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The Sea

I left my soul there,

Down by the sea

I lost control here

Living free

A cool breeze flows but mind the wasp

Some get stung it's worth the cost

I'd love to stay

The city calls me home

More hassles fuss and lies on the phone

- Morcheeba

Next Day’s End

It was still light out surprisingly as the days fall away too quickly, by 5pm it is like midnight out. I happened upon Lorraine. I think I could be her some days, sitting next to her begging on a street corner so we could buy a packet of cigarettes together and split the ends or hitch up my skirt as she does to buy myself something nice. I think of what my father would say and my mother’s gaze. Lorraine was anxious today she kept telling me she had to go change her coins into something more manageable. I imagine it is less embarrassing at the tobacconist or grocer to arrive splaying dirty coins on to the countertop.

That afternoon was different a gentleman was passing and recognised old Lorraine. He came and sat in between us on the bench. Purposefully he didn't say his name and he wasn't letting me in on it either. He was well dressed - a navy blue blazer-white shirt and leather boating shoes and a ginger moustache. I was confused by his thick heavy pants. I was staring at them and he replied that he “slept outside these days.”  It was autumn so he came corrected adding that he had made in the passing days, possibly weeks, months or even years “the decision to live in his clothes.” I liked him, most would call him a drongo but I prefer his sort to the big noting men that litter this town.

He told us that he had to go into the pub and would be back. Lorraine was off like a bride’s nightie to go buy something with other people’s small offerings or better put the brass razoos strangers toss her way. The gentleman returned he hesitated in front of me. I told him Lorraine would be back shortly. He then sat down beside me. I asked him what he had bought; he told me it was a bottle of, “Southern Comfort.” Noting it was the real thing from those Yanks in Mississippi, showing me the label as proof. It read, “None Genuine but Mine” and the other label stating cautiously, “Two per customer. No Gentleman would ask for more.” I wondered if he had already downed the first earlier that day.

It then occurred to me it how apt and all so fitting living in the city of the south under these southern crossed skies and it was that other word as well that hovered and resonated in the air, 'comfort'. It seemed to spell it all out for me – my mood. I guess it is what we all look for is comfort. To fill that void inside us that we no longer fill with the love of god as my father would have said. This man had found his, in his glass bottle filled up with amber liqueur like spirits. The effect always temporary perhaps like returning to his mother’s breast nuzzling into the warm and golden licks or nestling into Lorraine’s hefty warm chest. I wish I could do that give into some vice completely with disregard for all other things. It was obvious the gentleman had a gambling problem and was on the drink as well, an old story in this town. I imagine black jack not that low class two-up or slide-of-hand-card-tricks from the hustlers around the railways.

He took the hip flask sized glass bottle out of the paper bag wrapping and slowly unscrewed the lid. He then mentioned if he drank it all in one he would be on the ground-floored. He snarled a laugh. He had enough social graces to say, “Cheers,” to me and made a gesture with the bottle up towards the sky. I said, “Santé,” he then usurped me one better and said, “Salute.” I was intrigued. Where he had found or won the money to not drink the plonk served up by the publicans or to run around with Lorraine. He placed the bottle to his mouth, his southern comfort, his comfort, like searching for his dearly departed mother’s glass nipple or his first lover’s warm embrace or Lorraine’s arms around him. The comforting rise and fall of her motherly breasts the warmth between her legs, underneath her brown stockings and her sturdy frame.

He titled his head back slightly he didn’t gulp or swallow; the amber bourboneque-syrup just flowed down directly, trickling down his throat, splashing into his empty stomach. He had mastered this motion, this ritual, his throat didn't hesitate either it was waiting for this moment. Lorraine returned in that moment and they both shot through like the Bronte tram leaving me on the bench alone.

I knew what they thought of me, another pom with my toffy nosed accent from the mother land that held no sway with either of them. I have heard others like them call me a Chardonnay socialist in their waking world of drinking, standing on corners chasing brass razoos trying to battle the hunger and relentless flames of thirst that screamed, quietened only with liquor, cigarettes and somebody to lie down beside, no closer, to feel another’s heart beating against their bare chest. To feel life race through them to make it to the next day’s end.

Of The Inky Blues Fading Into the Inky Blacks

I had taken him to one of my secret places. I walked the few wide steps to the welcoming water and took off my leather white sandalled heels. I dipped my feet into the dark blue harbour the water warm and cool in the night air.

