Work in progress

Numbers stations cast windborne over dry yellow fields to our hamlet, some thousand even footfalls at the grill where I meet Pleur while bovine tracking - she waves and asks if I know how to till by hand, yes and then it is lemonade at the invisible estate on the hill and dot matrix wheat joysticks and a history of sunburn and some handful of foggily sequenced politics. I only meet Leif some weeks later, and then Varva.

Pleur had botany genus back to the Rum Rebellion, allowing me to identify plant life-history data in the fire regime of the local woodlands. Everything was copper glazed, mushroom bounced.

At first it was rows, then columns. Seeding the dust with batteries, what Pleur refers to as keys, she transfers money to cover my time.

The house is tall as her mouth is wide, half the distance of age cast shadows from ripples on the pond where she and Varva float topless in a terracotta rowboat and absorb everything from the Kármán line down to their paramourted ease.

When eventually I meet Leif he does not meet me. He sits on a bench facing mine beneath a lattice canopy and talks only to Pleur about the gaps around the crops. Pleur responds only with reference to Varva who I have not seen yet but who Leif seems to make manifest by drawing an outline of her with his finger in the hot air as he searches for the right word, settling on none.

There are times I walk away when Leif appears as my job is in the fields and not beneath the canopy, and when I look back I see Pleur gazing at my position while Leif remotely shapes his lips into a broadcast pattern of wanton cardiac elegy.

It is Varva who Leif dissuades notification when he eventually does address me, asking about my family, how long in the valley, before and or after the rapture, generations where he has seen only minor days.

The appleshine afternoon when Varva swiftly footfalls between barn and house before us and is stopped by Leif out of, at the time, seemingly unfounded obligation, he shares with me her name and asks she not do mathematics in my presence, although not in those words.

What he does say, I have it written down exactly, is that Varva should speak Australian.

Interviewer: How long after you met Leif did he begin to open up. Did he know you were taking notes, did he encourage it. How much was remembered, that you later wrote down after your fieldwork, perhaps that night at a desk in your bedroom, and how much was taken down in real-time. I ask this because I see comparisons between yourself and Johann Eckermann, acting as a secretary of sorts for Goethe, taking conversational dictation, but also forging his own poetry out of their conversations, for Goethe's benefit as much as his own, in terms of brand posterity, translation issues aside.

Is this it.

The train leaves when.

We'll be fine. Head down this street.

It's one way. I'm going on the road.

Too many pedestrians.

Mind the truck.

Green light. Straight through.

These eBikes are alright.

Tell me about it.

Turn here.

Central is four blocks north.

This front tire is half flat.

Makes curbs easier to hit.

Up there and done.

Easy. Minutes to spare.

These CountryLink trains are terrific.

My first time.

They even have a buffet car.

Sleeper cabins. Fold out tables.

So tell me again about the project.

You've never seen the documentary.

Only thirty-second snippets online.

It's called Bastards from the Bush.

Bob Ellis interviewing Les Murray.

I only know them vaguely. Through you.

They visit places formative to Murray.

And you want to recreate this.

I want you to interview me. No cameras.

We'll stand wherever and pretend it's somewhere.

As a way of creating a simulacrum.

We'll perform gestures of realism.

Dress up in costumes of meaning.

By the way. You know how sorry I am.

Thank you. The time had come.

So she's gone. You've quit your job.

And what about you. Long service leave.

For three months. Katita is on sabattical.

The kids are with grandparents.

I keep thinking about YouTube,

surprised that I don't care more.

It really is immense.

We relied on it for housing everything.

A digital catalogue of all cultural memory.

The idea that there are no backups,

nobody took the time to archive it all.

All those data-hoarding enthusiasts,

this was supposed to be their moment.

