Tales from the tub - Averyl

Averyl

Averyl was in love. But she had been in love before and now she was a cynic.

"He". It made her laugh. The royal "He". He, him, the person you are looking for that you have no idea what to do with once you find.

"What do I do with love?"

"What do you mean, you revel, you rejoice, you have what everyone wants," Stephi found her friends' indecision infuriating. How dare this bitch question her good fortune.

But, for Averyl, it was a valid question. What do you do with it. It isn't a physical or tangible thing. It is a concept. It's an idea. A construct. What do you do with something that is actually nothing, in real terms.

"Love is an intangible asset, what does it mean? Is all," she retorted with suboptimal conviction, "I know it's what I want, but I don't know what it is, which brings me to my point, which is, what is it and what do I do with it?"

Seeking love is a monopolistic activity. It overrides all others. The seeking of it, unfortunately, detracts from the reality of having it. Many, once they have it, stop. Mission accomplished. Often in this instance the relationship stagnates and fails. Why? Because there was never any plan, no plan, beyond the acquisition.

So, there she was, in love, with no plan. No idea what to do with it. As aforementioned, she had been in love before, she knew she could find love again, so why keep this one?

No love is greater than another. You aren't comparing apples with apples. You can't. Each love is unique. So, how do you pick one from another.

I am pushing this back to my bored readers. Finish my story! What do you do with love once you have it? Help me!

Tales from the tub - Petunia

Petunia ( and The great rubber bridge bun heist )

Utter, utter relief. Defecation used to be something Petunia winced at the thought of even discussing. Today, it was a joyful occurrence. It meant everything was alright, all her woes released from her body in one great cathartic motion.

Somewhere in her mid-30's, somehow, she came across the Bristol stool chart. It was a life changing experience. Consumed now, as she was, with the consistency, shape, color and buoyancy of her relief.

"How are you Peti?" Gladice beemed. She had been beeming since she had her dentures replaced with porcelain caps. A barbie doll's smile on the body of a gollum figurine.

"You look stupid Glady, those teeth are too big, didn't they give options?"

"I look fantastic, it took ten years off, shut up and deal."

Gladice and Petunia had been rubber bridge partners for 5 years. They met in a graveyard.

"So, your husband is dead, huh, mine too."

Gladice shrugged, "it would appear so."

"Did you like him?"

Thinking on this, "not really."

"I didn't really like mine either, sorry for your loss."

"You too."

"I always wished I had married Tim Seres."

"Me Too!!!!"

They were firm friends thereafter, bonded by the conflicting emotions. The loss of someone you love but are thoroughly sick of and their rampant lust for Tim Seres, the international king of rubber bridge.

The year was 1958, London, Tim owned the bridge scene. When Tim entered a room, heads turned, women crossed their legs and cigarettes were lit. Little did they know, when they met in a graveyard many lifetimes later, they had both been there. Vying for his attention, waiting for the privligde of playing with him. Nothing is more attractive to a woman than a man that lives on his own terms, this was Tim's philosophy.

While both women adored this man and they adored his sport, call it circumstance, call it generational, they had never lived on their own terms. Now, with their husbands beneath their feet, they were free. Now, they could live like Tim.

As it's name suggests, rubber bridge is played in rubbers. A rubber is the best of three games. Each game built on a contract and the game won by the first team to score 100 points for successful contracts. A contract is the assurance that you will produce a certain score in a hand as predicted.

Perhaps, that's why rubber bridge spoke to Petunia and Gladice. Their lives were based on contracts.

You marry me, you take care of me and I predict I will have your children. If I am successful you will take care of me and our children for the rest of our lives.

Now, with their husbands in the grave, the stakes were higher, they had new contracts to negotiate. They had been scoping out this bakery for the last three weeks. It was a block from were they met to play bridge. Each morning they would walk past and buy a pastry and a coffee. Unassuming septergenarian bridge players.

They needed money. Their husbands, while loving , had left them nothing but stretch marks, ungrateful children, piles and neurosis. They wanted more.

On their way to the regional rubber bridge tournament one summer day, they didn't show up. A win, but slightly disatisfying for their aponents, a forfeit.

