ignore the people in my head, to walk into the room with a straight back, to shake hands and smile, to remember the interviewersâ names and make a warm-but-not-too-intense kind of eye contact, to consider their questions carefully and to answer calmly, but with precision. I am acting in a play. I am assuming a character I wish was me â articulate and responsive and measured.
The new job is four days a week, writing articles for GPs in the core areas of general practice: ischaemic heart disease, asthma, diabetes, depression, hypertension, common infections in children, soft tissue injuries, arthritis. The other members of the âteamâ are keenly self-sufficient and not particularly welcoming. Iâm given a desk and a computer and Iâm told to write an article on new drugs for congestive cardiac failure. Thereâs a list of cardiologists and pharmacologists with whom I have to consult. My desk looks out onto the front of a BDSM house (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism). Occasionally one of the Mistresses comes out for a smoke dressed in a black shiny catsuit complete with tail and lace-up boots climbing her thighs.
The espresso machine confounds me. When I finally manage to make a cup of coffee my hands shake so much from the lithium that half of it spills as I walk back to my desk. The people in my head interject while I read journal articlesâ
spasm spam ride the blue train colitis mastitis arthritis red reel
Mornings I catch the train to work. There are other people on the train. Many of them. Iâm afraid of their eyes. Carriage doors leer open, are disembowelled of people. Mobile phones ring and make me jump. Sometimes I canât find a space with enough air in it: there are bodies pressing, pressing, smelling of cigarettes and burnt cheese and blood and body odour. Bodies wriggling and scratching â the movement of flesh.
touch him touch her SCREAM
I stay very still, lines of sweat run down the back of my legs.
Once the sun is low enough in the sky after work I walk to the local pub. Candles along the bar and on the tables provide the only light, candles cosseted inside frosted glass so that the light is soft and foggy. The tables and chairs and floor and ceiling are old wood stained dark. It is warm. There are velvet curtains and few patrons, no racehorse or footballer photographs in gilt frames and no particular dress code. People sink into the couches. I unzip my coat and stretch out. I may stay here forever in this cocooning light, with whisky and black coffee, my scruffy notebooks and the sprung rhythm of GM Hopkins.
âGin and tonic?â repeats the bar woman to someone with his back to me. âOh hell yeah, full of vitamins,â and they both laugh.
Dolly Parton is singing âJoleneâ. Jolene, please . . .
Easter. Though not of the Christian faith, Jesusâ sort-of-suicide is fascinating and I carry around a quiet sadness â not about his death in particular but about Death and Grief. To find some spiritual space I book the cats into a cattery and pack the tent and camera and food and drive up to the Alpine National Park in northeastern Victoria.
My father taught me about photography when I was quite young. He had a Nikon SLR. Before I was born he worked in the ABC television studios so he knew all about light and perspective.
âDonât just snap away,â heâd say. âTake your time. Think about your foreground. How you can make the photograph appear 3-dimensional.â
I love trying out new angles, changing the ISO or filter, lying flat on my back looking up the trunk of a tree, crouching in a corner, or waiting for thirty minutes till the light changes in the rain for that one shot when the pink sun bloodies rain drops and makes them live.
Thereâs a car park off the Bogong High Plains Road from which I begin walking. This is the traditional country of the Bidawal people, the Dhudhuroa, Gunai-Kurnai and
The new job is four days a week, writing articles for GPs in the core areas of general practice: ischaemic heart disease, asthma, diabetes, depression, hypertension, common infections in children, soft tissue injuries, arthritis. The other members of the âteamâ are keenly self-sufficient and not particularly welcoming. Iâm given a desk and a computer and Iâm told to write an article on new drugs for congestive cardiac failure. Thereâs a list of cardiologists and pharmacologists with whom I have to consult. My desk looks out onto the front of a BDSM house (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism). Occasionally one of the Mistresses comes out for a smoke dressed in a black shiny catsuit complete with tail and lace-up boots climbing her thighs.
The espresso machine confounds me. When I finally manage to make a cup of coffee my hands shake so much from the lithium that half of it spills as I walk back to my desk. The people in my head interject while I read journal articlesâ
spasm spam ride the blue train colitis mastitis arthritis red reel
Mornings I catch the train to work. There are other people on the train. Many of them. Iâm afraid of their eyes. Carriage doors leer open, are disembowelled of people. Mobile phones ring and make me jump. Sometimes I canât find a space with enough air in it: there are bodies pressing, pressing, smelling of cigarettes and burnt cheese and blood and body odour. Bodies wriggling and scratching â the movement of flesh.
touch him touch her SCREAM
I stay very still, lines of sweat run down the back of my legs.
Once the sun is low enough in the sky after work I walk to the local pub. Candles along the bar and on the tables provide the only light, candles cosseted inside frosted glass so that the light is soft and foggy. The tables and chairs and floor and ceiling are old wood stained dark. It is warm. There are velvet curtains and few patrons, no racehorse or footballer photographs in gilt frames and no particular dress code. People sink into the couches. I unzip my coat and stretch out. I may stay here forever in this cocooning light, with whisky and black coffee, my scruffy notebooks and the sprung rhythm of GM Hopkins.
âGin and tonic?â repeats the bar woman to someone with his back to me. âOh hell yeah, full of vitamins,â and they both laugh.
Dolly Parton is singing âJoleneâ. Jolene, please . . .
Easter. Though not of the Christian faith, Jesusâ sort-of-suicide is fascinating and I carry around a quiet sadness â not about his death in particular but about Death and Grief. To find some spiritual space I book the cats into a cattery and pack the tent and camera and food and drive up to the Alpine National Park in northeastern Victoria.
My father taught me about photography when I was quite young. He had a Nikon SLR. Before I was born he worked in the ABC television studios so he knew all about light and perspective.
âDonât just snap away,â heâd say. âTake your time. Think about your foreground. How you can make the photograph appear 3-dimensional.â
I love trying out new angles, changing the ISO or filter, lying flat on my back looking up the trunk of a tree, crouching in a corner, or waiting for thirty minutes till the light changes in the rain for that one shot when the pink sun bloodies rain drops and makes them live.
Thereâs a car park off the Bogong High Plains Road from which I begin walking. This is the traditional country of the Bidawal people, the Dhudhuroa, Gunai-Kurnai and
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