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OF CORRODING WOE

To be Australian is to play pinball in a coastal leisure centre in view of the beach and its silhouettes, its late century ocean sparkle of morse code diamonds threaded into the ten J. M. W. Turner paintings every man needs to see, raised on the novels of Hermann Hesse between wars, on the affirmations of Nietzsche on what it is to be Australian, the Down Under Over Man, the Foster Tuncurry scene with New Journalists sleeping on the sand, where ninety two in the shade is exactly thirty three to the decimal with an endless repetition of threes in the centigrade, apologies to the International Committee for Weights and Measures, apologies for Anders Celsius, nineteen forty eight in the shade the same day that Columbia Records introduces the very same ratio, a record that spins at thirty-three and one-third revolutions per minute, eighteenth June, when another revolution spun out, the Malayan Emergency and how to be an Australian Avro Lincoln bomber is to drop two hundred and thirty kilo affirmations, you think of this as an Australian when you mosey through Murrurundi on foot, along the wobble of the suspension bridge, the two-story garden shed with so many missing panes of glass the size of LP album covers, rattled out perhaps by divine wind, the neighbouring yard, over the fence, housing so many reused glass bottles filled with dirt brown water and offcuts of native Australian labor, of a capacity to recite the lines of early Australian poets like Alby Pope, Wilko Ernie Henley, Frosty the Noman, Agro's Cartoon Connection, Larrikin Larkin, Hey Hey its Alfie Tennyson writing quite a stirring evocation of the first media war, of Churchill in the West Wing as Australia's first war president, of one Theirs not to make reply, two Theirs not to reason why, three Theirs but to do and die, with an endless repetition of threes, thesis antithesis and synthesis although not necessarily in that order, it was easier to make a living when you were writing, as an Australian, for entry into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, an accessibility of meaning, a still living god, a child of eight and an octogenarian both able to enjoy the recitation of verse, like those songs everybody knows so well rolled out on the pianola in nursing homes, I'm thinking of those classic show tunes from nineteen thirties Australian riverboat space operas, On The Sunny Side Of The Street, Over The Rainbow, As Time Goes By, Beautiful Dreamer, Julia Jacklin covering Someday by The Strokes, Holly Throsby covering Berlin Chair by You Am I, Slowed Reverb Test Drive by Joji, anything live on KEXP, Samurai Pizza Cats Episode One, Chopin's Opus Twenty Five Number Twelve performed on the Light Organ, how Marianna Simnett uses machine learning to project Australian species of light entertainment talk show hosts onto her face, Corey Feldman on Howard Stern, Beniamino Gigli singing Largo by Handel for His Master's Voice with Herbert Dawson on organ, A Message to Young People from Andrei Tarkovsky delivered at the demolition of the Newcastle Council Carpark on the twenty eighth of May two thousand and twenty two at ten past twelve just after midday, opposite the Cathedral, the graveyard with all those victims of shipwreck trying to make passage into the harbour, along the shoreline, you think of the likes of Australian writers such as Joseph Conrad and Hermann Melville, bunkmates on the Adolphe they alighted and walked away from, left washed against the breakwall at Stockton as if it wasn't their problem, as if romancing water had nothing to do with any of this, when the customs agents asked John Berger, when he emigrated to Australia, if he had any criminal convictions, and he replied in his best Sherman's March how he didn't know that was still a requirement, how this is very much not what it is to be an Australian today, on Jimmy Stewart reading a touching poem about his dog beau, yes exactly, a hole in one, this is what it means to be Australian, to live in the Tropic of Capricorn, the Largesse of the South, of the invention of the Cochlear implant and the electronic pacemaker and WiFi and permanent-crease clothing, on the first date we might imagine between Dymphna Cusack (of Black Lightning, The Sun Is Not Enough, Come In Spinner with Florence James, although not necessarily in that order) and William T Vollmann as depicted by Ron Howard in Grand Theft Auto about the life of Australian logician Kurt Gödel, his pet name for Dymphna, Leonardo's Bride, she taking carriage of a research grant into the ecology of coastal communities, of the myths presented on the vertical backlit stands of pinball tables, her a whimsigoth vision crossing the floor of the leisure centre in a crimson corset and permanent-crease starfield skirt, he in his most affordable Australian smile, not quite like that on the tarmac of a prisoner exchange so much as the curve suggested by the presence of an inland empire, how it pulls everything in, how she pulled him towards her, allegedly, and said - 'Advance'.

