Is that a HB pencil?

Don’t know quite where I am, have an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing but all of the four options seem like they could be correct (unconditioned stimulus). I eat the perfectly ripe yellow banana, even though the smell of banana this early in the morning makes my stomach heave. But it’s brain food, and it’s sad you dropped yours on the floor (Bobo doll experiment). I had stressed dreams, thrashing around like a malfunctioning egg beater and waking up with my mind racing. We’d gone underwear shopping and she’d told me I ought to lose some weight (fixation at the anal stage).

The sun was trying to beat away the clouds, freezing wind whipping at the tops of uncovered feet. He’d scowled in disgust at the nicotine clouds blown in a perfect stream from your lips, but really, why on earth was he compelled to ask you if you wanted to join a gym? (fovea) The days blend together and the battle with the umbrella takes precedence (Mrs. Boles) when superstition dominates (Stanley). The man with the kind face gave you two marshmallows (Cesario); the sour-lipped woman in the op shop begrudgingly docked $3.50 from the final price (assimilation) and the passerby with an expression full of pity and horror clicked their tongue at the figures huddled in front of the window, howling and shrieking over the wind (le subjonctif).

Listen to the sound of hundreds of anxious voices bouncing off the concrete, finding their way into the cobwebbed corners that are neglected in the absence of the Spring Racing Carnival (is Sebastian really dead?). I walked through a puddle and now my socks are wet, this takes priority over my concern of not understanding Orsino’s motives in marrying Olivia. It was like an airport lounge, and as the distressed buzz dimmed (les pronouns relatif) I was horrified to realise the horseshoes printed on the carpet were facing the wrong way. How were they going to catch any luck? How were they going to catch my answers as they spiraled out of the ends of my frizzy hair, wet with the drizzle? (Cattell’s 16 Factor Personality Test). I closed my eyes and imagined Space Invaders, ricocheting past and exploding where the carpet met the tiles. We were numbers. At least English is our first language, I remember saying (reliability). At least we’re not left-handed, so everything we write doesn’t become smudged as our hands race across the page (validity). At least it’s only two hours, not three (cross-sectional). Why were there so many clocks? It would be so silent, surely the ticking would drive us all mad? (longitudinal) As if to support my theory that the desks should be facing the other way, we can see out onto the racecourse. I can hear the crack of a starting gun (factor analysis), the snap of gates being pulled back (Darwin’s theory of evolution) and the thunder of dozens of hooves churning up the soil (separation anxiety). I hear the nasal commentary of the race, which fascinated me at a young age (the id). How do they speak so fast, Mum? (positive reinforcement).

I remember where I am, and what I should be doing. Those who are absent are declared to be so via invasive red sheets of paper, with cruel letters stamped across the front (rationalism). The person sitting next to me is feeling as though a 25% chance isn’t enough to see him through (Descartes). He oozes dismay as the 10 minutes of reading time tick past on the labelled clocks (negative punishment). It’s contagious! (extinction).

I spot his identical twin on the other side of me. I read a question about noses (I think it’s functionalism) and become fixated trying to spot the differences in their appearances. Are thy really related? What are the chances of identical twins doing the same subject, in the same course, at the same university? Wouldn’t they be tired of sharing space, sharing attention, sharing faces? (synapses). I can’t turn my head fast enough to spot them. One is potentially more red-headed than the other, they have slightly different haircuts, perhaps in an attempt to seize individualism by the horns and defy their shared DNA (projective tests). I feel sick from moving my eyes so quickly, I taste the banana that was supposed to help me (taste aversion therapy). And then it begins. And while I’m choosing A, B, C or D, I can see feather-adorned hats, and see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is flickering slightly (You did not just compare a tunnel to a birth canal).

Don’t the voices sound different, without the anxiety laced through them, though they still bounce off the concrete and encourage us to make a hasty exit?

