many do. People come from afar, and all love the light in their own way; some to worship, some to harness, some to exploit, and some, some very few, who reflect and glow and encircle the sun to give the light inspired in them to the recesses in which the sun cannot shine, and they are the moons. They live in darkness and ice, are solitary and lost until they find the light, and their glow is solemn, tinted in blue sorrow; but if they are not shone upon, they have no light at all, and are invisible. They pine for the star's touch. They seem cruel and indifferent to the bodies around them, and for this they are ignored, denied. But shine one them, show them there is love, touch them in darkness, and they will glow for you, and glow for you always.

My Old Friend Sadness

I used to have this friend. By friend I mean friend, people made their assumptions but really it was a platonic relationship built on our mutual loneliness at the time, but having never actually been in a romantic relationship myself, I have drawn on what we shared over the years to flesh out ideas and step into the vagueness of real love. Looking back at it from that angle, though, I don't like what I see.
She had this problem. It used to upset both of us. She'd spew endless reams of issues over me, typical teenage stuff; her mum's mean to her, her dad is a cunt (her words), she can't find a boyfriend, or, when circumstances were providing, her boyfriend is immature and doesn't understand her (she had an affliction with really sweet natured, but really stupid boys...and by Christ do I ever mean stupid). In return I'd share some of my problems; mostly the repercussions of my excessive drinking at the time, some fight I feel bad about, some horrible thing I said or did to, or with, some woman, and on occasion my family issues.
But my problems were trivial to me. I had deeper things, locked in my heart, that I didn't understand, and I'd find an outlet in writing. At the time, nobody could get me out of the malaise that would take over, and it would be many years before I trusted anyone to really see what's going on below. Still, however, sometimes I just need to be sad. Sadness has been a constant in my life, feeling it is like holding an old teddy or blanket, it has no cause, no destination, it's just a dull, distant ache that comes to tell me I'm not alone, that my sadness is here to be with me. Yes, it is sadness, but it's mine. I've grown to love it.
That used to drive her batshit crazy. She'd say she's open and honest with me, and gives me all her problems (I didn't want them, thanks) and I give her nothing. Not fair of her to say; I gave her my problems, just problems that were, as I perceived, of equal importance to the problems she gave me. That is; not terribly pressing. The deeper things, the ghosts with no form, I couldn't explain them. I just had to have them. Even if I wanted to give her everything, I couldn't. More to the point; there will never be anyone I can, nomatter how much I love them. They have no words. They're just things, and they come and take form when I write, thus I am a writer.
I can't help but to wonder; why did she feel a need to pester me? If I'd have let her in, I would have done so on my own time. But why did she want in? Why did she want to possess me so? If she was secretly in love with me, wouldn't she have just accepted the way I am and let to me sadness, when I needed it? I'd have done the same, if I'd loved her, I'd have wanted to see her fly free, as often as she could, and been happy to have the emotional, and physical space to myself. It's not something I could give up. It's not something I want anyone to give up for me.
I guess the question I'm posing here is; if you love the bird that flies, why would you want to put it in a cage? Just tell it you love it, and let it perch upon your shoulder when it needs to, and when you need it to and it needs to be needed. If you get lonely on the ground, maybe try to fly yourself? You've a better chance of finding each other in sky, don't you?