Lumping grain, phosphorescent shards of mirrored corn, westward against first duties (silking, ripe embargo link casting onto pleats) and to the bridge where the farrier's youngest lad was rolling a teak horse with barrel hooves until it strafed firm right on its downhill run and pinged over the edge and into the drink. Old Trip with his sawtooth net was quick as you like already spooning it from apogee low beneath the green as the mite cried until the horse was risen and dripping all sides as two grateful little hands plucked it out of Trip's net and very nearly repeated the same trajectory before the mane was dry.

When I told Pleur she looked at me as if I were a dolly peg with sanded eyes and a steeple gait in need of dawn reprisals (firm eggs, straight legs, notice nothing).

She touched my face where the knots bend the wave rings into bass jazz staves.

The CountryLink pulls into Wondabyne Station, not a planned stop, a tree has fallen on the rail up ahead. Leif and Atmos alight without the conductors realising. This is where the two thousand and four Australian movie The Oyster Farmer was filmed, between here and where Leif and Atmos walk next, the Hawkesbury River Marina. "You think I came out here to the end of the world because I like the scenery?" a man who has just decoupaged a bathtub with ill-gotten paper currency gains says to the protagonist, played by Alex O'Loughlin (for reasons unknown credited as O'Lachlan), of Scottish and Irish descent who would, the following year, screen test for the role of the British spy James Bond in Casino Royale after Irish actor Pierce Brosnan (whom American actress Halle Berry in Vanity Fair said that he, quote, restored her faith in men), the namesake for James Bond sourced from the author of the classic field guide 'Birds of the West Indies', an empirical work of, for its sins, the Empire.

Does the marina have accomodation.

No but the hotel beside it does,

look it even has a piano bar.

I play for our supper,

that's what you're thinking.

What would your set list be.

Aftersun by Massive Attack

featuring Dot Allison.

Just Like Heaven by the Cure.

You know what media I always

associate that tune with.

The Real World and Road Rules

MTV spin off, The Challenge,

season thirty-six, episode two.

Close - in The Beach Bum,

the Harmony Korine film,

where Matthew McConaughey

sees Isla Fisher kissing Snoop Dogg

bathed in bleeding neon outrun radiance.

August 17, 2024: A controversial new technology trial in Japan has sparked international concern as the country begins testing airborne ‘microplastic-cleaning bombs’ over Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama in a bid to address the growing threat of plastic pollution in the atmosphere. These tests, designed to reduce microplastic contamination found in clouds, have raised alarms across the globe, with several countries expressing apprehension over the potential environmental implications.

The technology in question involves deploying high-altitude chemical dispersal devices, colloquially dubbed ‘cloud-cleaning bombs,’ which are designed to neutralise and break down microplastic particles suspended in the atmosphere. The initiative follows recent studies revealing alarming concentrations of microplastics in the clouds over Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji and the nearby Mount Oyama. These particles, scientists warn, could be contributing to plastic rainfall and even exacerbating climate change by facilitating cloud formation and greenhouse gases.

While I play why don't you talk

to the girl behind the bar who has

been making eyes at you since

we walked in, Eve Babitz over there.

Danna Coe, Kenya Sanderson,

Patty Sears, Erika Skoda.

Just say hello.

What if I fall for her and want

her to join us on our journey.

Will that disrupt our plans.

We can find a role for her

in the documentary, easy.

I can interview her about

the role she played as my

childhood sweetheart in

the caravan park nearby

where my family would

annually return for our

summertime vacation.

Previously, on Auto-Friction.

One day I want you to sit

quietly and watch my face

as I listen to the PinocchioP

produced song, sang by virtual

pop star Hatsune Miku, Because

You're Here. You'll see me respond

to the melodic similarities between

the chorus of this tune and the verse

theme of Komm Susser Todd which we

both know by way of its defining scene

in Neon Genesis, as I am washed over

by the thirty-seven timelines that as

a result of franchise diffusion via

light novels, pachinko machines

and video games we never saw

imported here to Australia, I

feel deeply a pathos for my

life and time never to be

regained, I think of the

lyric Miku sings, 'Even if

I'm not loved it's okay', she's

only software yet she references

Auden here, quote 'If equal affection

cannot be, let the more loving one be me'

which is to say, I feel wonderfully unloved.

