‘Chilblains’, Art Gallery of NSW
This morning: a hard wind on my soul. Chilblains knife up my wrists at a small kindness. I spend the day tallying slights against me, and I can’t wait to tell god about it. The first time I’ve seen non-rehab art in years; it is horrible. Prams in dark rooms, nubile art students, cute children not mine with parents my own age. No kindly therapists, just Louise Bourgeois tromping through the day in various types of clay. Centrelink makes the price of admission cheaper. I spend my kindness on a small god; it can’t wait. The soul on my wrists winds up my chilblains this morning. Hard slights tell the knife about me, tallying up the day. Emerging is never over. Important dates on calendars: I have been sober for 1000 days = new occasion to measure How Far I Have Come (3rd installation). I have a spreadsheet full of resentments, character defects and fears, an autopsy of my chilblains. This slights god but he can’t knife a soul today, so waits in the wind. My life, up until this point, had been psychological folk art. My report from the psych ward: rehab Uno is perilous. What is up against me? I tell the morning about a kindness, small and hard on my wrists.
Drinking Log: Day / Month / Year
My Day According to Me: Moods—everywhere! I am asking my desolation for analysis; it happens in every poem. Better get drinking! My fridge is full of bad energy. Outside, I’m struck by a demented egg yolk of sun. No one plans for these to become their days. I peruse my library of habits. Every day I am getting better (at drinking). According to my mood analysis, mood is everywhere. But ask me or my poems and I go, with splendour, into the wrong document. Slabs of feeling erupt from spreadsheets, bills, emails—I’m budgeting for an adult that doesn’t exist. The world has shrunk to the size of my body and increasingly I don’t like what goes on in there. Last time an emotion happened I needed a doctor and he told me to write ‘analysis day’; it’s getting better every mood. But me? Ask my drinking poems. I am everywhere according to my desolation.[i] Long and sluggish lines flop into the kitchen and I get busy installing air quotes around helpful advice. At this stage all books are burn books. I’ve been going to mass all year: I genuflected at the tabernacle (box), figured out what the foot cushions are for (knees), didn’t mean to take the Jesus snack (communion). God, do you stick a finger in every now and then? Prayer: What does it mean to let go? God, please, take my collection of objects, my empties, and transform them into the communion of subjects. Don’t let me be alone.
[i] Simone Weil, a connoisseur of affliction, names four evidences of mercy down below: 1. the experience of god; 2. the radiance and compassion of some who know god; 3. the beauty of the world; 4. the complete absence of mercy here. Is this what rock bottom looks like?
Annie Dillard. For the Time Being, Vintage Books, 2000
The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government initiative that supports sustainable cultural development in regional, remote, and very remote Australia. Regional commission were made possible by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, provided through Regional Arts Australia and Regional Arts NSW.