Heartbreaking

A tear-stained article, because I spent so many years running from the world, and have arrived on the far side of the abyss to find the same pit of bleak despair I ran from in the first place. But this is where my experiences lead me, and I feel it's only right to turn them into something to share. Having said that, I don't want to push an opinion or belief. Take from this what you will, but I implore you to read on, because one damaged soul sends a ripple into the great sphere that affects all of us, most painfully those who are receptive to it, and the events of the last twenty or so hours have moved, rattled and disturbed me, and yet I can't quite bring myself to forge any conclusion to deliver you.
As for my experiences, most folks go out and have a few drinks to wash off the burdens of the previous week, they meet people, they have fun, some get lucky, others retire none the less entertained by a fun night. The fates, however, have seen fit to give me a magnetism for the strange, the sad and the horrible. Last night defines the latter two.
I stepped out, not to drink but coffee and water, but to ease off the pressures and trials that bombard me throughout the week, as they do anyone. My idea of getting lucky is meeting folks with whom I can share a good conversation and maybe make a few friends, if the stars are particularly well aligned. It was a fun night; music was good and, in a rare blessing, the company was wonderful. I was taken in by a group of friends out celebrating something and they were wonderful people. Though it would not normally warrant a mention, I do so this time; two of them were in a homosexual relationship.
The first bar closed and, on insistence supported by me, we planned to retire back to someone's house. However, the majority ruled, and we went to a nightclub down the road, this is in Geelong, but really it could be anywhere. The nightclub was, as expected, a dreadful bore and I couldn't wait to get out of there, but I was getting along well with everyone and decided to stay. In many ways, they were lucky I did, because within a few hours three of our party, myself included, were getting thrown out. Not an experience new to me, but I was sober this time, and graciously requested the bouncer take his fucking hands off me or I'm going to bust his nose. Amongst us were the lesbian couple.
Outside, I asked what the hell prompted such an action. I'd seen the bouncers harassing one of the homosexual girls on the dance floor, and finding his conduct to be indecorous, I'd intervened, but I didn't, until then, know why he'd started on her in the first place. The reason? She and her partner were dancing “too lesbiany”. I'll mention that several girls were dancing quite lasciviously with one another, as drunk girls often do, but these two were thrown out, and I could see already how deeply hurt she was. She knew, as I suspected, that they were marked because, rather than being tipsy straight girls putting on a show, these two were genuine homosexual women, and wore it on their exteriors.
It was a cold night, and the women had been escorted out so quickly that they'd left their clothes inside. This is where things heated up; while one of the bouncers was saying he's “just got a job to do” - a job I'd choose welfare over – the other three were dismissive, and were hot on the police radio as soon as the woman began to show how upset she was. Frustrations grew, and the woman started to shout, while three big men surrounded her and smothered her voice. She couldn't complete an uttered word, let alone a sentence. Understandably, she began to lose her cool.
Knowing the police were coming, I was desperately trying to coax her and her partner and friends into my car to take them home, knowing that while her cause may be just, her enemies were too many. Pick your battles. Not after a few drinks and, obviously, a lifetime of alienation and prejudice, it would seem. Praise to her, however, she managed not to slur, not to stumble, and once the police arrived she and I managed to talk them out of arresting her on the spot. I bargained to whisk her off as soon as she had her clothes back, and it was quickly arranged. But the rude remarks and ignorant, incendiary vitriol continued, and tensions grew ever more. I stepped in, I tried to pull her away, off to my car, a mere five paces from the black mariah. Five paces, if I'd have had the strength I thought I had, things wouldn't have turned out the way they did.
Finally, surrounded and bullied to the brink, the woman struck out at one of the bouncers. It wasn't an assault. A shove, one in exchange for many needlessly given to her. I and the others were pushed aside by the police, and this woman, all of a slightly built five and four, was grabbed in a choking lock around the neck, and by three policemen hauled so violently into the wagon that her body cleared the rear bumper entirely, leaving her friends hysterical.
More police were called by the bouncers, and with screaming drunk girls around I had to shout and demand that they get in my car before they all ended up in the slammer. I took them home and retired, but I can't subside the ache in my heart. What did I just see? A drunk girl over-reacting? Or the straw that broke the camel's back? A life of being forced to society's limits because of the nature with which she was born, finally exploding, pushed that much too far.
I've seen violence, some that would make your skin crawl. I've seen raids, arrests, gang bashings, weapons, and more than once and ambulance to accompany the black mariah, but nothing has hurt me more than last night. But I have no answers. Naturally there is an element of self-blame, I'm the sort of guy who'd blame himself for a meteor hitting Earth; had I just asserted myself that much more I could have spared her that last humiliation. Had I never stopped drinking I'd have flown in to the police, fists flying, and taken the arrest in her place. But I don't think any of that would have changed the way I feel about what I've seen. The violent arrest, and the words excessive force to come to mind, was only the last line in a long transcript of heartbreaking exchanges that night.
The attitude of the bouncers, the open aggression against two people in love and expressing themselves, the crass and overtly imposing behavior of the front door security, they all contributed...but I think what hits me the hardest is that I saw these two on the dance floor; holding each other in embrace, swaying gently from side to side, while others rubbed genitals on each other and sucked on one another's tongues, the display of these two was extremely moderate by comparison. Yet they were targeted.
At the end of the day, the only send off I have on this note is that...my heart is broken.

