Notes of Substance

Sensing  the  future It was our last morning in New York City. It was a morning too early to be leaving, and as it turned out, a morning too late. Dad was on his final lap of life, and we were making a dash home to cheer him along as he hit the home straight .  I went down to breakfast with a heavy heart. The bar was buzzing. Halloween scenes were already playing out in the streets. A kind waiter asked me 'have you got your costume sorted for tonight?' To which I stumbled, 'no...I I I have to go home. My dad's sick...' and began to cry. The dear boy was shocked, 'Oh, I'm so sooorreeee. Do you wanna hug?' I could barely breathe. NO, I managed. I ate cereal alone, and had grapefruit juice. Dad loved grapefruit. I packed the last of my things, and stumbled out through the lobby, past glamorous girls in fabulous costumes. Mark had already run off to explore the neighbourhood after checking out of the hotel early. It didn't seem...

The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the station platform, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. Outside; offside: the limits to friendships. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation.  The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. We weren’t allowed to welcome them in. One day, my m...

Have I imagined the clip clop of horses’ hooves, as the milk cart delivered its morning load? Fresh milk, in glass bottles, with foil tops, delivered to our front garden. In this picture I am watching through my leadlight window from my gabled-roof room. The slap of hoof on road floats up to my bedroom eyrie. After the horse and cart, the bottles were delivered from a van with open sides, with the milkman jumping down to place our order outside our home. The bottles of milk were set down on the edge of our gravel driveway as the first light of morning was arriving. At times, the milk was a little warm when we brought it in, the icy coldness having melted down to cool. The cream at the top was sometimes a little clumpy, but a shake was all it needed. The pint bottles became 600ml bottles, but I feel as if the foil lids stayed the same. At some point, our milk began disappearing. Not the lot of it, just a bottle or two. Most weeks there would be milk taken, and eventually a patt...

Robert Munro Sublet 5.3.36-1.11-15 A few years ago, when dad was home alone facing what he felt at the time was a medical emergency, he began to write us an email. He thought his time was up. The subject line was: Time on, final quarter... As happened many times with dad, that time he defied the odds and got to play on! Dad was eternally optimistic about his situation when it came to medical issues. Maybe it was more pure stubbornness or defiance-he was never going gentle into that good night. He certainly wanted to rage rage against the dying of the light.  He never complained. He didn't bemoan his situation, nor moan about pain. At times he grimaced, as if he were trying to deal with a jolt of electricity to his limbs. Once I thought he was groaning about the antics of us kids, getting progressively noisier and more drunk as we downed another bottle of red. No, he wasn't annoyed at us, of course he never was! He was in pain, but sometimes we hadn't k...

Somewhere between here and there, as we raced home to see him, Dad passed across the line. We were airborne. I was dreaming. In the dream, I framed objects in the foreground for a photo, then noticed that Dad's cheeky smiling eye loomed across the picture from the top corner. I awoke mid-flight. This was the time of his passing. I felt rested and calm. Thanks for all the steady care and love over the years to my beautiful father. I know he could hear me when we communicated on the phone from LA airport. He knew we were on our way back to see him. Xxoo Postscript: I hope there will be many more words I write about Arfur. These were the very first ones I formulated after landing and finding that we had not made it back in time.

'Please, someone, fucken help me! PLEASE! You're all ok, I'm fucken sick can someone please fucken help me??!' Pause. 'I'm gonna kill you all with a fucken 503, I'll take you all out. Can't someone please help me? I'm going insane.'  It's hard to know what to do when someone is unwell AND threatening violence. To be honest, I'm too scared to approach this man. I'm hoping I am not in his direct line of sight. Quick-how can I help him? Quick-look down, read my phone. He starts sobbing. His frame is shaking, shoulders loose and heavy. He is crying like a baby who needs consoling. He does need consoling. The tears are plopping off his face as he stands and turns. 'Which of you is gonna help me? Please! I can't handle the pain.' He is walking away from me and I am relieved for the distance. I feel if I waded into this it  could cause an explosion. Then a calm, younger man puts his hand on the man's shoulder, touches h...

Chart Collective are mapping Melbourne stories via landscape and memories for their I Was Here project. They plan to make posters to put up in the CBD where the stories took place. They will be anonymous snapshots of our city. Asking us to stop and reflect on place, as they give voice to hidden histories. I wrote 300 words-it was meant to be 300 characters! Well, this is the long version. Maybe my short version will end up in Caledonian Lane, where I stopped for a pee and then made a very bad decision.   Losing it on Lonsdale It was one of those hot, hot nights in the city. Melbourne was burning up. Clubs and bars pumping, music thumping out into the grid. I had been drinking cans of beer at The Lounge on Swanston Street for hours. Full strength beers. This was before the days of light beers and Uber. The boy was in a band, a sweet boy with jet-black hair. He wasn’t the lead singer, the one with loud charisma; he was the bass player, he kept his head down. I rem...