the green wheelie bin was brimful of topshelf pornography.

dark without noise, the blue-beaked night
off the radar, with a vast expanse
empty of its own urbanity.

A short story:

"I'm gonna kill myself," my mother kept saying. "I'm gonna kill myself." I'd listen, but I didn't believe her. I didn't believe her because I used to have a friend who was always saying that, a good friend who went funny one day and started telling me all the time "I'm going to kill myself" and at first I took it seriously, got worried, but then time went on and she kept saying it but she never killed herself, and after that I stopped listening - we drifted apart. So I heard mum when she said it, but I didn't believe her. Then mum killed herself. Hard to believe, but she did. And it was only a couple of months later I heard that my friend had topped herself a year back, too. I'd just never heard.

Harding's most famous "mistake" was his use of the word "normalcy" when the more correct word to use at the time would have been "normality." Harding decided he liked the sound of the word and made "Return to Normalcy" a recurring theme. Critic H.L. Mencken disagreed, saying of Harding, "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

"I suppose you like to read." The voice was a cold shred, a rasp.
"I like books." Then, as if to excuse himself, "My sister likes reading too."
"Yes, I supposed she would. Of course she would."

..

"I don't read. I was what you call an 'avid' reader in my youth."

--

Africa for twenty years.
"Which part?"
"Does it matter which part?"
Not to him, maybe. He didn't know enough - not yet. But surely to Eudora...
"I suppose they sent you over here because I'm old - they expect I will be able to tell you stories, like a grandmother in a book."
"I don't know."
"They think I'm either old and wise enough or old and silly enough to be full of things I know and remember and tell them to you. So we will be like family. Well. What I know. What I know. I don't know what I know. I don't know them, the things that I know."
Her dry little eyes were pinned to the window. He could see her gaze cutting at the glass, her eyes etching jagged little patterns on the pane, sharp little scratches.

