a silk purse from a kangaroo’s nutsack.

OK, it’s about 6.30 and change in the AM, & I have been awake since 4ish.

I have been keeping strange hours with writing the book-

(‘Writing the book’.

For some reason, that phrase sounds kind of pathetic.

It’s like…some voice telling me, ‘oh, he’s writing a book, but he’ll never finish it, and even if he does, no one will read it’, etc.

The voice of doubt.

If I could remove that…I’d have a hundred books.

I have a hundred books…other people’s. )

Anyway…

That’s part of what I want to talk about.

Indulgences.

Like self doubt.

So…I have been working the material.

Hundreds of pages of it.

Over and over again.

Shifting the pieces around.

Here is a small excerpt from the book;

What drama.

Exhausting.

You want drama??

If you knew how often I have been moving chunks of text from one part of the manuscript to the other…like a…

Let me give you an example…

Some idea of how tricky this stuff is;

untangling all this soul work, and looking at it.

One of the challenges of this book has been the structure.

That has been the most elusive thing of all.

I write for a little while…

I work my memories…

And then I hit a dead end.

I have tried to fit them every which way…

And failed.

And then I fall into a heap in my bed from exhaustion…

All the words, the memories…

Swimming about in my head.

A chaotic soup.

I drag myself to this very position, in front of the laptop, for the umpteenth time over the twenty years I have been working on the book…

And as much as I would love to just leave it as it is…

A collage of memories and speculation in random order like a Burroughs novel…

I know in my heart of hearts I cannot do it.

I have to finish this book.

Or it will haunt me.

That little boy’s face…

Will haunt me.

That’s just the way it is.

So I sit here…

and I wonder.

What next??

I won’t go into too much detail here- it’s dull, it’s not what I want to talk about today and anyway, and some of the process is in the actual book.

It’s a book about writing a book about writing a book, etc…

And a book as well.

About…

well, I guess it’s about being a man.

I’d say it’s about being me, but that sounds arrogant and pompous, which might be one of the problems with being a man.

The impediments.

The doubts, fears, neurosis and self-loathing.

It’ll kill us, anon.

Anyway, I have taken a day or two off, because…

Well, this is the occasional gift you get as a writer.

I had almost driven myself insane the last few weeks, working the material in a feverish state, on the verge of eating my own head off…

A few days ago…

I just collapsed.

I could no more.

a few hours later I woke up to find that the material works.

For so long…

I could never get past page 50.

It got so bad…

I even pruned things back to page 8.

I thought it was never gonna’ work.

In a haze, I read through the stuff when I woke yesterday morning…

and it was working.

Past 50.

Past 100.

Past 150.

I got to 175 pages, and counting, and couldn’t believe my luck.

I stopped reading.

I didn’t want to spoil my good fortune…

& I didn’t want to get too excited in case I was dreaming.

Dreaming I had a good book.

I liked my writing.

So…

I think the book is half finished.

So I took a day or two off to get out of the house, go for a drive, check out the kangas.

A Picnic at Hanging Cock.

I didn’t see many kangas, but I saw a family of emus coming into Halls Gap.

It was a fair day.

Any day above ground…

But I don’t like to stray too far from my book.

But I had a copy in my pocket on a usb, so we were still tight.

As I was driving, I was listening to the radio.

And…man???

The bullshit???

OK…

I need to get something off my chest.

Truth be told?

I want to travel again.

I want to head back to the States.

(Even though the threat of terror is peaking again…

I love it there.)

But the book is calling the shots.

And the usual crap about money.

I don’t complain.

I have it good.

But on the radio…

People are complaining.

One of the big issues at the moment…

Down under…

Our milk and fruit growers are complaining because they cannot find a market for their goods.

They are priced out of the market by cheap imports.

They want government to step in.

I don’t drink milk, but I do eat fruit.

I would prefer to eat local, and do when I can.

But my point is…

It’s an open, free market.

What do they expect the government to do?

Strangle free trade?

I get a little nervous when people talk about ‘protecting domestic markets’.

Seems kind of racist to me.

I’m not so sure I am opposed to free trade.

So these guys have been forced into the ground by cheap imports?

Well…tough shit.

That’s the way of the world.

I’m an artist.

It’s a tough racket.

To survive…

I have to write the best shit out there.

I have to write shit that sets asses on fire.

That’s just the way it is.

I have been sitting here, in my room, working on my book, tearing my hair out.

Literally tearing my hair out, eating my own flesh, sweating blood, and looking at my own nightmares over and over again to write this bastard.

That’s the way it works.

To do this right…

I have to write in a room that is on fire.

Burning with…

Shit that I have created that is nothing like anything else out there.

These farmers have become complacent…

producing what they have always been producing at a good price.

And now things are starting to tighten up.

Competition.

This separates the chaff from the wheat.

The men from the boys.

These boys have had it too good for too long.

They complain about parity, as they flick the channels of their plasma TV…

Sitting in their own homes, on their own land.

While the competition…

Poor Asian families in straw huts whose only indulgence is a little rat meat and cold rice?

???

I can tell you now…

These are tough times.

Tough times coming.

For many, already here.

Been here.

Tough times don’t last…

tough people do.

I’m a writer.

That’s my choice.

I don’t ask for concessions.

I don’t ask for shit.

I don’t get shit.

When times are tough…

I do my work.

I tighten my belt.

I eat soup and rice.

I don’t buy shit.

I watch the sunset.

I scour my soul for inspiration.

And I PRODUCE.

