Provoke Love

Saturday evening brought me back from east to inner west and on the way I passed a Uniting Church billboard whose message was "Provoke Love". I couldn't think of a better motto for my weekend. Lassooing my partially own cowboy-man was inspiration enough to keep on searching the good search for the Real McCoy. I have a date with a Jew on Wednesday. I am not going to do any background checks, but simply front up and see what happens.

My New Man is a Motorbike

Living a polyamorous lifestyle is the solution to so many problems, the first of them envy. My new paramour, El Caballo Blanco, is mostly spoken for, but has those chinks open in the Pyramus and Thisbe style wall for the moonlight and kinks to shine through, which is where Mitzi fits in. Older, bald and with paws like less marble and slightly smaller versions of Michaelangelo's 'David', El C B is man in the form of a motorbike: the endless perv, the endless gear changing, the low hum and the furious roar. Like (was it The Hollies?) sang, it's a long, long road, from which there is no return, which leads us to who know where? Who knows where?

In spirals will do me just fine for now. Round and round in circles again, thanks Joni, and nowhere in particular other than cheap and cheerful Thai restaurants, the fabulously unwrapped Little Bay (I swam with the puffer fish on Saturday) and back home, back home. The corny metaphors are quite pouring in and fortunately I'm deftly volleying back at my subconscious like Agassi up at the net - back you go, silliness, forehand and backhand again, sentimental brouhaha, ha! Gotcha.

Uh oh, one got in at high speed to the base line: life is a sonnet and it tied up the strings of my bonnet and I can leave my hat on, thanks Joe, and not too much else.

I'd like to thank God for being conceptually ambiguous, my manager for mismanaging on grand scales, my Mum for teaching me how to cook, and my producer for mastering my latest metaphysical emergence in total oneness with the moment. I accept the award for Polycracker of the Week with humility and awe, in admiration of others who have gone before me.

Until El C B introduces me to the woman of the house, I remain respectfully yours and the rest of the world's, besottedly unpossessive and beaming at the gathered faithful who come to dip toes in the hithering, thithering waters of ...

(... I just became a character in Finnegans Wake, for those unfamiliar with Book two chapter two in which two washerwomen transform into a tree and a stone)

... night.

What do you think the G stands for?

It's nice to switch off. Its more than nice. It's a little but radical. So this weekend I have radicalised my lifestyle. During this paradigm shift, I have made an important discovery ...

... the hand-held, automatic salt-grinder.

The Other Write Club

Tonight I hosted my writing club of three, myself, McFimo and Ginger, at my place. One's very chuffed to have such a grand, impressive abode to show off to mates. It being easily the fanciest house one has ever shared, complete with spa-bath'd dungeon, sorry, laundry basement, and elegant drawing room with fireplace.

Today a lightning storm shattered the afternoon stillness for a quick soggy trip to the shops. I broke my kitchen kvetch rule in order to put on a spread, as we do, when friends come calling. After much in-depth and admittedly lustful discussion of roast beetroot last night with my darling Sash, I jumped at the 99c bunches at Il V______, where other wholesome and less so goodies are sold. Diced, caramelisey beets dotted our rocket salad with vermillion aplomb. Crumbs of white fetta made them all the more scarlet, and a trickle of black vinegared oil got everything dressed up slick for a  .... holy fuck I don't know what day it is.

... Thursday night's gossip. McFimo is divesting herself of an unfortunately inexperienced younger fellow - he is not as virile as is required, and is more backward than forthcoming in relation to that proud Aussie tradition of shouting rounds of drinks, more starkly obvious when the round is for but two drinkers, and more painfully so when the second drinker is girlfriend material.

While Ginger has yet to dabble with anything as riskily youthful as McFimo, I am thoughtfully in the process of pairing her up with the possibility of The Sicilian. He may not be as literarily inclined, Ginger being a maven of the book industry, but his conversational skills are out of this known world, and he is an atypically unsleazy Italian. While I had tentatively embarked on the path to alter that, I feel his cause could be better justified by encountering the princesslike, near-perfect and paella-preparing Ginger.

As pour moi, I have my work awaiting me in various laboratories of social inquiry pertinent to our psychosexual zeitgeist. Today, The Talker and I made a subtle leap forward in our quest to embrace a more smorgasbordlike arrangement of opportunities. The Talker is a bloke who is a bit like chocolate - just a bit makes you feel great but you feel it's a treat best reserved for weekends.

Added to this, I have established a budding friendship with a fellow of my still youthful vintage who has impressed me greatly with his wit. As he is just another fish in the sea, at first glance, a regular John Dory, I am trying to minimise my hopeless 'hopetimism' before our meeting in a few days' time. I hope he finds me winning for more than just my remarkable ability to inspire ragingingly surging desire of the not unduly depraved variety, which is oft the reaction of one rendered immobile and thoughtfully indulged in as a toothsome bit of crumpet. Yes, your Burger is hoping to bait a mate, and not the kind you take to trivia night at the pub.

With my sister and bro-in-law piking out of shabbas dinner tomorrow night, the need for a mate is even more keenly and painfully felt. Amusing and pleasant as the family circle is, it's not easy to withstand its pressure without an ally. Long will I gnash my teeth in despair that we didn't have another brother or sister, or a more plentiful supply of cousins. Ah - cousins! There's a good ally source, or a good excuse if I need to lie my way nicely out of Dinner.

