Leaving/Leading
post-ecological cartochoreography xoxoxo
Pixel art illustration by Tokipix.
When Leif asked Katita
if she felt like joining him for dinner
at Big Al's perhaps,
and she said sure,
it was the first time
they'd been
one on one
outside the group dynamics of the zine project,
they're at
the launch party now,
plastic cups and boxed wine,
hills of bound copies of Urchin Street Press
to be dropped off at wherever,
cafés and pubs and
the YMCA backpackers - but
that can wait, the fries are calling at Big Al's,
so on past the Conservatorium
with organ chords wafting out
the third floor,
like train horns as harbingers of sunset,
yellow
orange burnished sweeps
to powder light footfalls
through Civic Park, King Street, past The Moorings
where Katita lived last Autumn,
she lost her bond when she couldn't get the
drip of oil paint and gouache from brushes
and leaned canvases out of the carpet,
she depicted Leif's words in the zine
which is how they first s y n c e d up,
next door to the little train engine
that could, it carried plates
of steaks to mouths
but not in Big Als, just a share plate of carbs
as he asks her what her plans are,
well I might go to Melbourne,
oh no I meant tonight - why leave town
and she says well, a boyfriend could make
me want to stay, and she looks at the glass
and the lights and he looks at her lovely face
while tapping his foot on the muzak off beat
it's just that I've been in Newcastle
for so long,
surely you must want to see the world,
a writer, a poet
how much
more is here?
Everything, he says, this is the entire world -
like Dublin for Joyce, this city -
she cuts in, but Joyce left Ireland,
well sure, but maybe like Baudelaire then
with his Parisian Scenes, do you know
what he said about sea ports and light-
houses
such pleasant places
for a soul worn out
she crinkles her nose,
how old are you, worn soul
nineteen, twenty in May / hey me too
what day, nineteen / I'm on the twentieth
she says, worn soul
I want to dance dangerously,
take me
somewhere
he says, warn sole - I know
just the place, a transmission tower
on Hunter
oh we're going big, lead on,
so on Crown,
by Wheeler, Union St
no too far, Union La / yes
beside a community radio station, an arcade
where Leafcutter John gave a presentation
once at a This Is Not Art event,
they listen to subharmonics
padding against the fabrics
of the op shop beside the lane with a poster
of Clambake,
Elvis and Shelley Fabares
grooving against flat pastel shapes,
so they do too - he arches his legs
like plastic molded hot rods, she
swishes her hair parametrically
like ecstatic folded kilowatt beach bods
cascading in tumbles of nonchalant eye smiles
beneath paper suns descending, stepped on
on the off beat, again -
he catches her
as she throws him a softball
shall we get a drink / up there
on the roof / like a bubble / please
so up stairs
table, cheap beers
do you remember the Cookie Man
oh I remember the popcorn man
from the 60s, and I remember the
smell of data from next century, laser trams
phasing, Newcastle in space, post-ecology
but those cookies with the Smarties in the middle
the little mine cart in the arcade
that used to run on rails
around the pole, miner
with a pickaxe ringing the bell on the hour
You know, someone stole it when the mall
was being demolished
Let us hope it has gone to a better place
I think it was you / I'll let you believe it
Her brass nose ring
embroided, it postures light
and he leans back and dissolves
into smudged powdered shadows
while she rises as a bubble northward
above the rooftop, floats and rotates
like a gyroscope of lightheartedness
and neighbourhood abolitions, ungravity
nestled and appreciated -
he gets another two beers and by his return
her carbonation has eased, back in her seat
the two of them as temporary flesh machines
looking in the back of the Civic Theatre shortly,
now actually by the time this real-time narration
has caught up,
the utility access for props and so on
where they enter the light
and take the stage -
are they really doing this? Katita is already
treading the boards
while Leif sidles up and hides
behind the cacophony of a performance
say four or five performers on stage along with
pantomime figures, foam versions
of landmarks - Town Hall, Queens
Wharf Tower
assorted buildings from Frederick Menkens, is this
a biography of his life / no it is
a way of explaining where the tram line will run
Katita is flowing wavy metal lines towards
Leif in a costume dressed as the old Station,
he says:
it might lead us somewhere,
but she hears:
it might leave us somewhere.
by the time he swivels
around the girth of a
pink foam School of Arts
she is gone
where is she
not here
not over there
he looks around
the theatre
but she has exited stage left
(Heavens to Murgatroyd!)
so he jumps off the stage and barrels down the aisle
out onto the street
up King, to Hunter Street Mall
where all timelines seem to be overlapping like
glass petals, like overhead transparencies, like
memories transpiring, like a carousel of
Google Street View
photographs of the city in its heyday, see the folks
wearing nice hats and suits, David Jones with its
beautiful window displays, glamour and care,
and then when it was hollowed out, tax
breaks given to artisan crafts while the void grew,
the car park demolished from the top down, only
Bolton Street left - of course!
Leif runs up the road to Bolton Street Car Park,
another of Frederick Menkens stamps, the last
of the great multi-storey parking stations,
he throws himself into the building,
transmutes into the brickwork, the slabs,
his eyes on the balustrades like closed circuit
television cameras
scanning the network for her
Katita where are you, Leif panoramas
but the city is so dark now, the future is here,
apartments up and down, everywhere to live
with nothing to do, empty homes banked
for future sale, the perfect economy, no people
only a migration of statistics that can be sold
in exchange of a perfect light, and then he sees her
on the horizon, a little battery
resting atop a fishing line separating
blank ink seas from pupil wrought skies
all space where there is none, Katita is a boat
drifting, a coal ship carrying a ballast
of big muscle red beating heart glow
below deck, Leif spots the crimson rue hue
and does this thing
where he metamorphises now into
the obelisk on the hill
and like a rocket he jitters free of his footfalls
and bb ll aa ss tt ss oo ff ff ---------->
up and over and to the east to where Katita bobs
he dives into the water
by her bow and leaves barely a wake
and they don't talk, not much I mean, as
they float towards Carrington where Katita
rolls onto the shore with Leif
at her feet,
she says, why did you say our trajectory
might leave us somewhere, no what he says I said
might lead us, you know like take us somewhere,
and she becomes the shale and the crumbly rocks
as the ground shifts and he floats away on her back
like a magic carpet of dirt,
they seperate and dissolve
from the island becoming another island,
that fabled land that fades in and out
of view from
Newcastle harbour, from the beach,
you can see it as a rise of hazy conifers
between here and Stockton
in certain conditions
Library of Babel as First Date,
dry prairie a fable as nursed fate
Rose-Meta Stone (are trees
memories?)
singlet, Bubble o' Bill, similar news
to a nearby star, Katita
drifts and Leif rides, like a barnacle of love,
taking a piece of (super)Novacastria
with them into languid tidal drifting,
Baudelaire would want to name her,
soft enchantress / indolent sorceress,
flowing skirts, patchwork landmass, prisms
of decorative tectonics, as paramour to momentum,
those cheap beers and fries from Big Als keep
them both buoyant / beau antipodean sunrise rising
risen revival of romance, next issue of the zine.