As Gladdy and Peti drove towards their futures with a bun truck and $30,000 cash from the register.

Tales from the tub - Abigail (Abi)

Abigail (Abi)

Running her hands through the back of her hair, wrapping her fingers intricately and determinantly around the blond strands she gripped and she pulled,

"AAhhh," shrieking distress, even this was not enough to vent her frustrations.

Getting up she paced backwards and forwards through her flat. Abi was successful, successful by everyone's standards but her own. At 32, she had a successful legal practice, small but her own, sufficient to buy her own apartment. She had travelled the world to acquire trinkets and laboriously furnished her space to her liking. She had everything. She wanted for nothing.

Ani Defranco, over her speakers as she paced,

"I have everything I want, still I want more," sang the siren. Abi pulled harder on her hair, as if she was trying to pull subconscious thoughts out through her follicles.

"AAhhh." That one hurt. A clump of hair in her hand and it hadn't worked, she had gotten no closer to the answer she was trying to retrieve. The answer to a question that many of us ask ourselves and rarely answer honestly. "What is it I really want, how can I have everything and still want for something...?"

A baby, she thought, I'm 32, I must want a baby. no, no ,no. A new car, is that it? My old Mazda is a bit ordinary, and I can afford it. no, no, no. A holiday, I've never been to Tahiti, perhaps the answer is a holiday? no, damn it, no. A new lover, she cut herself off there, god no!

"Libiamo, libiamo ne'lieti calici
che la belleza infiora.
E la fuggevol ora s'inebrii
a volutt"

In perfect tenor through her window, through the monotony of her thoughts. Standing stock still, her body, led by her left ear, elongated towards the sound like a petal to the sun.

Rag clad, head to toe, there was this man. 'La Traviata', at the top of his lungs, passionatly, making a concert hall of an inner urban street.

Passion, she realised, that's what I need. This man has nothing but a passion, I have everything but no love for any of it.

That night Abi went to bed with a greater sense of purpose. When she woke. Nothing changed. Let's face it, this wouldn't be a realistic tale if it had. But ever after when Abi felt trapped and lost in her perfect world, she would hear 'La Traviata', drawing strength from the potential embodied in one vagrant man's passion.

Tales from the tub - Tifanee

TIFANEE

Tifanee was the antithesis of her birth name. Intended to be 'Tiffany' one of the more popular names in the early 90's, a signifier of upper class luxury, her parents were phonetic retards. To be fair they were literal retards.

Tifanee was born in 1991, daughter to Mark and Angela Redden, both of whom suffered from relative degrees of mental retardation. Mark and Angela were loving parents and loving people. That was one thing Tifanee could say for her folks, retards are nice.

Tifanee often wondered how her life would have been different if she was born like them. She wasn't. She was bright. From the age of 5, she had been her parents, parent. She prepared breakfast, let the visiting day nurse in and got herself ready for school.

"My daddy is a lawyer," she would rehearse on the bus on the way to school, "My mummy is a housewife." She had to learn that lesson the hard way first day of kindergarten when she was the only one without a professional explanation for her parents existence.

As she got older, her lies became more elaborate.

"How is your dad, Tif?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know he is still in Paris, after winning the Law institue of Victoria award he decided to take a brief sojourn. My mother is thrilled, she has had her eye on this Parisian tailor and is going to get something made, don't know what, just something, you know, a little something, something."

The lies felt so natural. But, each evening she went home, had a cup of tea with the house nurse and discussed her parents progress that day.

"Your Dad did really well today Tif, he is reading at an 8th grade level, you shoud be really proud, make him a nice dinner, yeah, he has been asking for fish fingers all afternoon."

"Fish soldiers with tomato sauce!" came a cry of agreement, glee and self-pride from her father in the living room.

Tifanee burst into tears, she couldn't stop. Somewhere between her reality, the false reality she had created and the intensity of pubescent hormones she lost it.

A warm hand on her shoulder, it was her mother. "Hush baby, your our magic Tifanee, you don't cry, even when you were a baby you didn't cry, you can do anything, you are magic, they said we would never have any babies but we had a magic one, you, can we have fish soldiers now?"

A choked smile, a kind face from the day nurse, "Yes mum, go watch TV with dad and I'll call you when its ready, ok?"

