Greetings Dear Connoisseurs of the Arts (mine),
This is the third duck commission, which I promised for the last blog but forgot. The two ducks’ main activities were eating snails, chasing the dog, and swimming in their custom-made pool. They lived near my farm in Mulbring, NSW.
Today’s short story imagines the situation of a weak-minded and idealistic young man who wants to change his little piece of the world to match his delusions, but luckily he has a strong, good-humoured woman waiting in the wings.
A Temporary Peace
WELL, it’s a very small house, cottage, hut (converted tool shed actually), but it has been dedicated to Your glory, and houses (huts?) some of Your creatures. To live in freedom and harmony. And chastity. Purity. A vegetarian diet cleanses the soul and cools the blood.
I rise in the cool of early morning and tend the vegetable garden. There will soon be food enough for us all. It pains me that I still have to visit the store (creeping through the shrubbery, eyes averted) to obtain our sustenance. But I am gradually learning my companions’ likes and dislikes. I suppose I will always have to buy in a supply of pasta for Laura, but Lady Ming pleases me with her preference for stir-fried beans. Soon the garden will provide for her. The sunflowers will feed Aurora, and Pan should be well content with the bounty of the back lawn.
This morning The Evil Temptress visits (I shall refer to her as ET, I told Laura later), disgustingly underclad in damp lycra. Laura trembles, fearing the effect of ET’s seductive wiles, and presses herself against me. I lie a hand reassuringly on her shoulder. ET overflows with worldly witticisms which fall tack-flat in the aesthetic atmosphere of the godly abode.
Frozen out by our silence she departs, leaving behind a beef casserole. Before I can seize it for disposal, Laura leaps onto the table and wolfs down the lot while Lady Ming claws and screams in her efforts to share the offensive repast.
I find their behaviour disturbing in the extreme. Obviously the conversion of my contemporaries’ eating habits was not as thorough as I had hoped, and this incident represents a major set-back.
Another week has gone by, Creator, in the undemanding company of my friends, spent in the simple healthful pleasures of tilling the soil and contemplating Your miracles. Today should see my last visit to the store as the garden nears my goal of self-sufficiency.
ET visits again. I hide in the hedge and watch her enter The Abode. She emerges laughing. She laughs again as she strolls through the vegetable patch, and departs carrying two zucchinis.
Disaster! ET did not close the gate, and while I was at the store Pan got in and consumed most of the produce, trampling the rest. I find it difficult to suppress my desire to hug him around the neck – very hard. Really, a goat is quite satanic in its features. Perhaps Pan is not really one of the Creator’s works at all. Inside, Aurora had discovered my abandoned muesli breakfast and consumed it (a huge bowl), then flew crappingly about. I don’t think she missed one single fabric item. Your creatures do have their flaws, Mighty One.
I take the floor rugs, doona cover, curtains, bath towel, tea towel, etc. down to the creek to soak clean. I have draped myself in the camouflage net so that ET would not see me. With all this drama I have neglected to feed Your creatures today; thus shall they learn the virtue of Patience.
When I return with dripping cloths beneath my camouflage, I discover Lady Ming on the back lawn surrounded by colourful feathers. She is purring loudly, her tail swishing ecstatically from side to side as she crunches her way through the remaining leg of the incontinent Aurora.
“A leopard cannot change his spots, Lord, nor a Siamese her instincts,” I remark to the heavens with surprisingly little sorrow as I hang my burden upon the line.
Pan is not on the back lawn, nor in the defunct veggie patch. A line of little black bullets leads to the door, which again I had forgotten to close.
“Pan!” I roar, and run inside with Laura close behind. Pan is standing on my bed in a puddle of his own piss. The ubiquitous faeces are trodden into the doona, pillows and floor.
I am temporarily paralysed with fury, but Laura reacts with extraordinary speed. A missile of bristling hair and tearing claws, she flies past me with a bloodcurdling snarl, leaps onto the bed, and rips out Pan’s throat with her bared fangs.
My world is tumbling about me, and above the turmoil, the spurting blood, the gnashing teeth, rises the mocking laughter of the Evil Temptress.
“Come away,” she cries. “Come home!”
She grasps my hand and leads me off. My weakened legs take me trembling jelly-like through the mess of my house/hut, over the feathers and up the slope to the Big House, Laura and Lady Ming following.
ET shuts the door in their faces and leads me to the bedroom.
This poem describes one of my livelier days when I worked an an oil and gas geologist for Esso Oil. I could begin the day in the office, suitably tarted up, and find myself on an oil rig in Bass Strait by the end.
Working in Oil
Then I drag my cold bod on the train;
Several short hops through a number of stops,
While I hope to myself it won’t rain.
Lipstick, makeup, earrings, dress – wobbling on high heels to impress.
I’m pressed with the rest off the train:
the roaring sound of the underground,
then I’m out in the sleet and the rain.
Splashy, splashy, not so flashy – glaring eyes and teeth a-gnashy.
but it’s all put on hold when I’m told,
“Grab your bag and some dough, to the rig you must go,
and be there ere the day grows old.”
So taxi, home, bag – to airport, don’t lag – no-one who works in oil dare drag.
then it’s over the sea in the sky
with a slow, steady motion to that speck in the ocean
to that rig where the choppers all fly.
Now it’s overalls, earplugs, boots and hardhat – where the seals play below and the platforms are flat.
but there’s sorrow on the dials of the crew;
“We’ve blunted the bit, there’s no speed left in it,
so there’s not much for you to do.”
For days and days and days and days – and days and days and days…
