Tannic Teeth

(Warning – shameless self-promotion ahead)

It was quite some time ago that Steve [now editor of DDD] and I talked about starting a literary magazine for Perth. It was at Alda’s on a later summer day. It was a casual conversation born at a writing-meet held by myself to help writers publish their work. From small things, big things grow. Even magazines.

Dotdotdash came into being by a collaboration of artists, writers and a platoon of tireless helpers. All staff are volunteers with not a penny to be made. Its topics cover creative non-fiction, travel, poetry, short story. It’s textured with art throughout.  The first topic – quicksand.Steve has done a fantastic job creating a magazine showcasing some of Perth’s up-and-coming writers and artists.

Definitely watch this space.

dotdotdash

(Quarterly)

Issue 01 (Quicksand)

Out now

So week seven. How has the writing and new technologies course been so far?

It’s been good. As one would expect the pace of uni now has moved into hyper speed with a lots of assignments due all tragically within the same week. As if it was by some tormented creator everything else in my life is ramping up. Work would like more hours, I’m offered another job, I’ve got this photography thingo to do, I’m wanting to start yoga, got to think about writing next months wine article whilst taking on more of an editorial job. LOL. Really I should be a little more thorough in my work that i churn out here first as a good start point. Oh yeah what did this have to do with my reflections on the my course (shit – sorry!) umm yeah the course has taught me so far to look through texts as well as looking at them and that the digital realm is fluid and ever changing. one thing about it is that rules are broken in every genera. With all that now aside I feel like a beer. This was taken at the James Squire Chef Match Launch on Monday 8th Sept.

(Writing and New Technologies Exercise Week 7)

This day was not particularly cool – even for that time of year. The heat lurching up from the pavement only reflected more by the sun’s incessant rays. Every where there is concrete and bricks and mortar. Nature has been progressively replaced and you feel trapped in this God forsaken city. The Canal today is particularly rank. Its slow moving water peppered with flotsam from people upstream who cared not to dispose of their refuse on the street. You were told yesterday that young girl tried to kill herself there. She jumped into the fetid slow moving tributary and no one swam to her aid. If it wasn’t for that police officer – visiting his mistress in Nevsky prospect – that he wouldn’t have chanced upon her splashing. Why did she just not put her head under and drown herself quickly, effectively and without fuss or botherment. You think maybe she changed her mind mid jump, as her dress parachuted out. Or perhaps it was the refreshing, though, squalid water, seeping though her fine lace corset that made her feel alive once again.

You saw this whole scene unfold in the corner of your eye walking up to cross Kazansky Bridge. She was a little dollop of cream on the corner of the plate then, she vanished into the water. You gave a shout which ultimately attracted the attention of the Policeman Utyosov who came running. Surprisingly it didn’t take long for him to remove all his clothes before diving in to save the girl; in fact it was like as if he was already half disrobed, making the whole scene look like a melodramatic play unfolding by corny street actors. The girl was making far too much noise for someone that had the intention of self destruction. Utyosov was a not a tall man nor was he particularly short. He was of portly proportions though, looking like he had been stuffed into his cloths, the fabric around his buttons pulled tight into triangles of tension. A fat stocky man undressing whilst running, saving some dollop of cream in the river turned out for you anyway – a comical affair. But you were not the only one that found the scene unfolding comical. There was a man in the bridge too. A tall man but of meagre build. He wore threadbare clothes and had a general miserly appearance about him. He laughed sardonically with a hiss from his a broken tooth. You both noticed each others sense of humour, caught eye, then shuffled away in both directions, embarrassed.

So you have an assignment due on Friday, a 20 percenter (1000-1200 words) in Writing for Popular Mags. Attempt one, which I shall call Version 1.0, a measly 2 lines, lies in my other window collecting e-dust as I try to entertain my caffeinated thoughts. Maybe this is a good little mental warm-up, you know like stretching before tackling that rock-climbing wall or bouldering problem (Yes -I know Devil’s Advocate I haven’t climbed in a while – but I still think I’ll whop your ass!).

Limber your thoughts before creating your next masterpiece?

LOL.

Getting those neural pathways firing in all directions so you can only discover that ‘it’s about time to vacuum your room, dust and do the rest of the things that you didn’t find the time for over the weekend,’ but because you have an assignment lording over you, now is better time than any. My mental browser tracks between the aforementioned assignment, boring-ass work this arvo and Her. I like the frenetic pace of my tangled thoughts, ‘twisted reasons that strange my mind like liquorice laces.’

Perhaps I like the pressure. Diamonds after all, are created by such.

Week 4 has ticked past me like a Dali clock: painfully slow then exceedingly fast. Of course all the fun times blur past and you hope your 8hr bottle-shop shift on a Saturday night is already over. Divvying up time from uni, relationships, gym, work and my jealousy guarded sleep leaves nothing much left for simply sitting down, as I am now, and thinking about how the hell the next 10 or so weeks of uni will pass. One day at a time I guess, but with a little more clarity and focus? That’s what I would like. And it’s not found in a bottle of wine, it’s found during those times of silent contemplation (only silent because I can’t have my music up loud because people are sleeping now). This unit is interesting- as for the Assignment that we have to be ‘considering’ at the moment, I have paid it no regard. But I’ll start it soon I guess, maybe tomorrow after my indulgent sleep.