I gestured for him to do the same he was reluctant as he had laces to untie. I told him to sit on the top step next to the water’s edge. I sat one step down placing my heels on the step below me. He played an Arabic song by a woman named Narwhal. Telling me it was a sad love song. He sang the first line in Arabic before she began.

We spoke of Arabic words. I was trying to pronounce his Middle Eastern sounds with my lyrical French ear. The words summoned by breadth and the placement of my tongue in ways unfamiliar to me. He would repeat the word several times. I looked up at him focusing in on his mouth, studying his lips and the position of his tongue and the movement of his mouth drawing breath to emit a word.

I felt his lips grow shy with my gaze upon him, a slight smile of awkwardness and a light crushing laugh. The ends of words almost silent to me pronounced and produced with a breadth. The music played on, the sounds of the oud, the Lebanese woman singing. My body facing towards him I turned my face away from him to the side and upward to regard the Harbour Bridge and beyond it across to the Opera House. The night sky lit up by these two profound monuments, then across to Luna Park shining like a diamond in the night, the moon the only witness to our scene. The water rippled towards the small jetty like ink spilling towards us, the wash and fall of what I imagined was the inky blues.

That dark cobalt blue ink that rose from the mixture of  ancient wine and iron salt over a fire to make the final bluish-black wash. The black India ink rising from the other lamp shade black of the skyline and that diamond winked out of the darkness with the effigy of Old King Cole’s face, with his ghostly mouth broad and wide smiling at us across the water. The sky raised above it turning into the inky blacks, the rise and fall of the water’s edge splashing like champagne then drawing back, slinking away, withdrawing and sinking into the night.

My eyes fixed on the scene. My face in profile towards him I felt his gaze upon me. My mother would have caught his gaze in moment such as this and fixed her eyes upon him not lowering her eyes piercing the moment. I felt myself shy and timid in such a candid moment. I then felt myself a woman the gaze I long for from a man. I lowered my eyes and passing my fingers across my soft mouth and lips to awaken a feeling I keep hidden. I felt my lips blossoming making the moment linger. I turned slowly to look at the moon behind him playing witness to the scene. I turned my face towards him. Charmed by his big eyes, his slim soft lines, the way he crosses his legs. He is delicate like picking saffron from the mauve coloured plant yet I am simmering with a slow colour that permeates from the stem of the crocus flower.

Or is it rose water with slivers of almonds, crushed pistachio and amber glass caramel. Is it a metal oil burner swinging or musk incense, powdered with jasmine petals splayed with dates and oranges peppered with cloves?

I revealed one of the few charms of this city to this young man and as we walked back making our way under the bridge, the train rattled above reassuringly. The views of the night making me feel him far from home far from Riyadh and the warm air of a summer’s night in Sydney. Of the inky blues fading into the inky blacks the gentle stroke of the water’s edge caressing the jetty in the midnight hour. The night lit up, illuminated by the sails of the Opera House and the sturdy dark iron bridge, tinted pastel, the romantic tones and hues of love. We parted ways at the railway station. I greeted him kissing him twice, once on each side of his face. I am charmed.

A moment later turning to see him, he had disappeared into the street, into the night. He is my Arab June, my muse never to be Henry. I decided to never see him alone again. I am ten years his senior and I do not wish to deflower him in the many Western ways I know how. I want to enclose him in his innocence, preserving him, prolonging his youthful charm. He has given me back my tenderness, my gentle swerve. How a new soul can remake an older soul and now knowing that there are many types of love. I am certain of this now.

Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here!

Salut Roxanne,

I am waiting for my man to come home to me and prove once again that he loves me. I get tired of waiting for him and the jazz radio plays in the background. I really understand why Billy Holiday drank. PUTAIN! Last night I drank like I was your age and smoked Les Gauloises. I smell like a beggar this morning. He did not arrive at my apartment door yet again. This man, who I came here to see, is loves low down dirty shame. Forever my big secret, I was so angry last night I wanted to slam the kitchen drawer on my hand put out the cigarettes I smoked on my naked skin. However to cowardly to act it all out. My bowl of coffee could not be big enough this morning.

I am attempting a self portrait. I have not attempted such a drawing since my last year of art school so about a decade ago. It is strange to look at yourself in a mirror studying it and mapping out what you see on the paper, my hand still steady from a decade of neglect, rarely putting pencil to paper. The last portrait I attempted a charcoal drawing, my hair a high rise of matted twisting curls I titled it Medusa's Child, like I drew the serpentines beastly shadows within letting it all spill out to draw out the beast's sorrow like drawing blood out with a charcoal syringe bloodletting pulling out the sorrow inside me out of me onto the paper rescuing me from a dark winter all those year ago.