I go over and over the puzzle again and again with nary a solution at hand, thus I forced back onto the hedonistic whirlpool of recurring but dizzying delight provided by The Roving Assortment. If my ally of choice is anything other than the family-approved model, my grandmother will give up on life and make me aware of it every waking second of the day and night. Now, I grew immune to her bullying and threats years ago (when the sister intermarried, god bless her) realising I had a choice: exile, or approved model. The approved model is a myth, like the Roq in Sinbad's story or the unicorn in our other stories. It just ain't showing and it's blindingly impossible. I know it's possibility levels are worse than endangered as I have already tried. For those not reading through the Burgerese, the approved model is male and Jewish, in that order.

Anyway, I have the internal dilemma discussion once every two months or so when I am stuck without an ally. It's a bit awkward bringing a friend along (McFimo? Anyone?) to pretend to be starving and in need of chicken soup to help provide a buffer zone; but that just might be the only way through. A typical menu starts with chicken soup and chopped liver dip with challah (brioche-like plaited bread.); mains includes a meat dish, ghoulash or roast something, with sides of sweet potato mash, what I like to call 'windy mushrooms', stewed spinach and salad. On a lucky night there is broccoli pie or cabbage rolls. It used to be baked rainbow trout every Friday but everyone's iron levels suffered. Dessert is always red jelly and fruit. Dark chocolate blocks are hidden in the glassware cupboard where the designated chocolate spy (i get the job sometimes, acting on orders from Pa) retrieves the prized stuff.

So, emergency Handbag required: conversationally qualified friend or associate with an interest in eastern suburban and occasionally worldwise Jewish life, culture and gossip required to share the shabbas experience with the clan of three (possibly four, with the niecelet in gorgeous accompaniment.) Your presence is greatly valued as a stop-gap buffer diversional decoy device to prevent my recurring interrogation by immediate family. A good excuse/white lie could be gig tickets for a show immediately after dinner.

Questions and Suppositions

My attempts at home-made hummous have always tasted nice but failed in texture. I boiled up some fresh chick peas and their texture is M&M'sesque, melt in your mouth. Perhaps the perfect, creamy hummous depends on the chick peas' texture?

In the interests of scrimping and pinching (that's an economical philosophy, mind, not a kinky prediliction) I have opted for another try at my kitchen kvetch*. The idea is that my kitchen complains if I get too extravagant. Therefore I am duty-bound to make use of all existing ingredients before heading shopwards and buyming more supplies.

While I am afeared this may result in a lettuce omlette or an eggplant strudel, so far I am doing well with the pulses and Italian cuisine.

Meanwhile employment is becoming an abstract term as I hover in limbo, overcoming writer's "shloch"* by vowing to do more productive things than plan party outfits and rearrange my book shelf. When yesterday my sister's Telecommunications Law essay started to become interesting, I knew I needed to seek professional help (that is, in becoming professional again!)

*kvetch is Yiddisch for 'worry' or 'gripe'.
*I think this is roughly Yiddish for 'slobbishness' or just unrefinement. 

Please be seated

I am sure a Freudian analyst could put something interesting on my recent acquisition of two new chairs. These chairs represent my need for stability and comfort, a perch from which to survey the passing world and my own inner life with greater clarity. Or perhaps to cushion the posterior better than the wooden dining chair did to compliment new muscular structures developed at boxing class.

My first, the practical chair, is an officey swivel number of black pseudo-leather. It has a rocking option for when I need to put my feet on my desk and read an article with a critical, scholarly eye. Its back reaches importantly to my shoulders and capes me, crusaderly, in its mysterious embrace. It matches my new black printer which I will eventually use to scan all my work items (the thousands of worksheets I have invented for school jobs) so as to save myself the strain of storing a short career's worth of resources in a cardboard box from Franklins.

My second, the impractical chair, is rather less impractical than at first glance. It's practical, because it's inspiring. It has flown to me from another era and called out to me from the vintage chasms of Newtown, yearning for a home. That is was reduced to half-price from two months ago strengthened its case. Herewith the chair: it is fluffy* white and silvery chrome. Let's start from the floor: it has four sexy legs, skinny silver, that curve up ever so gently to the seat, which is covered in a pouffe of white fluff that is less than furry but more than velvety. Then two parallel chorme lines never meet but reach ecstatically to the back rest, a semi-oval of more white fluffy fur.

Black and white, serious and frivolous, these two chairs will support me in my ongoing battle for poise and purring amid the sea of strain and troubles that is everyday life.

Speaking of poised, I am poised to flee in the new year, in a quite perhaps sort of way. Whether rural countryside towns will claim me, or a posh private school in our nation's capital, I have a feeling that for a short time, a year at least, my destiny lies elsewhere.

The more I search through the employment avaialble, the more time I have to reflect on the options open to parents and how they may engineer those options (financially, and ethically) and mostly on what sort of establishment I could be a part of. The more religious schools I encounter as prospective employers, the more grateful I am for the public system which removes the religious focus. Despite this, I am also in favour of religious education, especially for those parents who wish their kids to grow up with extra complexes.


*those who cringe at the word will allow it for the sake of a practical new chair.