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There was only forest around me. The usual mixture of all types of complex feelings and thoughts and duties and plans was gone. Suddenly there was just forest.
I remember being irritated when I discovered that now we would also have to take a stance on this war. It was very distracting. As if it wasn’t enough to have to decide on all this bathroom stuff. Now we would have to take sides in Iraq.
The drama of it all. You’re here and then you’re not. From one day to the next. I saw it in a flash and realised that the difference is so overwhelming that the mind has to acknowledge its limitations and pass.
I don’t like people. I don’t like what they do. I don’t like what they are. I don’t like what they say.
I found myself almost constantly in a state where I registered what was going on in the world, but it never crossed my mind that it might have anything to do with me.
In good times and bad, they said when we got married. The problem with this is, of course, that any one time can be good for one person and bad for the other.
one saving grace of children is that, despite everything, they provide a bit of charm which, in small doses, can be something special. But birth and death. It’s a revolting circus. My father disappears and a new life appears. One I never knew is replaced by another which I will never ever really know.
And if there’s one thing I am not becoming, it’s like my father. How could she say that? I hate it when she blurts out things like that. As if she knows things I don’t. As if she’s been thinking about it for a long time and suddenly decides to share a bit of her knowledge with me, but only a bit, the tip of the iceberg, only a hint, so that I have something to chew on, so that I can work out the rest of the picture myself. This is a technique she often uses and next time I see her I’m going to tell her to stick it up her arse.
We believe we know so much, but in reality we don’t even know what planets are, and even less who our fathers are.
So you’re out and about robbing? I say. Yes, Roger says. I like this area. Lots of valuables and very few alarms. Higher up it’s right-winger country with alarms everywhere, but down here folk vote left and think about the good in people, and they’re rolling in it, too. For me that’s an unbeatable combination.
I spend a whole day enthusiastically humming a melody I can’t place. I’m feeling on top of the world as I cheerfully chip away at the bark on the totem pole. Bits fly off into the forest as I work my way round the trunk, lost in my own world, humming and whistling all the while. Snatches of the lyrics begin to emerge by the evening, and I sing them uncritically for quite a time before I realise, in a cold sweat, that what I’m churning out is the signature tune to an Australian TV show, Bananas in Pyjamas. Not even out here in the forest am I spared the poisoned darts of children’s culture.
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Doing nothing is a very demanding job when other people are constantly on your back.
A lie is a splendid device, far too seldom used. It’s incredibly effective. You say one thing and you mean something completely different. Fantastic.
One problem with people is that as soon as they fill a space it’s them you see and not the space. Large, desolate landscapes stop being large, desolate landscapes once they have people in them.
After all, I am not an Indian, but a man of my time. A failed man of my time. Or just a man of a failed time. Depending on how you look at it.
