Took observations in pencil on the move that I wrote balancing the page on my thigh, would never look at them again, ripped out of something that hardly belonged to me. Dad would ask respectfully, as we coughed out our shared rheum nosed allergy, stacking hay bales in the last acts of the working day, what value I saw in my work driving a taxi, and his response, when I told him, involved his Shakespearean uncle, the peripatetic chemist who walked the streets and recited to empty streets well into his dotage. I knew it was a compliment. On a bright day the airy panorama on one side of that property, which stretched toward the bay, had the power to give perspective and confidence as if to explorers imagining their future navigation through the distances. But the same wind grew and wailed as it closed around the outlier at night from the mountain side, and seemed to inhabit the insides of the metal roof as we looked at each other askance with each new violent rush.
When I worked it seemed like a city of millions lurcing along only well established arteries of escapist grog and grief. My notes were published for a while but this must have been unnatural to me for it gave a deep unease which suggested there was something premature at that time and worth protecting. It seemed to me what I wrote down was removed from the main highway of belief of what is generally known, and perhaps valuable for this reason alone, so I should not let it slip through my fingers unexamined. Humus on the forest floor, the edge of knowledge, edge of my knowledge anyway, truth sought for its own sake, the scrub fantail surely would scratch and turn over my observations into some redeeming use. Perhaps I was eyewitness of the almost missed or the lost drunk overboard washed up with red eyed on some undiscovered continent. Sensed something deeper felt there was no sense to it or way to articulate, to do with this sort of ebb and flow of events in the cab. Meaningfully parcelled, performances alcohol loosed, random, festooned, staged, threats coiling off the tongue – seek the heroin hit straight out of jail, then a minute later the richest man in the country arrives, they changed seats and I could hardly tell the difference. In the background one arrival posed a question for consideration, answered by the next.
A mother’s child, now in my headlight on the outbound lane made a mistake that was now immaterial, for he was crushed and encased in the metal cloak of roof and doors nowhere to look but straight back at me. His breath heaves, I took off my shirt. Elsewhere young man alone on the footpath, would be like a piece of cardboard detritus if he was left there for a day or so, his viscous blood flooding the cigarette stubbed grey the centre of his thoughts loves dreams. In this sort of lowering background we were married at 30 and 27 at the farm next to the creek, her grandfather from the old country proud and resplendent but with no English, a beaming talisman for our future. Easy to choose we were both free, my first nephew in arms of the new generation present. Red bellied black snake in langour on the site when the guests arrived which they were told to disregard, hay bales from our stack were placed around as seats.