I wrote it in June 2008

Sometimes I wake up and forget everyone else speaks French. My dreams are a confused garble of Romanian, French and English. I'm somewhat of an awe-inducing artefact in my French classes. The woman in charge at Assofac, the organisation who runs the programmes, is a heinous bitch with cankles and was adamant that because I spoke no French (surely I spoke some French) I wasn't enthused about learning the language. So she lumped me in a class with 10 other people who already spoke fluent French and were specialising their vocabulary in the direction of environmental science. I learnt little in the three or four lessons I was made to endure except that my teacher's name was Delphine, she had a pustule on her toe and provided me with living proof as to why no one should smoke at 40. So after it finally clicked that she really doesn't speak French, she wasn't lying, I was put in a class slightly more to my level. However once again they don't believe that I speak no French, and I am subject to a mandatory presentation about oneself within 30 seconds of being ushered in the door - initially they thought I was 28 and had two children but after we got that straightened out, everybody reaffirmed their opinion about my lack of French speaking abilities. I'm made to read aloud, write on the board, write sentences and conjugate imperative verbs - I decided that after the three hours of urine-soaked fear that was the first class, it would be a really clever idea to purchase a dictionary. Outside the classroom, the language barrier is easy to navigate - though I've learnt that I need to stop laughing when I sense the opening for it in conversation, as it gives people the illusion that I understand and prompts them to start nattering at me in French and then waiting for my response. I've become slightly expert at interpreting what people are saying to me given the situation I'm in, and change my answers according to pure whim, swapping between 'oui, merci' or 'non, merci' (creative, no?). This is a mixed luck draw - I never know what I'm going to get. Last week it got me my purchase gift wrapped, definitely a positive, whereas when I responded 'non, merci' when the salesman at Galleries Lafayette asked me for my postcode, the reaction was less favourable. Needless to say, it keeps life interesting.

Incapable of thinking

1. The first thing to go is the ability to think creatively or logically. If I am engaged in a task and there is a possible way of completing in a faster, more simple or better way, I will manage to ignore the flashing warning signals and keep trudging along the beaten track. Spontaneous questions that involve memory recall are destined to fail. Vocabulary shrivels down to the basics, the ability to pronounce things clearly or articulate properly disappears. Conversation other than the necessities becomes too difficult. Along with the ability to think outside the square, being exposed to stimulating material is overwhelming and daunting.

2. Next to vanish is the attention span. Even if I believe I am concentrating, staring at words on a page, my mind has exited the room and is dancing in the puddles outside, thinking about something irrelevant, busy twisting itself into overanalysis or concocting ideas for dinner. I should take this as a cue for what I so desperately need but I never do. I fidget in my seat, flicker back and forth between what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. I read pages and can't remember the subject matter, much less any type of evaluation of material. Basic things become very difficult. I revert back to a page several times just to copy out a sentence accurately. I find myself using wrong tenses, bad grammar, stubby fingers struggling with hitting the right key on the keyboard (and before I wrote 'right' I wrote 'write'). Life is becoming too hard but because I can't think beyond what I am doing at that exact moment, it is destined to remain unchanged for the moment. It's getting worse.

3. The slippery slope of deterioration is steepest when this phase dawns upon me. As I struggle with my brain thumping against the inside of my skull, my hands shaking as I pick up a pen, having to think long and hard about how to construct the sentence 'I am in the room in the library with the green reading lights', I am angry. My whole body is tensed with rage. My eyes are black darts, shooting looks of disdain and contempt at anyone who makes a noise. Why am I so angry? Because the girl sitting opposite me is wearing bangles which are hitting the desk as she types. And I will probably kill her, because I am an irrational fiery ball of crankiness, who hates everything in her direct vicinity. Including the way the lecturer is pronouncing 'transport' and the crackle that it is producing in the left ear of my headphones. I am bubbling and spitting, a cauldron of discontent, of unpleasantness, of stewing distress and fury.

4. Stop. What is that? Through the blindfold that has been plastered over my eyes, enabling me to only see red spots of anger, I recognise something. An innate reaction. And whilst I am angry about it, there is rationale starting to peak through, struggling against the dark shutters but nonetheless letting in a persistant stream of light that is enabling me to focus clearly for half a second. The person sitting beside me is eating. The smells emitted from the spicy hot bowl of nourishing goodness they have in front of them stir something within me which I had obviously tried to repress for too long. My stomach growls. Not just growls, but rumbles and roars like a caged animal who has been injected with a shot of adrenalin. It dawns on me very suddenly, very clearly. I am hungry. Not just hungry, but starved, possibly going to go blind with famine and desperately need something to eat, right now, this very second.

I breathe in food, inhale it in one gulp. And then happiness and tranquillity reign supreme (unless someone tries to pry it from my grasp) and I can live again. The demons have settled, until dinner time. Or until we pool our change and charge towards the vending machine, needs satisfied by king-sized chocolate. But, it's like you told me, the advice I will treasure and ignore its untruth. Nothing is bad for you when you are doing something good.