"ok, happy magic baby?" said her mother with the most angelic innocence.

"Happy magic baby, thanks mum."

Tales from the tub - Walter

Right you bastards. Boring, apparently my happiness bores you. I have been informed. Things are clearly more interesting when my life is in the toilet. Now, while I certainly can't promise to be happy indefinitely, I have a gift for fucking things up in spectacular and unique ways. I have only been happy for a little while, give a girl some time.

So, in response to the constructive criticism I received today. You asked for it. My back catalog of fictional short stories, penned in the bath. To regale you with, while I think of a way to screw my life up again : )

WALTER

"But, is it meant to be yellow, I swear they never used to be yellow," Walter surveyed his fingernails, picking dirt and shit out from under them and massaging it into his trousers, "no, I don't think it's meant to be yellow, they look flaky too, I don't think they are meant to be flaky, no."

Walter was displeased. Things weren't quite going the way he had planned. As one part of his body failed him it took all his attention, to the detriment of another, in this case his fingernails. He hadn't really even considered his previous ailment an affliction, if his penis didn't work then he no longer had to service that monstrosity of a woman he married some years earlier.

It wasn't that he was no longer interested in sex, far from it, a 25 year old posterior was always able to make his member tweak, even at it's most advanced state of circulatory deprivation. But the truth was, he didn't stand a chance. He got head spins when he took a crap.

Driving a bus for a living wasn't thrilling him either. While he enjoyed feeling big on the road , his bus was Napoleons hat. When he took it off, he wasn't so big. He had also run out of excuses. Driving a bus initially put him through school, then got his kids through school and now, well now, it was just something he did. It was never intended to be what he did.

2am and he woke in a panic. He had a bad dream. Perhaps the dream woke him, perhaps it was the guttural snoring and post orgasmic flatulence of the devil woman next to him, perhaps it was the increasing pressure of his regurgitating urinary overflow. Whatever it was. Things had to change. He wasn't going to stay here waiting for death, he was already dead.

Walter was not a man of action, he was a man of procrastination and eventual defeat. But not this time. Between 3am and 5am he planned his escape. He was going to be the man he wanted to be.

He ate breakfast at 5:30am and went for a run. His limbs burned. Coming home he showered casting a disdainful scowl at the lump of womanhood that moved only to relieve herself. He dusted off his finest suit. He got dressed and he went to work. But not his work. The work he would have had if he had stopped driving a bus 20 years before.

"I'm Walter Clarendon, Mr Whitman is expecting me," he said officiously.

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, I don't have you in his diary, did you have an appointment."

"Did I have an appointment?," raising his voice slightly, "get me in that office before I share with Mr Whitman how incompetent his PA is, I have had this appointment for 2 months, he requested that I fly in from Geneva and you have the hide to ask me..."

"Sorry Mr Clarendon, of course, take a seat, I'll free up some time, my mistake." She looked at him. This young thing looked at him, not through him, at him. He was commanding respect, his member tweaked. Brief discussion on the telephone and he was ushered in.

"Walter what are you doing here?"

"Barry, I need a fucking job."

"Walter..."

"Barry, I got you laid remember, I saved your life, save mine."

"Walter, you never finished you professional placement, I can't take you on, your too old, I have kids working for me with more qualifications and willing to work for less money, help me here buddy."

From his brief case Walter produced an antique tin, opening the lid to reveal a stack of Polaroid photographs.

"Sure Barry, I understand mate, but help me here buddy, these photos of you with an indigenous male minor, where do I leave them on my way out, how's the wife?"

Desperate Damsel v's Femme fetale

Saturday and the melancholy of last nights frivolity has worn off, I have showered, I am clean and good to go. So I made made my way to Glebe markets with $100 and hoped for something divine!

There she was, fat, aboriginal in origin, rude, mid-50's maybe and pumping out works dedicated to Robert A. Maguire classic crime noir illustrator. Where have you been all my life fat, rude, talented lady?

The interesting thing is that she only illustrates, desperate damsels. There are classically two types of crime noir heroine. The desperate damsel and the femme fetale.

