Z (September)

It’s the end-of-the-evening letter. Bill Evans on the record player. It Might As Well Be Spring. The cats curled up upon the sofa. Sofa so good. Starless if the rain approacheth. Did anyone really go and wave? At the parade? At footballers? It’s the drowsing authorial-voice letter. Peter Porter going round in the head. The unfinished paragraph. Marcel Proust in his cork-lined room. Your Facebook friend is doing the washing. It’s the last-button-on-the-remote letter. The box-set of Downton Abbey. What is a weekend, asks Maggie Smith. As we drift off into the weekend. It’s the sleepy zone end-of-September letter: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

L (September)

 L was the Lip, upper and stiff. L was seen with a Prince Albert quiff. L lifted his game lobbing over square leg. For the square hole L was the square peg. L leapt up from Euphrates mud. L cracked cuneiform before the Flood. Became a club member

in September. L was Lace, a whalebone corset. L always put her best foot forward. L lined up for the Frontier. L locked in to tiffin and ginger beer. L longed for her lost America. L made do with downunder Australia. L lilted her way across the Empire. L laughed, lingered, expired.
 

L was the Lip, upper and stiff.

L was seen with a Prince Albert quiff.

L lifted his game lobbing over square leg.

For the square hole L was the square peg.

L leapt up from Euphrates mud.

L cracked cuneiform before the Flood.

Became a club member

In September.

L was Lace, a whalebone corset.

L always put her best foot forward.

L lined up for the Frontier.

L locked in to tiffin and ginger beer.

L longed for her lost America.

L made do with downunder Australia.

L lilted her way across the Empire.

L laughed, lingered, expired.

K (September)

K is the kilometre or three of the Clifton Hill Embankment, availing the crossword traveller of stretched September vistas: aged freeway chimney, browned Ormond College tower, creambrick Redmond Barry, dark-red Lygon Street highrise, evanescent Barak Building, firm St Mark’s Fitzroy, greying Hoddle Street highrise, hive-like Collingwood Secondary, ink-sketch Collingwood Town Hall, just Telstra, knotty Gardens, lonesome Collingwood silos, massed St Patrick’s Cathedral, neo-cubist Hyundai Showrooms, original Orica, patterned  St John The Evangelist, quilted Caselden Place, reality Nauru House, solid Sofitel, transformed Southern Cross, upright Daimaru, veiled Mercy, wilting Hilton Hotel, x-rated Hyatt Hotel, yo Rialto and oh! a zed tunnel.

 

Photograph by Mark Hassed: Roof of the south tower of Collingwood Town Hall.

H (September)

Then H. What is there to say about H? Is it hollow? Aitch or haitch, the stylists are aspirational. High as H is in the operations of language, its absence is equally to be noted. It harumphs words, hurts them into poetry, helps with the hum breath produces, then hovers undemonstratively, servant of its alphabetic colleagues. It is soft as a sighing September breeze (zephyr, if you prefer) or hard as a hit of hail. Hell is meaningful, and Heaven. H’s structure, like two I’s holding together with a line, is a frame for everything, heart’s hope through to hoo-ha.

T (September)

T.- Listening to the stranger is a good place to start. You hear words and sounds coming from their being, not yours. You cannot put your own agenda onto the stranger, if you listen with attention. You make no contract, the only giving is your attentive time. Analysts get paid by strangers to interpret wandering words. Counsellors monitor what needs doing next with September symptoms. They want it down to a T. First name basis changes relationships. We have history, needs and expectations that change how we hear. Even anonymous initials define familiarity. It can never be the same. –P.  

V (September)

 Virtual Venice, where Alexander Calders are giant attenuated red insects in my dreaming atrium. Victory fanfares party-popper the plaza of gold-thread-and-feathers that any moment will be lost in rain. Vengeance is staved off over espressos when the beginning of the end of the Cold War is the only talk. Volcanoes burst anew from eighteenth-century imprints opened for visitors. Vile insinuations wash down the canal of yesterday’s crime scene, all in my mind. Violin TV signals continuity from upstairs windows. Vietnamese mint beams in purely cerebral patio pots. Vacancies press at hotel doors where September makes way for early chill factor.

C (September)

August, the census computer seized up. Explanations were contradictory. Clocks continued. Cynicism went viral. Who was in charge? Come September citizens turned to paper. Make it easier to cope, fill the squares with calligraphy. Contribute your ciphers for their consideration. ‘No religion’, meaningless category. Consider the religion of the census. Convinced consumer. Capitalist cog. Salary slave. Productivity person. Commercial viability. Tick one box only. In the name of selfishness, anything is allowed. Confidentiality is assured. Answers must be correct. Do not include your cats. It confuses calculations. Sign. Insert in blue envelope. Join the ciphers. The barcode must face out.

E (September)

September eye-spy impressions from Highway 1-Ring Road, Winchelsea to Watsonia: eyes ears eggs exit eucalypts emptiness entry ewes elastic excess extegument exhaust ebony estate empties eerie emergency Epworth excepted ends exercise electrics entrance escarpment eagle edge energy evidence expanse elevation engine error eleven entertainment eatery efflorescence evergreens excellence experts environment earthworks egos evaporation effluent eighty enforcing express expand English eggplant exfoliations expired everywhere emblems excavator embers extensions essence equestrian Equipe elongations eaves excrescence employment eddies emphasis engineering everything exposed erasures elevator elegance extra equipment education equilibrium E.J.Whitten e-commerce easy effort essentials excitement Edwardian emporiums Epping everlastings echoes enjoyment etched endoscopy

Y (September)

Y is the river come down from Otways after a week’s rain on W-structures and E-structures lodged into hillsides, the remaining houses staring down gullies and out to sea at torrents. Y is the split in slopes of Paddy’s Path, gone under the Ocean Road into containment walls, ready to widen into watered W’s, collapse into layers of earthen E’s, the Road closed. Y is the loader bucket shifting soil and stone, while Workmen and Engineers move about, excavating hillsides that in December were on fire and September went under flood. Y is the silent street turnoff at Separation Creek.