yes, I do, generally, then I quit my job and i revel in unemployemnt
2:56amSSS
: ) bless your buttons
2: T
How are you?
2:56amSSS
i'm getting a job
i'm ok!
pretty healthy really
: )
marking essays
plus i have a supervisee
a honours-equivalent gal
writin on faulkner
2: t
it's 3am after halloween I'm a bit drunk
2:57amSSS
lol
bless you
happy halloween
*cuddles*
2:57amTTT
ah, faulkner
2:57amSSS
in theory, i am "working"
touch of burnout, tho!
2:57amTTT
I must finish one of his books
2:57amSSS
lol
2:58amTTT
yeah...
2:58amSSS
i think he probably used to say that.
any money he never read one.
2:58amTTT
hahahaha
!
how is the UK at the mo?
are yougoing OK (health aside)
2:59amSSS
pretty good -
i got meself a
new supervisor
which scares me a bit coz
2:59amTTT
wow
2:59amSSS
she aint the critical kind
she's more the "yeah that's so fab you're so fab" kind
which some might find reassuring
but i find deeply scary
think i'm an academic masochist
2:59amTTT
yeah I get ya
2:59amSSS
crave punitive but productivwe ciriticism!
2:59amTTT
HAHA!
yeah
2:59amSSS
had kit over here bout 3.5 wks
was awessome
2:59amTTT
your are fab though
2:59amSSS
had fantastic time
3:00amTTT
oh cool!
3:00amSSS
gallivanting over the country on train passes
3:00amTTT
just had dinner with ness and now
3:00amSSS
yeah shux honey i hemidemisemi-fab anyway :L )
3:00amTTT
hence v drunk
nou, I mean
3:00amSSS
quality!
but no kit !
she's up w
our mum
miss the family and the boyfy
3:00amTTT
yes, in coffs
3:00amSSS
but hangin in there
hey -
3:01amTTT
i bet
…
3:01amTTT
is it all OK?
3:01amSSS
oh yeah, it's totally good
we worked crap out a lot - we had
couple of months on the rocks there,
3:01amTTT
yes, i thinkso
xxx
3:02amSSS
how's the writing : )
3:02amTTT
but write her an email
3:02amSSS
lol facebook
students
3:02amTTT
ah... yes... writing...
3:02amSSS
it must be strange, to be teacher, suddenly feel like a big grownup person
i still think im 16 sometimes
not being doing a whole lot hey?
3:02amTTT
I thinkshe [Br W] alsways felt a big grown up person, and Being Young was off
3:02amSSS
i try get back into it now and then but theres far too much else going on i long since lost the thread, or the plot, or whatever : )
3:03amTTT
no, I'm doing too mcuh
3:03amSSS
yeah she kinda implied that to me once
3:03amTTT
aha
3:03amSSS
bout her time at summ hill
3:03amTTT
what are you writing?
mmm
3:03amSSS
when i was at summ hill with her i remember i didnt know her very well btu i was ragingly jealous of her hair and her singing voice : )
couple of loooong short stories
3:03amTTT
3:03amSSS
that don't seem to want to get in shape.
3:03amTTT
as in, novellas?
3:04amSSS
i sort of have this strong 'aura' of what they're about and how they would be shaped
3:04amTTT
edit edit edit
3:04amSSS
but the specifics keep eluding me
: ) yeah.
3:04amTTT
"kill your darlings"
3:04amSSS
well, novellas, makes em sound, too like, proper
3:04amTTT
I've been told
3:04amSSS
indeed - in fact
i love "hacking"
i call it "hacking" not editing
its so liebrating to highlight a whole bunch of paragraphs and instead of editing hitting
3:04amTTT
yes, and also slashing
3:04amSSS
the "delete" button
burning i havent tried yet : )
3:04amTTT
YES
no need
3:05amSSS
no, too teenagd : )
3:05amTTT
it's all soft copy
3:05amSSS
do u write on paper? i do everything
on computer
it's a problem - my computer
performs every function in my life
that the microwave doesn't perform.
3:05amTTT
I write poetry on paper
3:05amSSS
Shocking way to live : )
3:05amTTT
heheh
so coz I wrote poetry onpaper, anything I want in that vein, I write on paper first
I dunno why
3:06amSSS
Did you ever read any swinburne?
it's probably a good idea, ur paper thing
3:06amTTT
writing on the bus? at work?
3:06amSSS
i do a lot of writing on the back inside covers of paperbqcks and on bus tickets lol
3:06amTTT
but it's not the means
3:06amSSS
both phd and creative
3:06amTTT
it's the words
ha
3:06amSSS
all i ever come up with these days is fragments and ideas that trail off
useless.
sometimes i miss that feeling at school that there was budding talent and a future in which to develop it
3:07amTTT
not useless ifyou put all the fragments together
yes
3:07amSSS
instead of now, when u feel like you should have 'arrived' and didnt and are no longer a budding renaissance woman
3:07amTTT
Iknow
I miss the feelingof poetential
3:07amSSS
but just, like, well... apathetic? or, seemingly so.
SAME!
sigh.
3:08amTTT
it's not tho, for you, it's the sense of Middle
3:08amSSS
maybe.
did ur course finish sweet cake?
3:08amTTT
in the middle there's little excitement'
and little pay off
yes ish
one did
another didn't
I'll see if I get a PHd next eyar
3:08amSSS
still enjoying? at all rewarding?
3:09amTTT
yes and yes
3:09amSSS
awesome. that would be fun - sense of expansive time.
fantastic to hear!
3:09amTTT
I find, in writing, the oddest things can be rewarding
a line
3:09amSSS
there was a writers discussion group today for anyone who idly writes crap and feels like whinging to others about it or boasting or sharing or whatever but
3:09amTTT
a poem
3:09amSSS
sasddly clashed with my supervision
yeah a single image!
3:09amTTT
a single comment in a semester
damn
I want to read more of your stories
3:10amSSS
really? awesome!
we shold trade some time... a nice little one so i aint swamping you none!
3:10amTTT
just writeFrom Your Heart
if you know what I mean
yea please?
3:10amSSS
totally.
3:10amTTT
please!
3:10amSSS
i loved reading your poems : )
3:11amTTT
you would never swamp me
3:11amSSS
the marrickville et al.
shux little button.
3:11amTTT
yay
yeah, I like that one
3:11amSSS
well i gunna rattle on my merry way coz duty calls me alas
but let's do a trade.
3:11amTTT
I was meant to write 12 poems, ad I wrote 50
3:11amSSS
lol
3:11amTTT
yes let's
til soon
mwah
3:11amSSS
you are miss prolifica prolix
xxxx
smooch!
xxx
3:12amTTT
as are you - you just hide it
smatch xxx
3:12amSSS
i am miss scraps. the bubble and squeak of the written word
xxx
3:12amTTT
til soon xxx
3:12amSSS
xx

"She made a slow mash of her life with soft gums. Eudora Welty was getting old. But in those moments where she closed her eyes and stopped croaking - in those slow, slow moments where she would sit shut-eyed like a pendulum without motion - he thought he could see the shragged tatters of something like youth still [[Scraping by//shrieking past]] under her eyelids."

add anything!

she could no longer write or even read in a linear way

instead a panicked scattering of her eyes across the page

having nothing to do with sentences or

paragraphs.



==


her black translucent throat pulsed, trolling.