My whole blog is femme fetale inspired. I just don't identify with the other. Crying bitches... please, just shoot the daddy in the back of the head and be done with it, right? Plenty more where they came from.

So, I bought one.

This one.

I thanked her profusily, tried to wax lyrical about the genre, told her to send me a catalogue of her other work.

She didn't even look up, I was not even on this angsty middle aged womans radar. She was to0 involved getting her creative sad on. I love her! I wonder, if I had been the man that broke her heart would she have put her ink down, who knows?

Love it. So the teary love smacked damsel will sit pride of place above my couch and there she will stay. A constant reminder of why I will never be the desperate damsel!

This is one of mine... spot the difference.

Cya Daddy...

Uniting the twin disciplines of red shoes and mens hands...

"In Hand" water color and ink on paper. Mark Schwartz.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a weakness for two things, red shoes and men with nice hands.

Oh hello....
GOD CREATES MAN... MAN CREATES SHOES. S is having both, thanks.

Was what I thought when I made an impassioned decision to buy one of Mark's works this week. It's so powerful, raw and I just love it!

I've been checking out his work, prolific work actually, Mark can you sell me your work ethic too? Very few of them seem to have a human element, so this one had a particularly visceral appeal complemented by the bleed of the water colors.

The title has a resonance with me as well. There is nothing about my life presently that I feel like I have in hand. So it makes me feel kind of steady and reassured.

It's also just a little bit sexy.

It just fills me with such immense joy! It's marvelous!

Thanks Mark.

The girl who's house threw up Mexico!

I adore understated genius.

I had lunch on Sunday with a girlfriend I have known since primary school who smiled and allowed me to rant incoherently about my new years resolution to return to dress making. The vintage patterns I found online, the fabric I had bought and the mission it was to get my sewing machine home from the coast to Sydney on the train when I have the upper body strength of a tadpole.

"yeah, I do furniture," she said.

She pulled an elegant antique tin from her bag and pushed it across the table. It was her portfolio.

Oh holy Jesus! Maaike, you are a clever bitch! Her extensive travel through Mexico combined with her eclectic and tangential thought processes have influenced some of the coolest and most unique furniture projects I have ever seen.

Maaike, I hope you don't mind that I put your image here ; ) Of course you don't , your marvelous!

The Beppe (Frisian for Grandmother) Chair is covered in green velvet stripes previously destined for the dump, and labelled as "too ugly" by anyone who saw it on the bolt. Combined with Mexican roses and princess-and-the-pea cushions, the chair resembles my Beppe's adhoc sewing basket. http://www.maaidesign.blogspot.com/

I think you either love it or you hate it. Her house is full of these pieces, someone, who didn't love it once described her home as the house that threw up Mexico! I love it, played hard man, nice work!

In the words of Maaike, my new favorite creative she-hero.

If anyone, man or woman, tries to get between you and your creativity tell them:

"Stop making me a lesser person." : )

The Deadly Nightshade 2

The windows of the Brown estate were boarded up. The contents of the house disappeared as Byron Browns creditors clawed at everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Like a complete jigsaw puzzle being dismantled one piece at a time, Belladonna watched the life she knew disappear and the skeleton of a new one form.

The feeling of cold invisibility, she felt like a wallflower, a spectator as strangers in single file raped the contents of her home.

“No,” she screeched at one of the removalists, clutching her wooden spinning top until the carved symbols on its surface pressed red indentations into her palm. Set about his task he ignored the little girl’s protestations and her pain.

She was the last thing to be liquidated. Lilydale’s Finishing School sent a car for her one overcast Sunday. A heavyset Turkish schoolmistress, Ma’am, as she insisted on being called, had been sent to escort Belladonna to her new home.

“You will collect your things and come with me, your Grandfather has enrolled you and you will receive an education commensurate with your breeding. The death of your irresponsible parents was the best thing that could have happened to you, imagine, home schooling a child,” without making eye contact Ma’am judgmentally surveyed the wreckage of the once proud Brown estate, “Don’t dally child we have a long journey, go!”

Tears stung her eyes, “No!”

Throwing her toy on the ground she ran for the door. With her eyes closed she kept running but she could no longer feel the ground under her feet. Ma’am had her suspended by her shirt colour as she struggled desperately to free herself of this circumstance.