(Writing and New Technologies Exercise Week 3)

I would wake up every morning and hope my luck would hold out on me. I had to run into the stinging surf, the hiss of bubbles around me, a spa for those how dared to live, amongst rocks jagged like a boars spine. We were looking for mermaid’s tears, each one of us rejoicing when we discovered a mature one, lovely and rounded by thunderous surf. Sometimes they were really fresh, jagged as a sawtooth, far too immature to trade with the Cirrus people. They liked the reds the oranges and blacks. But the black ones are becoming rarer and rarer something that they have a developed a great appetite for. To them it reminded them of sunsets, something they rarely if ever saw

I have always been amused by their ways. They take the mermaid’s tears, polish them and embed it along their faces. Following the contours of leathery hides blasted by years of living at high altitude on their floating cities. Our soft skin would never so much as hold a single tear, for our kingdom is the surf; the edge of the mighty oceans, for we are fluid like the waves that pommel us. But we were just on another level those Cirrus above and the ‘Others’ below. Those that exist below us, in an unsigned contract never to venture into others realms. Sometimes when we swim out too The Lens and look down we see the Underlords, harvesting their bounty but selfishly do not trade.

The higher ranking Cirrus wear the Tears in designs that us beachcombers have seen in the sky. Patterns swirl across their faces, a testament to the clouds they harvest. I have always envied their freedom, for skycombing must be liberating.

(thoughts of Writing and New technologies thus far)

To be honest, I really love this unit. It’s learn-at-your-own-pace (except you better have those postings up by Wednesday arvo), listen-to-when-you-want lectures enable us as busy students (that also work and have relationships) to keep slightly less bogged down lives considering to brave a 40min drive south of the river for uni time.

I do enjoy the unit questions, which probe my understanding of text based new media. I would really like to have a physical meet up at the tavern – perhaps at the end of the semester to put names to all the faces that just appear as text with non-physical identities. As a result of reading and writing more, I feel, but it may not be so evident, (due to my shoddy spelling partly due to the speed at which I type) but I have increased by vocabulary and the weaving of sentences together (a craft in itself) has become easier.

Perhaps just a compulsive thing, but I must post a photo of something when I blog, so I’ll leave you to guess where this is in the city of Perth.

Writing and New Technologies (Writing Exercise Week 3)

Who am I? Where do we truly exist?

Mind or matter? What is more important?

Well science tells me that I exist in some a strange phenomenon called Space-Time. Apparently it’s a continuum too. It’s linear. That means there is no turning back and presumably -putting all my eggs in one basket- Hawking and Co. might be right that we will see an end to it in a few billion years. But as for now I physically exist in space time. I am tangible. Enough said.

But my existence or identity could be considered intangible. My identity as a blogger appears here, most simplistically as the electric impulses of 1’s and 0’s but miraculously programmed into a coherent expression of self – that is – the writer. I exist as I am typing this out on Microsoft word with all permutations of conscious feelings, I also exist to you, my (dear) reader wherever you reside on the earth’s mantle my identity –creepily- follows these truncated words of inner intimacy.

The duality of both existences certainly presses for more inner questioning, however before I get too lost down the rabbit hole of ‘Cogito ergo sum’, and start ranting on about all the oblique mishmash of philosophical existence I’ll put the matter to rest. By the way…

Who are you?

Writing and New Technologies (Writing Exercise Week 1)

A face without a name

I love people watching. Not in a creepy stalker-ish kind of way, but just to observe people as especially being in the city, surrounded by hundreds of other unfamiliar faces, one is granted some anonymity from the usual glaring faces that cause us judgement. I walk the city many times during the week; I see few familiar faces, the rest smear into the amorphous crowd like Perth station during peak hour. There is one man I see regularly. He always catches my eye. He wears the conventions of days of yore; in his hackneyed gait, his sullen face, the tatty leather jacket -of which I’m sure it’s his only one – and the characteristic Black Akubra that I’ve never seen him without. He looks oddly out of place amongst steel and concrete. He looks lost. He belongs in a dusty Western; on a horse riding into the red sunset. He looks lonely and sad. He looks like a cowboy that time forgot.

I really don’t know what he does; some people say he bets of the ponies, living from windfall to windfall. Others say he works as a sheerer in times when seasons demand. Others still say he is a millionaire, given up all the conventions of palatial superfluosity, to live a life free from overarching trust funds and hollow social obligations. Whatever he does do, must be interesting. It must spill fort around him, colouring his world in sepia tones. Bars probably ARE still saloons where dancing girls doubled as fine poker players and tripled as ‘something more’ but only when Bourbon flowed and pockets brimmed with cash. I wonder if he ever thinks he’s judged. If he ever thinks the anonymous faces gleaming back at him knows of his past? What he’s seen though those milky eyes? The loves lost, victories won, brethren he’s buried? His story? History.

Untold, for that it surely is.

Endevouring to be the good student second time round at uni, my blog will, at least partly, fall victim to some of my assessments. Gone are the days of languid studentdom doing the bare minimum to pass; I actually desire the HD of assessments long unattainable. Now perhaps is my time to get cracking…

In a strange twist of fate or fortuitous serendipity, the unit that I was originally enrolled in was canned (due to lax numbers), that I thought was critical: learning to write right. Sadly my poor grammar and syntax will be inflicted upon undeserving side units (and their respective tutors) in what I would term ‘collateral damage’ -not entirely Rumsfieldian. By choosing this unit which is Writing and New Technologies I’ve managed to shave off 3 hrs of physical contact time at uni, but possibly increased my online time 4 fold not to mention my morbidly obese download limit.  The unit looks like it’s more student instigated learning, a change from the force fed hold-my-hand pampering I have been used to in the past.

I look forward to the new semester ahead. Bring on the mi-goreing and red bull.