GET A JOB YOU BLUDGER & BUY SOME ORNAMENTS
my family hold onto their ornaments, in times of distress, have them hanging around their bedheads while they sleep, during sydney's southerly busters, bone china & porcelain tremble on the shelves, at night they contract, during the rainy weather the glued-together bits fall off, they can be smashed in revenge, when the family move ornaments are transported in cardboard boxes & some always break, they have to be dusted once a week, i doubt if i could imagine a christmas without them, over the years these ornaments have caused me much confusion, when the ornaments are surrounding me in the houses of my family i can't think straight, my family thinks this is because i am a dole cheat & a schizophrenic, but it is the ornaments that are unstable, prone to breaking. i am simply moulded by them & meld in, although as of late, i have felt a little sick inside, the ornaments always remind my family that i am on the dole, that is, i am an poet, in the way that i can't afford ornaments, i say 'but i don't want them,' 'oh, but you must have some, you must have some little pretties around the place,' nanny says, but she is enslaved to their dusting, protection & maintenance, she has a lot of energy as she has adopted pot plants as well, she never goes out, her skin is white & frail, all the long summer she stays inside with her things, all her long life, i said to dad, 'she never goes out, because she will get skin cancer,' i have never seen her at the beach, only in very old photographs, dad said, 'they never fucken go out, they work, that's it & buy cactus down at the fucken markets on the weekend & when i worked they did it with my wages, they didn't even learn how to drive or swim, when i took pop to the next suburb he said, "geeze, sydney's a big place" & that was in the 70's & he has to have his tea on time, so when i took him fishing, he made us pull up on heathcote road so he could eat right on six, otherwise he would have a tantrum & tell nanny on me, so we stopped,' dad pissed off to the bush & gave away everything he owned, i started giving away what i owned to charities, with mum scowling in the background, every christmas they would buy me more & i would give away everything again & the scowling would start again, nothing changes inside the house except their skin grows older & christmas, easter, birthdays, fathers' day, mothers' day etc come around & come around & come around & the same six people stand together in nanny's kitchen or aunty karen's loungeroom & exchange ornaments & not much interesting conversation, only what brendon & myself would bring in about the outside world, i felt guilty talking about myself all the time to nanny but she wanted to hear it, just like she watched the news every night at six, then when i went away to live my life i don't know what she did, i guess she began the dusting, my family are terrified of depth holding onto their ornaments & clean kitchen benches without a knife scratch for their lives, the smashing of an ornament for certain members of my family affects them like a death knell, so does anything meaningful because like the ornaments they protect, they are so fragile, once i tried to tell them about the significance of the christmas tree & it got all a bit too deep so the tv would be switched on or the conversation changed like the channel, whenever the poetry came out the volume went up, or a back was turned or some records were played, but there wasn't even much variety in the programs they watched or the music they listened to, the only real variation is in the ornaments themselves & even then they will collect them to death, frogs & dunnies are on this month, then it will be fairies & dragons, the endless searching in shopping centres, the hunting down & gathering of ornaments & objects without souls, it was very exhausting, i always just wanted to go to the fruit market or the pub & then go home, as for the ornaments i hated the fucken things, they meant more to my mother than me, like the time dale & her punched my head in & she said, 'bodies heal possessions don't,' i dreaded it every year when my mother went to surfers paradise & brought back all those fucken shells & dyed coral, those dyed corals were the biggest dust collectors & glittery things in bottles & snow storms, she did the lucky charms & now she's onto thimbles, it never ends, until they end, shop 'til you drop, until they die, then what am i gonna do with all the fucken things? most likely i will still be a homeless dole-cheat & a bludger, but by that stage the ornaments probably will have turned me schizophrenic, voluntary admission into a simple sterile environment to get away from them, just for that once a year holiday to sunny queensland my mother chooses to work herself into the ground, until her feet blister & her chest cavity collapses in fits of bronchial coughing, mostly she hardens up inside, as everything around her looks prettier & prettier, she becomes older & older, even she is worried about her recent accumulation of ten three stooges plates on stands, the mass-produced factory art plates from melbourne, i think we both know that she has a little problem, perpetually filling up houses with ornaments & buying them without blinking, even she doesn't know if she will have enough room left in the house for them, or more to the point, if she'll have enough energy required to dust them, one thing's for certain, they will outlive her, she'll break down before she allows them to be broken, a few even got broken during the divorce, now onto the other half, dad who is the second bludger in the family, along with myself, hates abbot & costello & the three stooges, but since he & my mother have been separated for fifteen years he no longer has to worry, he said, 'i hate those fucken cactus they planted all 'round the garden, some of 'em are illegal in australia now, big fines for having 'em,' i said, 'they broke all our balls in summer,' he added, 'yeah, the kids used to fall on 'em & a few quick trips to the vet for the cats,' now there was one photo in particular, again taken at nanny's, where my brothers appear to be ducking & weaving from mum's camera, as mum tries to show them an ornament, this time the ornament is one of those large & badly made clay australian outback homesteads, you will notice also, that mum has a peculiar dreamy or drugged- up look on her face that worries me, pop who hates ornaments & father's day cards, finally broke down on his eightieth birthday, he said, 'don't buy me any more of those bloody cards or i'll throw them in the incinerator', mum immediately said, 'well i'll have to buy you some more to replace the ones you burn,' pop's eyes rolled as the side of his mouth clicked, but this time he insisted, i looked at the collection of clay dunnies that had been forced upon him, collecting dust up along the sideboard, many years ago he had received one & had put his biros, reading glasses & various knick knacks in it from the kitchen table, so aunty karen, mum & nanny caught on to the fact that he might have liked them, he tolerated the second one being given to him, so as not to be rude & offend them, then he was bombarded with clay dunnies, by the same people that make the clay homesteads, every birthday christmas, easter & father's day, i said, 'pop would you like mum to buy you another clay dunny?' he clicked again, 'don't buy me any more of that bloody rubbish or i'll smash it with a hammer down in the garage & no cards for father's day, soon there'll be a card & all that jazz to buy every day of the year, it's a big rip-off for suckers,' nanny went into a two week sulk after pop referred to her ornaments as 'all that jazz,' mum, although smiling quietly to herself in the kitchen, worried for the next week over it, as fathers' day approached, on the eve of fathers' day she said to me, 'well he didn't want a card so i'm not buying him one,' i said, 'so you finally got the message,' for i too had had my share of idiot cards sent to me over the years, every easter the cards with chickens carrying baskets & bunnies in bow ties pushing wheelbarrows of easter eggs are given to me, with the same message from nanny & mum, in hand writing that never changes & every year i accept them & stick them in my scrap books, bound to their superficiality & am told 'don't you give them away,' now when i open up the page of the scrapbook i see them for their kitsch value & feel a little morbid, but largely unaffected, they wear you down after a while, but like the people who send them, you learn to accept them & forget about them, rather than trying to alter a well-established situation, like pop who has the occasional outburst & gets into trouble, or dad who said, 'they don't send you those fucken things do they? i put all mine in the woodstove last winter' |