“You’d do well not to make an enemy of me young lady and I’ll only say this once more, GO!”

What do you pack? How do you pack a childhood into a single trunk? You can’t.

So she packed nothing.

“I’m ready, Ma’am”

“That’s a good girl.”

People to eat, things to see...

Not all cities can do food. Of course, all cities have food but Amsterdam is a city that does food, it enjoys it's food. It was an interesting dichotomy from New York where food is plentiful and quantity and economy are king to Amsterdam where quality reigns supreme.

No where is this dichotomy more evident than in chocolate. At the Hershey's store on 5th Avenue in New York I saw plump tourists smack their lips at the prospect of a bargain 3kg block of chocolate while in Amsterdam there are small, independently owned chocolate shops where you pay about the same but come away with half a dozen petite and artful morsels.



Puccini was a on the corner of our block and had everything from white chocolate with vanilla, dark chocolate with chili, gin with lime rind and walnut truffles with cinnamon.

When in Rome? When in Amsterdam, Pancake.

Pancakes at Barney's with strawberries and from Sara's pancake house with Bananas. Also my own attempt at French toast with the Maple syrup or Ahornstroop that I bought from the near by organic farmers market.





Cheese, Cheese and more Cheese. My favorite is the white fleshed semi-hard goats cheese which is made by hand in Holland. Above was my breakfast, Goats Cheese, Triple Bree with truffles, Saint Agur blue, tomato relish, Grapes and Sourdough (the coffee and the joint are out of frame ; ).It's worth a trip for the food alone but the best thing was the sense of community that all these small independent shops engender. I loved it! Although I think I'll go easy on the maple syrup next time ; ).

A European Black Hole

When I got home from my trip I had spectacularly vivid memories of New York, memories that wake me at night and pictures that make my daydreams more pleasant than they have been in a long time.

Amsterdam on the other hand...

When I recounted my trip to a friend,

"So, how was Amsterdam?"

"um..."

"Haha," he said, "don't worry, I had the same experience, Amsterdam is a black hole."

Names of places come back in a hazy fog and memories like an avant-garde montage.

Like many tourists holidaying with a new lover in a city where marijuana is legal, I fell into the proverbial black hole.

Walking from the apartment we stayed in, on more than one occasion we passed a preschool. It was -5 degrees and the children dropped off on the back of bicycles looked like adorable walking small winter coats, all eyes, mittens and feet.

Staying in the Centrum (the central precinct in Amsterdam) in a furnished apartment meant I could feel more a resident than a tourist.



Should you like winter and gray days then you would love this city in January.

The architecture is spectacular. Often described as a living museum, you can't help but walk around this city and feel humble. As Australians with our oldest European influenced architecture dating as recently as 200 years, Amsterdam is 700 years old in parts. The streets never built for traffic and the pace of life feels the same. It's foreign and infectious.

The view from the balcony of the apartment.

MoMA

Sorry, that wasn't my 100th post. She's pretty but can she count?

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is spectacular. I am intentionally making next years trip longer so I can spend more time there among other things.

Here are a few of my super favorite highlights! Enjoy!

'Chair No. 41' (1881) designed by Austrian Michael Thonet.

This is 1881 IKEA. Flat pack furniture. It is beechwood and cane and is the worlds first flat pack furniture. First designed to meet the needs of mass production and distribution in 1858.

I love the idea that in 1881 there was someone looking curiously at their new chair and saying,

"Are we meant to have an extra screw?"

I love biological modern art!

This is a series of Tissue Culture Art Projects by the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. It was referred to as 'The Pigs Wing Project'.

Proving that pigs can fly!

'Porca Miseria!' Chandelier (1994) by German Ingo Maurer.

This is totally awesome! Its a Chandelier that looks like a set of china and silver cutlery has exploded and is suspended in the air. Influenced by cinematic slow motion explosions, it is the artists rebellion against fashionable contemporary design.

I want one!

This is 'Drawing Restraint 9: Shimenawa' by Matthew Barney. This work was done in 2005 and the artist was born in 1967. Its a chromatic color print.