Missing

"On the warm nights when they wouldn’t move from the back patio for hours except to fill up their glass, they would crave ice cream or something gluttonous, and walk calmly to where the ocean met the land. They wore thongs, they didn’t carry water in their bottles so ended up crouched, mouths poised open, underneath a garden tap; they ate their Magnums and sat quietly on the bench of life, contemplating their days that had usually been filled with not-very-much. Sometimes they had morbid conversations, other times they had meaningful ones, a lot of the time they cackled underneath the cloudy night. They walked home again and slept soundly underneath the star shaped lights, barely stirring when the freight train rushed past."

So what did Act III mean?

In the dream world, she would open up the desk drawer to rows and rows of plane tickets, lined up neatly. None of them have dates on them, she can use them as she pleases. None of them are window seats, she sits two rows from the exit. She'll never sit next to a baby, a person intent on conversation while her eyes are heavy with sleep or someone with repugnant body odour. 1 in 6 tickets will reward her with an upgrade to business class, and there's no disclaimer either.

In the dream world, she would have a typewriter that would send inspiration flying through her fingertips, not like the clunky whirring of a computer where the letter 'e' sticks longer than it should, turning 'the' into 'thee' and sending her brow plummeting to the middle of her face with discern. She would never have to think about the number of syllables per line, or how overly extravagantly flowery her metaphors were. Sometimes she would write with a sharpened lead pencil on a wooden desk that had been scrubbed back and painted.

In the dream world, there is money for fresh flowers, she never has to run for the bus, her room is filled with books that have been chosen with care for her by someone else, she retains information like a thirsty sponge, her conjugations are perfect and her black clothes never fade out to grey.

'But horses are my friends'

The fear of the unknown grabs the blonde hairs that frame her face and holds them up high, tickling her closed eyelids that are twitching with dreams. The fear forces her eyes open, as she cranes to see the little creatures that are trying to torment her in the black night. She can never see them when she’s awake like this, so she doesn’t have a choice but to soothe herself back to sleep, trying to ignore the thoughts that are careering around and around inside her mind, a merry-go-round that is spinning faster and faster. But the normally joyous faces of the horses are twisted and warped, they bare their gums in an angry snarl at her, spitting saliva and thrashing against the worn leather reins that she clutches with sweaty palms.

Wrapped in bed accessories and pillows that bring initial comfort, she slips back into surface sleep, her heart tight with a web of fear that she doesn’t let unravel. In her dream the sticky spider web clings to her face and she can’t get it off, though she scratches mightily, nails that are bitten short leaving red marks on her cheeks. She’s no longer warmed by blankets that Mama had smoothed back carefully in the morning light; instead they are heavy weights that crush her lungs, the fear of the unknown bringing her back to the surface time and time again, wrenching gasps of air with panicked shudders.

There’s no clock in the room because the fiery gremlins feed off the ticking that it makes, and the black air becomes too thick when she can count the seconds in the night. This time she’s back on the merry-go-round, but the ground surrounding it is red dust, and the tinkling music that the horses are dancing to disappears into the empty landscape. Their faces relax, calm and at peace with the circles they gallop in. The silhouette on the horizon makes her uneasy but she is comfortable in the saddle now that the horses no longer snarl and snap at her touch.

Then the figure comes too close, and anxiety spreads like bloodstains on white fabric. ‘Go away,’ she wants to say, urging the horse to go faster and faster, to disappear in a thunderous cloud of dust. But the merry-go-round is slowing, finishing its giddy cycle, and the music is fading, so that all she can hear is the wind carrying the dust against the red sun. ‘Go away!’ she tries to shout.

Then she wakes up again, feeling the panic wash away as she sees the sunlight creep through the crack in the curtains. Little creatures of the night, spawn of the unknown, leave her be.

I don't drink the dregs, I've told you this.

'The footpaths there concern me; there's too much bitumen. I prefer smooth cement on my footpaths. That's what the councils are doing at the moment; trying to reduce the amount of bitumen on the footpaths in the city.'


'You're basing how much you like a suburb on the texture of their footpaths?'


'Yes, for sure. How did you get that scar on your breast?'


'My cat scratched me when I was seven, before I had breasts.'


'At least I said breast, not boob or tit. It looks like an arrow pointing directly to your nipple.'