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Interviewer: We know that Leif worked in the former Soviet Union as a handler for a Times correspondent positioned in Moscow at the time, Ms. [Redacted]. What did he reveal to you about his life during this time - his lack of background or experience in security, his inability to speak the language, the way he ferried Ms. [Redacted] between increasingly fraught accomodation arrangements that lead to the event that saw them both badly injured and flung outward, he fourteen thousand kilometres into the air and across the Indian Ocean onto a soft mound of dirt in the halycon pastoral life you found him inhabiting, Ms. [Redacted] sent flying to Slovenia where, to my knowledge, they never made contact again, although not for lack of trying, as Ms. [Redacted] fruitlessly tried to engage his services again, for reasons unknown, no doubt fuelled by the allegedly intense relationship they housed as they moved from one unsafe, heavily carpeted hotel room to the next, something Leif only referred to once in a joke on a game show.

There is a painting by Anselm Kiefer named Bilderstreit that is everything its translated meaning implies - Image Dispute. If you try doing an online search for the painting you will only find depictions of the cover of a recent exhibition of Kiefer works called Bilderstreit, but this is not the painting. The work itself is a large scale painting of a field of poppies, yet when you try searching through a catalogue of Kiefer's poppy paintings, it never shows. The painting is definitely called Bilderstreit because across the top-middle of the work he has painted the word Bilderstreit with a hyphen between Bilder and Streit, along with many other words in smaller handwriting beneath and across the field of poppies. Someone more familiar with Kiefer's works will most certainly know the work being sought here, a painting that feels like a photograph of the backdrop where I first met Pleur with my dozen cows.

To be Australian is to ignore the bridge load limit, to ignore both the maximum vehicle mass and maximum speed, and when the sign says only one vehicle at a time on the bridge you question whether that includes the cloud of dragonflies bundled like a voluminous airship, pressing their domain from a high angle, like that of a camera phone pressed at a high angle above the faces of snapdragons and fibre cloth and five o’clock pansies, to be captured and then shared with no one, to knock off at five o’clock and then park your wife in the car outside The Kent while you walk in for a beer and then sometime later walk out to pass her a glass of lemon squash through the car window, for to be Australian is appreciate chain reactions, to direct high volumes of light at peanut butter to make it glow, and to be Australian is to wear Day-Glo to a funeral during your lunch break, the necessity of the living, even though you make everybody in your perimeter a target now, from a high angle, you and everyone you confuse with love are now in the mortal crosshairs, too visible, for to be Australian is to crave visibility within the fog of great southern anonymity, the invisible green and the sense of gold still on the statue of St Joseph’s head as you light a candle exclusively for the intent of powering cryptocurrencies, and so say all of us, during a final call for drinks, the one who says he will shout the entire pub a night cap, the way grandfather’s look upon this man as one who has reached the highest estimation, the better angles of our nature, and so say all of us.

Interviewer: In the first draft of your notes you mention an incident in which Leif, after dinner one evening, turns a garden fork upside down and pushes a handful of bay leaves onto the prongs, doing so in such careful arrangement that the shadow cast by the architecture of leaves from the fire against the barn conjured, as Leif manipulated the fork up and down, a perfect imitation of a crow floating above a field on a thermal lift, and it was, and I'm quoting you here, a direct reference to what Mario Bellatín did in the documentary Winter House as he hangs dry plants and flowers on and within the mechanics of the prosthetic metal hook that replaces his right-hand, a documentary that Leif had seen a rough cut of by way of a correspondence he maintained with a Mexican film director who was not Gonzalo Castsro but perhaps someone in his orbit, from two thousand and one through to two thousand and twenty two, a correspondence commenced after Leif and the director met during a motorbike road journey from La Paz south along Route One to Cabo San Lucas.