There are two incredible things that got me about this. It appears that the couple in the print are wet and only their severed torsos are floating on what looks like a milk bath. Its a divine visual effect, your brain really thinks when looking at this.

But the second, and my favorite draw card about this work is the symbolism. The passionate embrace and the two knives at the ready. So true, don't you think? How vulnerable we make ourselves in that situation, both ready to defend yourselves emotionally if you need to.




This work is breathtaking. You sort of need to be there. While a lot of the modern art around it was making noise and vying for you attention. This one kind sat there quietly but its asymmetrical aesthetic and humble color drew me to it. You feel balanced and happy when you are looking at this.

David Navros 'VI:XXXII' (1966) Vinyl lacquer paint on shaped canvases.



'Untitled' (1990) by Christopher Wool. This work is commanding, taking up almost an entire wall. it is part of a series of enamel on wood language-based black-and-white works. The expression was used in the 1957 movie, Sweet Smell of Success, written by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets.

I love this phrase, its is said to indicate that a dirty job has been done.

Question: "Did you take care of it?"

Response: "Cats in bag, bags in river."

Oh God it was all marvelous! I want to go back now : (

The Chelsea Hotel

There were a handful of things that I needed to do when in New York. The most important of which was to stay at the Chelsea Hotel. The Chelsea prides itself on being 'the rest stop for rare individuals'.

Think hard, because you may be more familiar with it than you think. It has had such famous residents as Janis Joplin, Brett Whitely, Jimmy Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Arthur C Clark and Stanley Kubrick while they wrote '2001 a Space Odyssey'. To name a few. I asked for the room where Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy, and the poster out the front of our room makes me think I may have got my wish!




The foyer is a circus. I spent ages here just taking it all in. The eclecticism and the vibrant history that is represents. I loved it!



The spectacular light filled stairwell. There were elevators but the stairwell walls are covered in art. The wrought iron railings make you want to cry. I didn't use that elevator much ; ).


The portrait of Sid Vicious, of the Sex pistols, that hung outside our room. He allegedly stabbed Nancy in the Chelsea.




Our room and its view. We only spent two days here but next year when I head back, I am there for whole time! The staff are rude bordering on arrogant. There is no room service. The rooms look like a 5yr old did the paint work.

So, if your after a hotel that feels like a hotel, then your in the wrong place. But, if your after a soul feeding experience and a hotel that feels like a gestalt entity. Then The Chelsea is your girl!

Utterly magnificent!

www.hotelchelsea.com

Shoes, bags and Little Italy

Pizza, Red wine and warm apple cider in Little Italy.

and...um.... Shoes

more specifically, Fluevogs.

What is a Fluevog?

A Fluevog is a brand of shoe. But the word shoe is inadequate. Footwear isn't sufficient either. A Fluvog is a religious experience and I bought four pairs when I was in New York!!!!

Thankyou John Fluevog!

That's my pile of boxes! Kim and the sexy sales boy that measured my feet! They work on a commission structure so he was as excited about my purchases as I was.

I had budgeted for this and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to walk into the Fluevog store in Little Italy and make it my own. I did just that! I'll have that one, those, those in green and do have these with an open toe?

Handbag heaven is a nearby shop, aptly named BAG. You can smell the leather from the street and it draws you in as you are captivated by the colors, designs and pure elegance of it all. That's the blue leather bag I bought. Can you legally marry a handbag?

OMG!

The shopping in Little Italy is supurb! Bugger 5th avenue with its ostentatious overpriced rubbish that you can buy in any city in the world. Little Italy is an enclave for those New York only gems!

Plus once your done and you need somewhere to sit to catch your breath while you go into a mild form of shock about how much you spent.

Australian wines are very popular in a lot of the restaurants in Little Italy , while I stuck to the Italian and American wines it was nice to see us on the menu!

Little Italy and China Town are separated by a single road. It is surreal. While we didn't make it to Yum Cha we did walk though illegal reseller ally.

Its worth going to New York just for that, I think. Mainly African Americans standing at make shift stalls screaming,

"Get a Rolex before the cops do!"

But my favorite was the guy that stopped Kim and I and said,

"Hey baby girl, new Rolex? new Handbag? new boyfriend?"

Needless to say I didn't stop there to take photos ; ).