The Voice Of Pain

You are the entrepreneur of a truth you have not yet found. An oracle, storyteller, philosopher, a guiding light sought by thousands, you can hear me now. I demand that you hear me now.
You call from the mountains. Many heed your cry, many sing your song, your voice is pure and your words are enchanting. Your voice is like the Autumn breeze.
You have volume and the masses come to you. Your body is desired, your coffer growing ever fatter, you live well from the willing gold flung at you, to the foot of your alter.
But my spell is more potent, entwined throughout you, whispered to you softly and carried on the gentle currents. There are none who see me nor feels me but for the slight chill that slivers amidst your warm radiance.
I am reviled, a secret deep within, far from the eyes of others, I am your shame, I am the ache in your heart like an ember resting deep in it's deepest recess and glowing forever.
Your melodies and seductive lyrics are spiked with my scent, though you hate me, it is I who brings you capital, I who am your love, your will, your desire, your hunger, your success, your sweetness, I gave them to you.
I am the spring from which you flow. The ice on the mountain peaks from which your fine tunes shower down.
You deny me, but I am patient, for one day you will hunt for me, need me, desire me, hunger for my flesh, before me there were no things but those which are eternal, and before you were, I waited for you. Idle in the sky and fertilizing your earth, I waited for my perfect host.
You voice will mute. Your masses will lovingly depart. You will be alone with me. Have naught but me.
I will still be here, secreting my venom through you long after there is nothing else left, my whisper will penetrate you, just as it always has.
Just as it always shall.

An Observation

I just spent a wonderful 50-or-so hours with my nephew, and him being nearly two that means a hell of a lot of Wiggles. In a move I think is brilliant, amongst the new colorful cast is a woman - Emma. Yesterday morning sometime me and my little buddy were watching the skivvy clad ones and Emma was central to the piece, when I heard my nephew whispering something: "Emma pretty" he said. I looked at him to see him staring fixedly at her, and it was so beautiful it actually half-triggered a memory of my own. Watching something, possibly the Wiggles of yesteryear, I remember being hypnotized in much the same way at some woman who was doing a ballet dance and dressed as an angel. Like my mini-buddy, neither of us, in our respective times, had any idea why these creatures captivated us in such a state of awe, thus it is at once utterly innocent and yet a prelude to a kind of magic he will one day reserve for a very special one, after he's mistakenly shared it with countless anonymous others, as I did (now no longer). He'll know who that special one is, because she will walk into the room and captivate him just like that, breaking through all the immunity and filters his life between now and then will (hopefully) put around him. He will be a grown man, but for a moment he'll be reduced back to that state that Emma had him in, and she'll be the only thing there and the rest of the world will be just a void. Like it was yesterday, it will be entirely innocent, because won't know what to say or do, he won't know what he wants. She'll be as much an enigma as had been that pretty lady on the television. It will be entirely new and special because he won't remember the days when lights and sound could have such an effect on him. It will be entirely different, because it will be love, and I'm taking what I've seen as evidence that love isn't the 83 three million megaton nuclear force we make it out to be. It's a whisper from childhood, a subtle, small feeling that tells you that you've traveled across time and distance and yet, with this person, you are home. I hope he knows it, this first encounter, this inconsequential prelude, this tiny non-crush, with a beautiful woman will echo through his life and gently touch him one day in the future to tell him he's arrived. He's home.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Why would I be standing in the freezing cold and rain, ushering at Simmonds Stadium? Character study, is why. If you're a thinker or a feeler or both, it's impossible not to be moved by the perfect snapshot of where Australian culture has been, and where it is going. Elderly men will wait by the security desk while the lady is having her handbag searched. Boys (I say boys for any age, you have earn the title "man") will go right on ahead. Every time. Without fail. This is not turning into a feminist statement; she's an idiot for allowing herself to be treated like that, and thus is a girl and not a woman. One girl, I saw, getting rained on and shivering cold, clinging to her boy's arm while he's wearing a big, thick coat. I thought to myself; surely he's going to give her the coat. We haven't strayed that far. Nope; she even asked him for it, just to slip her arm into one sleeve and huddle with him inside of it. He mumbled something and kept on walking, dragging her behind. Idiotic girl and arrogant prick of a boy. Then an elderly couple went to the bistro; the man opens the door for his lady, not because she can't get it herself, but because he still respects her and has the strength of character to bear the door (after all, she's carrying a handbag, and men have both arms free), and she the fortitude of a woman to allow him this definition of his character. I stopped doing that long ago; I got tired of the abuse the girls always gave me. Women said thank you, but women have become rare enough to be on the endangered species list. This is the choice of girls. - now I'm going to focus on heterosexuals because, as far as I can tell, homosexuals seem to treat each other beautifully at any age, if there's something else going on then perhaps a homosexual writer would be the better person to comment and so it's out of respect I form no observation of them - The want to protect, wait for and support women is part of the identity of a man, I believe this truly, but he won't so long as she doesn't earn it, demand for it and seek it. It is only girls who whine and say "men are this" and "men are that". Piteously, they have clearly never met a man, and have mistook the boys they know for men. Women, on the other hand, know what a man is; men find them, and are proud to be their friends or partners, because a real man hasn't the ego to be bruised when a woman wants his friendship and not his heart (and a woman has the courage to declare this want to him), and he has nothing to prove, thus what is shared between them will not be shared or distorted in his own circles, so long as he knows she will pay him the same courtesy. It's the choice of girls to become a woman. So, based on the folk at Simmonds Stadium, I'm hoping both boys and girls of Australia will raise the standards for themselves, and when they attain a sense of self and truth, they will receive the same from the people around them. I believe being good to each and ourselves other is built into our nature, we are by birth strong of character and stout of heart, it's our choice to deny it. I'm hoping we can rid ourselves of the need for affirmation, of the fog of superficiality, and communicate, demand and speaks from, always, the unique truth that defines each of us. Like attracts like, be it friends or lovers or even our children, who if we want the best for, we have to provide example. I'm hoping we can raise our own standards, for ourselves and others, our friends, our lovers and our families. I may have given up on opening the door, but I will never give up on the good nature buried deep inside all of us.