She raised her eyebrows and tried to remember the Saturday in the suburb with the uneven footpaths. The eye blinked at them from the shop window, beckoning with its tantalizing price tag. It was covered in things, bits and pieces of sorts. Coloured silk, a tarnished frame, shoes with worn in heels. The man in the shop beamed at them, his simple smile dissapitating when he realised what they were after and the challenges that might be involved in lifting the desk from the window front.


'I'll just get the boss for you.'


They waited quietly, as they'd finished their conversation on 'muse' (the word, definitely not the band and their overpriced hooded jumpers) and looked at the trinkets on the counter, searching for hidden beauty that wasn't quite found in a brooch with no pin, a broken key ring, a scarf that was too large to be worn properly without giving the impression you were trying to smother yourself in floral chiffon. A short man scurried to the shop front, sizing them up quickly when they asked to buy the desk with the blinking eye that was positioned in his window display.



'How are you going to carry it home? It's very heavy.'

'I live just down the road, we'll be fine.'

The process of removing the one-eyed desk from the shop front seemed unnecessarily stressful. She floundered about, trying to help but just getting in the way. There was a crash, and they thought it was a drawer falling to the ground and cracking, though it turned out not to be. The other one stood to the side, knowing better than to get involved, her sunglasses hiding the smudges of black that were still left under her eyes (later she would leave those glasses on the countertop, where they would have to return). They had planned to carry the desk, strong and agile girls whose mothers' had fed them milk and yoghurt as young children. The shop man 'tsked' and offered the lending of a trolley, with the condition of a drivers' licence and credit card. They conferred between them and miraculously managed to produce both items, cracked and interstate. She was excited, envisaging a large industrial trolley on which the entire desk would sit and they would steer expertly down the bitumen footpaths to where the cat vomit was, outside the front gate.

The reality was different; it was a narrow trolley that she'd seen previously to move gas bottles, boxes, or other non-challenging, non-heavy items. It bore perhaps a sixth of the weight of the desk, balanced precariously in the middle. They promised to return the trolley (or no driving or extravagant impulse spending for them) and were on their way, relying soley on the vision of the blinking eye, because they could not see past the scratched timber frame. She felt that it was not very heavy, though she assumed it was because she was not bearing her share of the weight. They zigzagged along, compelling other pedestrians to flatten themselves against the walls of buildings in order to avoid them. They turned the corner hapharzdly, breaking into a run onto the road and pulling in to the curb in a way they pictured reverse parallel parking to be conducted (though neither of them really knew how).

She hadn't imagined that in less than 6 hours, little possum with her frightened stare would be splayed across the road, her slight and furry frame shaking in shock and fear while the car that hit her panicked, while passersby buried her under an avalanche of coats and called an ambulance, not worrying that she might be sick or dirty (we are in the place with the bitumen footpaths, after all). Poor possum, she tried to jump from one branch to the other too quickly, but the car knocked her down and took all the wind from her lungs.

They conceeded the trolley was defeated by the time they got to the front gate, and lifted the desk and its closed eye from the bottom, cringing at the weight on their stubby little fingers. There were screeches from both sides as shoes with too-thin soles schlepped through the cat/dog/animal/human vomit on the side of the road next to the broken television. They rested in the hallway and there was a scurry to clear space in the room, moving aside CDs, a box with a letter from Centrelink ('please lodge your employer details to avoid Centrelink debt') floating on top, a guitar and a mass of cords with dust bunnies clinging onto them for dear life. She swept with a dustban and broom, they moved the desk into a corner. They were satisfied, she smiled in delight at the sanctuary they had created, she took the chair from the kitchen where there were never any clean plates and put it at the desk. They placed textbooks on it and marvelled at how productive it felt.

Then it was late, and there was a rush to shower. She lay in the rubble of picture frames of Miles & Otis, of tangled blankets and sheets that needed washing. She read two pages of 'Le Petit Prince' and half-listened to the dilemmas of finding a jacket that didn't reek of cigarettes. Then they were ready, and went to leave, before remembering the cursed trolley that was nowhere to be seen.

There was a rush, and a brief flash of panic, before finding it sitting patiently on the footpath where they had left it. They were relieved, and went to leave the house, not before seeing a couple, one in a sombrero and the other carrying a pinata.

'What is that? Where are they going?'

'They're going to a Mexifest.'

'Why are you so matter-of-fact about it? Does everyone go to Mexifests?'

'Yes, Mexican food is delicious.'

'Oh. I suppose you're right.'

They left and got on the tram, not before seeing a child strapped in a carrier close to his mother's chest, though he was far too big. He could've easily walked.