I don’t sit around bitching…

asking the government to stop other writers from writing better shit than me.

More profitable shit.

Cheaper shit.

I tighten my belt, I starve a little, I bleed a little, and I shiver in my bed sick with the flu like fever of pure creativity…

Until it works.

I make it work.

There it is.

Harsh?

To the poor farmers??

You tell me.

Harsh times.

We are spoiled.

We don’t know from hard times.

But we will.

We better be ready.

And three quarters of these squealing motherfuckers will die quick deaths.

Nailed to their plasma tv’s.

The strong will survive.

Those who can make a silk purse out of a kangaroo’s nutsack.

Something out of nothing.

I know the team I wanna’ be on.

The real deal.

REAL.

If this book has taught me anything…

It has taught me how to suffer again.

REALLY suffer.

PASSION.

It’s been a hell of a struggle.

And you know what?

I don’t mind.

Headaches, bad dreams, shitty eating habits…

The half-life of the sickness of real work…

The toughest work I have ever done.

Writing.

I have done some fucked up jobs…

As a cop, I have been around dead folks, put bits of human body into clear plastic bags, eaten shit, had the stuffing beaten out of me by mindless brutes, I have punched cows and thrown hay bales, eaten my own liver out in mindless dead end clerical jobs, and scrubbed rich men’s puke and shit and piss off the walls of restaurant toilets and…

Writing is the king of them all.

All these other jobs?

A breeze compared to writing.

Why??

Why is writing so fucking hard??

Don’t ask me.

Maybe that is a book all its own.

I would have thought writing was a job for pussies…

In fact I used to.

Like theatre, and cross dressing.

Before I tried it.

Even now…I meet guys I used to know in the job…

They look at me, like…

‘you still doing that writing thing’?

Like…

‘you still sucking dick for a living’??

They don’t know shit.

They got it

WRONG.

If I didn’t know otherwise.

I would have said the same.

If I wasn’t so in love with…

So POSSESED by the idea of…

Wrestling with the word.

This battle…

It’s like I want to beat it into submission.

I want to make it my bitch.

But it will NOT go down easy.

Sometimes…seduction becomes rape.

I try to rape the word.

& it turns on me.

Bends me over the basin, prison style, and fucks my ass.

Right back.

You know I know what that is.

I have written about it.

Tried to.

Matching the word with the reality.

The thing.

That’s the thing.

Head to head, toe to toe…

Lining them up.

The deed, the act, the actual thing…

& the telling.

The story.

If your words don’t bleed…

Start again.

Do it again.

That’s all.

This shit…this pain and suffering…

It is real.

& I don’t mind saying that…

It’s not self-indulgent…

Because it is FACT.

Come and see.

It is…

In my case…

The art of CONFRONTING WHO I AM.

& I don’t like much of it.

Fuck you!

Child!

Queer!

WHO CARES?

Fuck you don’t like it.

Do it anyway.

What else is there???

Most people don’t get it.

Don’t do it.

It’s tough work.

Too hard.

Other things to do.

Stuff on tv.

Hard shit.

Don’t ask me why.

Just is.

Maybe because it is…

Shitty emotional work…

Looking at your own guts.

Keeping crazy hours…

& there is no guarantee of any results.

Any reward.

NONE.

Death, maybe.

Some horror.

That’s it.

So what?

Child.

It’s what it is.

I don’t sleep anymore…

Who cares?

Sleep is a rehearsal for death anyway.

No rest?

That’s the price you pay.

For being WICKED.

I don’t sleep as much as I…

As much as i…

I write for a few hours until I can’t think straight, and then I lay my head down and pass out for a few hours. Wake up and write, pass out. Wake up and write, pass out.

When I really need to shut it down…

I take some sleeping pills.

Not too many.

I have enough to do the job there, by my bed, just in case…

But not yet.

I’m not going down without a fight.

I’m not there yet.

This is how close to the edge REAL writing takes you.

It SHOULD ask you to open a vein.

It should make you want to blow the top of your head off.

Most people never consider suicide.

A writer SHOULD.

Otherwise…

You aint a writer.

You’re a hack.

A con artist.

It must ask things of you…

Things, it doesn’t ask anyone else.

In any other profession.

I’m not working hard enough, trying hard enough…

if there are not times I want to cut my own throat.

Let the blood trickle over the keyboard.

Bash this laptop over my own head.

Tear my teeth out with plyers.

Gouge my eyes out with rusty chisels.

Puncture my nuts with spent pop rivets.

If you are never there…

Testing your mettle…

Checking your guts…

Your NUTS…

You are masturbating.

Not even that.

Dry humping.

A dead leg.

Fuck that.

Work.

That’s all there is to it.

I KNOW what’s expected.

I know what I demand of myself.

I always did.

The rest is horse shit.

If I’m gonna’ do this…

If I’m gonna’ LIVE…

I better live HARD and HELLISH.

I better see the darkest places I know.

Eyes wide open.

Mouth…

Taste the suffering spew, the sick of dark dangerous nights…

As well as the light,

Be here, do it well, do it painfully, take the challenge and live the nightmare of endurance in order to express yourselves willingly, generously…

Or stay home.

Or die.

A liars death.

You want to be a writer?

You better LIVE.

Not just exist.

But SUFFER.

Even die.

Open up your chest like a cheap overcoat & let the night air see your heart beating slow death.

Nothing else comes close.

The rest is just tomfoolery.

Confectionary.

Be a hack.

Or be a demon of the word.

A storm trooper of the art.

a

God.