youth

What were we, as youth? Embryonic lords of tomorrow? Heirs to the throne of all that light shines upon? We have no homes, we were despised as any creature on the earth, were, are and ever shall be. We die in pain, leaving those many who'd forget us in the passing of a week, those few who'd forget us by the month, and those precious handful who might remember us a year until it is as though we never graced the proud terrace of existence. Excepting of course those few who might love those fewer still of us, who will wallow in their grief until simply by our having lived and breathed as we have no choice to, we have led them the way to ruin and destruction.

The children by those who bred and were neglected will grow to resent us and in turn their own, or those which we doted on will scorn us and in reaction neglect their own. We give nothing, we are hated, we sacrifice all, we are betrayed. We will learn their reasoning by the watchful eyes of those we tethered ourselves so, not by the promise of love but for lazy habit's want, habit that will see us stricken of all but fear of our own company.

Some of us were gifted with flawless features that we may watch them waste and be wasted on other mere victims of day's light. Some may have splendorous charm that it may become an annoying flaw one it's poorly fitted and ill-adapted to our withering corpse whose soul refuses to lay itself into that cold abyss, clinging instead to the sinking stone of delusional comfort. The mortal shell's comfort distorts until we are buried and our bodies decay, as with the memory of us to be ousted as we might just the same have never lived at all.

Sharking in Perth

For those of you who don't know, the state government in Western Australia has approved a baiting and culling of Great White Sharks along the coastline. You see, a couple of people got attacked. The issue is, first of all, killing a couple thousand sharks isn't going to do a damn thing, they have the whole ocean and every now and then, tragic as it is, someone's going to get attacked, just like people will crash their cars and stick their hands in the toaster. The other issue is; killing protected animals is against the law. So we now have a government, in Australia, which is okay with breaking the law. When a government breaks it's own laws, it places itself above them, and politicians therefore exempt from any moral or ethical rules. Will we stand for this? I implore the whole world; helps us good Australians, there are some of us left.
Culling sharks is the worst idea in a truly appalling catalogue of bad ideas had by the Australian government. Around the world we are already seen as cruel, stupid, racist, ignorant and arrogant, do we really need to be seen as barbaric as well? We still serve shark fins in our restaurants, and now this policy. It's not only unethical, it's illegal, and whether you give a damn about sharks or not, when a government starts breaking it's own laws it's a sign of things to come. One day they will break a law that does affect you. They have shown brazen disregard for what the people want and need in every aspect of their governance, from who we marry to who actually leads us (we vote one person in, they get fired and replaced with someone else.) Somehow we have to stop this avalanche of casual disregard for the Australian people, we have to show them when they've overstepped that threshold of what we will not allow anymore. I hope this can be it.
For all those people oversees, I find myself more and more obliged to apologize for the actions of my own countryfolk. I have seldom been more ashamed to call myself an Australian.