I am a little mixed up at the moment and I don’t know what to do. It is like Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here. Poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine laboured to phrase a psychical map of this city's terrain of beauty and the human condition of life lived here. Those who have lived here before have passed through this soul-plagued landscape. A city weighed down heavily by its past trapped inside its memory which is beauty's affliction much like myself.

I find solace in the knowledge that the likes of Apollinaire chose to avail his heart and I hope mine as well to the art of living in a poetic manner. Living it out those days of yesterday here and now however wounded by this beautiful city still indentured to it its hypnotic timelessness.

Aujourd'hui je marches à Paris ensanglantées. Today I walk through Paris blood drenched was Apollinaire describing me whilst I am exploring the undercurrent of this landlocked 19^th century stone facade landscape. I feel wild like I am in a wilderness of solitude when left alone. All my friends all my past lovers abandoning this city, all departed only one remains here, my lover the only one that carries on here.

FUCK! PUTAIN! All my karma comes back to me. I am enjoying the hangover headache. C’est une douleur que je m’invite heureusement. Things are always clearer in the morning. The sun rose in the same place and will set tonight in the same place and mon cœur il continue de se battre sans l’amour ou avec, il n’y a pas de différence. So my drunken rampage has passed and I am alright. FUCKING PARIS! Please have a drink or ten for me at the Paper Plane exhibition hopefully my work is hanging next to your sexy Dresden outpourings.

I had a thought last night that you would appreciate. Why I am so vocal during the most intimate act maybe similar to your reason as well. It is because I need words even though they are not written down or typed out there needs to be some sort of exclamation point expressed made through sounds of words, screams, moans and a well placed slap acting as a full stop.

Je t’embrasse

Fayroze

Au Coin (On the Corner)

Chère Spéciale K,

Çà va ? So I am typing from the beautiful city of beige, Paris. My heart has not moved one step away from that man, mon amour. I think the suffragettes did not fight for me to behave like some 1950’s house wife. When Driss arrives back from work to my apartment it is cocktail hour! He cooks better that me. He made a seafood spaghetti with a white wine that I could cradle like a baby with scents of passion fruit, then for dessert a raspberry tartelette with pistachio and la créma,magnifique! It is not such a pretty picture as the jolie couple on your postcard. It is like Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal ici. He left after dinner and did not return as promised to keep all the hours in my bed.

He said he would be back at the apartment at 9pm sharp so I waited au coin so all of the 18^th arrondissement could see me waiting instead of going stir crazy in the apartment. I stood there outside in the street. It began to rain, it grew cold and I waited for hours outside on a cold night in Paris for the promises of man not kept. I grew weary the shop keeper Mohammad at the epicerie arabe au coin asked me who I was waiting for I answered, "ma mec." I knew he would only be coming by train so I waited in full view of the stairs to the Metro Lamarck-Caulaincourt on the corner, pacing, wandering in circles going nowhere and he did not come.

This man reminds me of my father. When I was sixteen, my mother had come back from working abroad in Saudi. She had been home three months and my father at the dinner table said one evening when he caught the train home that evening that he did not want to return, to our home ever again. A year later my parents were divorced during my Higher School Certificate exams. In France if a man says he is going out to buy a packet of cigarettes (cherche une cigarette) there is a chance he may not return.

My fella aint no good, it makes me want to throw every glass crashing against the wall, break ever mirror. I started smoking again. Oh fuck! Fuck this! He is no good to me. I am like Billy Holiday that loves this man. Oh god damb it! I am drunk again and the Rosé has turned warm.

Cold empty bed. Nobody will unmake the sheets tonight. I will not undress tonight.

Losing my mind he is the type who could save me. Knowing its safer dreaming in my empty bed. Swinging between this misery and joy. I am feeling quite insane because I am mad about that boy.

When I was a little girl the devil called my name. I saw his face in a corner behind my bedroom door. He called my name he had the face of my father who do you think your fooling he said sparingly my mother loved me she rocked me like a rock. I want this man to love me like a rock.

Oh dear fayroze.

Carte Postale Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal up in here!

To :                  Mademoiselle Roxanne Gröebelle