furtive photo

There was this cat-face pillow in the back of a silver car and I stopped, stepped onto the naturestrip and pulled out my camera. Across the road I saw two people on a porch, smoking, watching me. I took my photo, knowing they were in the corner of the picture and walked away hot-cheeked, feeling as if I was being followed. Maybe this was their car and they put the cat-face pillow there to lure passersby. Notice how their bin's out? Green rubbish was sometime last week, but maybe they always leave it there.

Look across the road. The guy in the beige jacket across the road with the camera. He's on the naturestrip. He’s going to take a photo of us. We're sitting on the porch having a cup of tea! Off he shuffles. He knows we saw him. He’s going to walk the whole way down the street with his hands like that, like he’s stolen something.

Excuse me? Have you got permission? You can't go taking my photo without permission. / But you're a cat pillow. / Have you got permission? / Who do I ask? / Me. / You're a cat pillow. / Yes, and you have to ask my permission. / How? / How do you think? By asking me. Can I take your photo, please. / But I'm talking to you in my head. I'm imagining this conversation. / That's right, I'm the talking cat pillow. In your head.

=

How to take random photos of people without their permission, or how to ask someone's permission I was thinking when I saw the family on their bicycles in the middle of the road, grandparents, Dad, daughter on a white-tyred, pink bike. She'd stopped to do something and the whole family just straddled their bikes in the middle of the road waiting for her to get back on her bike. The grandfather gave me a look, probably because I was looking at them. A car had to swerve around them. I turned away, kept walking, looked at fresh concrete landscaping in a front yard. 

Once at Oakleigh Market I saw someone with an SLR around her neck photograph a basket of red capsicum. The stall holder got really angry at her. You have to buy these she said. But she took the photo and ran off. 

furtive photo

On the other side of the picket fence of this twin townhouse a man in his front yard was wiping down the dark metal frame of a glass-topped table. When I stood in the driveway to capture the astroturf sculpture I made sure the bushes at the front of the house obscured me from the man and his table.

imaginary review

I saw before getting in the car to get to the pizza restaurant
http://jacket2.org/commentary/our-radar-ride-alice-notley
I took a Daniel Johnston CD with me and at the foot of the street
with the margarita sunset thick on the horizon over the park
It's Over It's Over playing through I thought that's a good idea
write an imaginary review of Alice Notley. There's no other
way I'm going to get to read that book, I have a copy of the sonnets
but never bought no Notley from Collected Works. And now
I shall write the next part of my review with the Dvorak keyboard
C cmaicb.e pcidycbi yr Hajt.y2 abe o.becbi yd.m ydco ncbtv
Ancj. bryn.f-o yddcpyc.yd xrrt co d.p ucb.oy f.y oaf yd. xngpxo
Back to Qwerty: instead of I remember, I imagine. When I
get the pizza and gnocchi bolognese, there's a car pulling out
in front of me, so I eat a slice of molten margarita salty and soft
with Aint No Woman Gonna Make a George Jones Outta Me
whatever that means, DJ repels Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers
feeds him acid. Driving home with one hand down a side street
I dictate in my head: I imagine this is also part of the review.
On a table in the pizza restaurant was a poem in black marker:

This Table is Not in Use.

com post

I'd left the compost bucket outside after dark, brought it in to do the dishes.
On the lip of the bucket was a big cockroach, a bushie, that dropped to the floor.
I scooped it up, popped it back in the bucket and dropped a used teabag on it.
There was an earwig in there too and a little cockroach, a German, on the lip.
I watched the roaches try to climb the slimy sides of the bucket as I washed
mugs and plates, scraping tinned corn kernels and corn chip crumbs,
then I took them out to the compost and left the bucket outside.

last night's viewing

Omega Man
The trailer made me wish we'd watched this instead of Will Smith's version. The motorbike stunt down stadium stairs is jagged, and Rosalind Cash wears a leather suit. Bright red blood.

Westworld
I'd seen this one at the Astor (the trailer that is). Starring the Dad from Little House on the Prairie, a scary image of some Roman bust in a stream, Yul Brynner's shiny contacts and a convincing rattler, also bright red blood.

Soylent Green
Naturally. But this was not the trailer with the refrain I like to repeat around the house from time to time: What is the secret of Soylent Green. R asked, what is Soylent Green and we said you'll have to watch the movie. With Edward G Robinson and thrillseeker Chuck Connors who was also in:

Flipper
Wherein Chuck promises son he'll kill any dolpin who gets in the way of his nets. Even Flipper? Even Flipper. But the kid rescues the dolphin. M said she watched this every afternoon, the TV show that is.

The New Adventures of Flipper
This one's set on an island, but it doesn't star Chuck, even though the voiceover promises excitement for any red-blooded boy or Dad. There's underwater caves and green bananas and Flipper flips a fish to a girl. The voiceover promises it's like a dream.

Dracula
We were getting the hang of watching trailers so we looked this one up because K told us about a meme about armadilloes in the movies that apparently no one knew about armadilloes until they appeared in the original Dracula. There's no armadilloes in the preview, only floppy bats. What did he do to you? He made me drink...

Freaks
Also directed by Todd Browning, but not so much of a trailer more a couple of scenes cut together, punters looking into a box, a lady screaming, two small people having a tiff and the small man flirting with tall lady. Viewers also watched:

Them!
See the whole film in two and half minutes! From teletype tickertape technology to bazooka igniting pool of oil! Comes with a catchy acrostic: Terror Horror Entertainment Monsters! R felt sorry for the giant ants and this afternoon said she wanted to watch the movie. You've seen it already I tried to persuade. Directed by Gordon Douglas or Douglas Gordon who also made:

Viva Knievel
Evel's first movie vehicle, also starring his stars and stripes motorbike and his haircut, Lauren Hutton in a jumpsuit, Leslie Nielson in a porsche and Red Buttons, who joins Rip Torn and Nique Needles in my venn diagram slash pantheon of actors with unnames for names. The theme tune is sing-around-the-house-able and there's a motorbike stunt down stadium stairs.

today's reading

Day of feeling poor memory.

This morning before work Gavin Yuan Gao in Stilts journal

                                [...]I hear summer moult

into autumn, persimmons untethered
               from stalwart branches thudding
                          to the ground like bells of flesh.

I don't know if persimmons do that - they're fairly firmly tethered to the branch and will stay there long after the orange leaves have gone, so long as the birds don't get them; and 'like bells of flesh', isn't fruit flesh already? An invisible simile?

Cycling, pondering over the persimmons, then an old man in business shirt on footpath with pendulous belly.

And Dženana Vucic also in Stilts.

and i wade out with this summer’s froglets  
skipping against my shins

Like a friend's memory of her grandparent's rice paddy in Sendai, covered in frogs. This one is structured semantically.

Then Peter Porter in Meanjin which I could half not work out - for example, why 'Yeats's Nobel head' and what is 'the long tree of light'?

Waited in the car for takeaway burgers with Be With, Forrest Gander with the inside light. Put book in glovebox so as not to rest greasy bags on it. Made mental note to remember to bring it inside so it didn't cook in the car.

After doing dishes, a mug of tea to the radio, Marlon Williams singing aria from Tannhäuser.

Then Happy Gilmore while trying to recall the actor playing the nasty orderly's name, to add to the list of unlocked names: Julian Assange, Le Corbusier, Kenneth Rexroth, and Fiona something, still to be solved.

accidental found poem