Sunday, October 15, 2006

One of them meme things

My earliest memory is… looking out the window of an commercial jumbo jet at the green fields dawdling by far below. My mother doesn't make sense of this memory; where did we fly when I was a baby? Don't know. If I dreamed it, that's ok, I guess, though it's crystalline in the memory banks. I really don't get it. Otherwise, it's the car accident in Booran Road, Ormond: I was mildly peeved that I only suffered a sore thumb, since that would hardly earn respect at school.

At high school I… could never have envisioned the high-powered, jetpack-enabled future of grotto-dwelling party-goers and marathon macrame sessions which awaited me. Funny, I still can envision it. But time, as the Stones said, is on my side (NB: assuming immortality).

My first relationship was… Better than I could have expected.

I wish I’d never worn… that patchwork shirt that made me a pariah in high school dancing classes.

My mother told me… that hair would eventually grow over the scar which runs across my crown from one ear to the other. It never did, which is why I wear my hair long, so as not to frighten small children.

I wish I had... three more wishes. And a robot valet.

My most humiliating moment was... just a precursor to the many minor humiliations to come. Read about 'em here.

At home I cook… for anyone who will eat, as often as I can. Cooking as therapy is vastly underrated (see also: gardening; knitting; emotional house-cleaning; the meticulous preparation of tea; cycling through a park on the first warm day of spring, a balmy breeze caressing your cheek and the sun glinting off the teeth of smiling strangers; and, of course, dancing.)

My last meal would be… prepared by me for people who'd enjoy it.

I’m very bad at… relationships.

When I was a child… I once had a sudden and unexpected understanding of the way the universe fits together which I still recall vividly.

The book that changed my life is… written by Thomas Pynchon.

It’s not fashionable, but I love… pitching peeled grapes towards the gaping maws of partially-clad supermodels during cocaine-fuelled Eyes Wide Shut-style scenarios in remote Tuscan grottos. No, wait, that's probably quite fashionable. Sudoku, then?

Friends say I am… different things, depending on who you ask. Anything from the crazy, kooky one to the calm and centred observer. It's the parallax view, I think. Don't get it.

The song I’d like played at my funeral is… Another One Bites the Dust, hummed beatifically by the congregation.

If only I could… make everything better, for everyone.

The last big belly laugh I had was… Little Superstar. I laugh hard only a few times a year, and that worries me. But when I do, I find it's mostly, and consistently, inspired by the sight of someone unselfconsciously dancing in a totally radical way. I don't know what that means.

What I don’t find amusing is… Most forms of humour based on us/them dynamics, which perhaps relates to a) why I really laugh so infrequently, b) my routine education in an arts-based course and c) why I'm pretty boring to be around at times.

I’m always being asked… How old are you really?

If I wasn’t me… I'd like to know who it was, and how to get those ugly stains out (vinegar, apparently).

At the moment I’m listening to… Diana Ross' Upside Down.

My favourite work of art is… by Franz Kline.

If I were a car I’d be… getting outta here.

I often wonder… if krumping is just a passing cultural fad.

I often wonder (2)... if I'll make it to the age of 70 or 80, when I'll be able to sit on a porch somewhere with all the friends I've managed to retain, lovers and nemeses, the garrulous and the begrudged, the ones who never got it, but accepted it anyway and found a connection with me in that, at least, if nothing else, or just ended up on that damn porch while I was there and somehow bridged the gap between banana lounges with a withered outstretched palm or gave me, a stranger, that knowing smirk that says "we got away with it!"




We didn't get it, but by god: we got away with it.

TAG: Our Man and (H)Ausculture.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for validating* the therapeutic value of tea-making.









*By validating, I mean discussing it on the internet.