M (September)

M is the mile or two between Skenes Creek – magnificent waves curving into beaches before green hills every moment – and Apollo Bay. Old milestones of another moment were souvenired for someone’s backyard monument. M is the mind, mulling alternative plans this September now no tourist buses and cars of schoolchildren multitudinously mill, business a trickle. M is the mile of Ocean Road at Wye River where Christmas fires left hillsides vulnerable to flood, landslides coming down everywhere, the Road splitting and edging into the sea. M is the mounds of uprooted ashen earth that have closed the Road, stopping everything.

B (September)

“Hurry up!” said Blackboard, while Miss Pat adjusted the latest abstract conundrum. She rebuked him, as usual, but blackboards were always hurrying us up. All the Mr Squiggles wrote their cursive Block B as if time were of the essence. No going backward, no getting behind, no bludging. Blackboards got us from A to B. The future beckoned, with so much to believe. A ‘B’ was nothing to be ashamed of. Behaviour had so much to do with belonging. “To be, or not to be. Discuss.” No backward scripts, no bad grammar, no copying. How we longed for September holidays.

U (September)

In a dream, up from under, I have prepared for the main part in a play. But, unaccountably, I stay away from opening night. Was there an understudy? Later that week the cast show up. Where did I get to? In analysis I start crying, why did I let everyone down? There’s no U-turn. It cannot be undone. The analyst makes noises. But I keep thinking, who am I? What is You? I should never have gone into acting. Outside is September. There’s a festival. Hilly streets are inundated with unending traffic. A child appears to tell me everything’s fine. 

W (September)

In the last century I constructed online an interlinking site called ‘Search Engine’, an acrostic wonderland, thought lost. This September I uncovered one of the old notebooks for this escapade, which included 42 acrostics for the thing called the www, then a toy of unforeseen dimensions. This miasma of double yous is self-definitional of the World Wide Web: worth.waiting.weeks wonky.windscreen.wiper weft.warp.woof wrong.way.warren worldy.wise.wrangle what.white.whale wakey.wakey.wakey wimbledon.wombles.wednesday woop.woop.whodunit whosie.whatsit.whatdyacallit white.winged.warbler wanton.willing.woman wang.weis.wash wild.west.won waikiki.water.wall world.weather.watch walt.whitman.wired willow.whacks.wickets western.wailing.wall women.want.women walking.wounded.write-in winsome.wangaratta.wahine wrist.watch.work willow.ware.winkles washington.watch.word wily.wicked.witch wishy.washy.wimp-out willy.wagtail.waltz willowy.wine.waiter wanking.window.washer wink.wink.wink watching.wim.wenders wondrous.whiptail.wallaby wiry.wicker.whatnot white.water.wipeout words.winning.ways wire.wheel.wallah wadi.wagga.wagga wonderful.wet.weekends women’s.weekly.work william.wordsworths.wasteland worst.world.war     

D (September)

D is the capital in spraycan scarlet and nightblue background on footpath hydrant box by stop-start traffic of a condensed arterial as we wait for green. A death’s head signature badges the corner and splatters of pink were added sometime where a poster peeled off for a show last September and who was he, she who did the D? Dave, Danielle? Did they take their time at 3am with exquisite precision? Were they speeding on something? Postponing despair? Escaping damnation? Upping declarations? Capitalising on doom? The green man walks, engine hums and we’re off again, into the density of day.

Q (September)

Q revolves around a star out there, the closest planet to sustain life, likes ours. We, who have trouble showing interest in our neighbours and ignore the destruction of life in our own world, become quite fascinated by the possibilities of an inaccessible Question. That life may consist of forms outside our range of reference, existence inconsistent with anything imaginable, quiddities that defy our quizzical science, only prompts grander quests with our outsized eye-glasses and quaint sound-bowls. Gold may be quartz, September a blink, on the Qs out there, moving in ways not yet explained or observed, eppur si muove.

P (September)

P1, who was he? Dependent on parents he had to puzzle out. P2 in the sandpit under the nellie kelly. Philip is one of the f-Ps, imagining Greeks training horses, rode them numberless miles on campaign. But I am not the P you put on me. That P is gone as September 2001, hard to place as that person cycling down adolescent Warrigal Road. That P you would objectify, sum up or divide out. They say we are twenty-five people at any one time: P reading Proust, P talking to staff, P on tram stops, P invisible even to self.

A (September)

Africa, that hieroglyph of home and escape from home. Decipher how the divisions ran deep and kept dividing, stuck in the mud. Asia, that pictogram of the thing- in- itself. Observe how its calligraphy runs down where it will till it stops. America, that extent of ante-alphabets and anti-alphabets and every alphabet. Squint to read on tablets of sliding sand most words ever written. Australia, that giant insula of unwritten memory. See how the Europeans invaded with firm prints. Antarctica, that Morse code of a zillion ice crystals. September is white as March but notice how their glaciers are melting.

G (September)

G is the thumb and heel of the hand and stitched, arched fingers of the glove on the ground. Its partner is somewhere in the world, a handbag or pocket. The lost glove is common in car parks where, with keys between teeth and bags in both hands, the driver hurried to get in the vehicle, always someone waiting to nose into their space, blinkers blinking. The sound of one glove napping may be heard in September, where the gardener left it after clipping the rose brambles, a G clutching an A of shut secateurs on a potting shed ledge.