THE BUNG TIMES

[Procrastination Issue]

there's a humongous rata trunk washed up on €the beach, an arch of twisted roots formed naturally among two trunks that join into one massive column partly covered in green slime, still wet from the tide; according to paddy it must be at least a thousand years old, blooming long before maories, let alone captain cook, got here. long before the tide of sailors, miners, irishmen, dance halls and golden dust, there was this piece of art worth a fortune in timber alone, growing in the forest on the wild west coast. now, washed upon the beach, regardless of a few chopped limbs it still is a monster, a whale of a piece. if one could only get it out of here. will make a grand entrance to a palace or a museum, if twenty ton diggers could only get to it. thank god almighty, they can't. in the meantime, beaten up jeep with a rustty falling out floor takes tree passengers at the front and a load of driftwood at the back,- we're in the land of plenty and sunshine is free of charge. holy shit, it's a high-way!, spitting sand and crunchy bone-dry twigs from both sides, jeans-driven west coast paddy-wagon ride with a free spirit: a man of god has been blessed many times over. thus we celebrate back at blue duck with a candle-lit roast and a sip of ginger wine, for those who dwell in the house of delicious foods every meal is a prayer. paddy doesn't drink, not even a drop. instead, he smokes rollies one after another and swears profusely and lightheartedly. he is a rare specimen of an irish exile inhabiting gypsy housetruck full of stain-glass hangings and twisted-grain candleholders, carved driftwood sculpture and many a copper and stone trinket to ordain a small highland tribe with jewelry. the legend goes that once a council come to negotiate the access to the rest of national park through paddy's land... he drove a dagger in the middle of the table and said, let's start talking, then. the outcome must have resulted in peace, as up to this day no more trampers have been heard being chased by a hermiting gypsy irishman with a wild glint in his eye, brandishing a wooden implement of some description with not very the friendliest of intentions; a winner of the millennium award and also a runner-up to himself, he took both the first and the second prize. when he finally leaves, he is loaded with indian beads, baked vegetables and a wrapped-up slice of home-made cake.

there's something very sweet and illusive about homemade jams, home-baked breads and grandmas. sweet because of the ripeness of old age, illusive because it's easy to run ahead into speedy crazy twenties and thirties. gardening is for old people says oliver, fresh from skifields of wanaka, where french girls on their annual holiday migration flock en route to dazzling oblivion and back to france, i suppose. i cant go on holiday; all i think about is unfinished garden beds of bungaville, trees to be planted and firewood to be split. my mountain is that of river stones, not to be climbed and conquered - rather, to be taken apart in wheelbarrow loads to where its rocky substance is most needed. for drainage, for support, for its fundamental retaining spirit. slow way to learn, perhaps, yet its gravity, its abrasive feel on my palms teach me how to ripen and retain the grains of gold, while letting sand sift away between the fingers.

one needs to have good soil to put the roots down. well aerated, not too acid, not too alkaline, and plenty of humus. think of yourself as a yam: shall i dwell in this bed of dirt? Chinese gardeners sleep habitually along with their vegetables, same way as tibetan nomads sleep with their pack animals. Lana sleeps with her goats. i sleep with a bunch of strange ideas and a flatulent cloud shrouding me from knowing any better.

look at them little furry yam-yam roots... mmm!

where is this place? what is tis all about, impatience, impatience! no quick answers here. the shortcut actually takes longer. always take untroden path! if one wishes to find their own way to bungaville, where we offer protection from reality, one must embark on a journey. our was a freak-show from the beginning. we, the mutants, who dwell in the shadow of the doubt, as far as progressing towards a bright future is concerned, were anything but normal and just wouldn't fit in, no matter what jobs we took up, no matter what masks we'd try on. half of our friends were on medication already, the other half were well on the way out of town...

the final call came in the form of a man who spoke in low demanding voice, wanting to know how much we'd sell our souls for. he stood on the porch, dressed casually for a satanic-beurocratic breed of door knockers and stared at us with evil goat eyes without blinking, his horns protruding in eager anticipation and hands clutching a stack of sign-in blanks from hell; we promised to see him in the morning and spend the night cramming our bedford with everything we could possibly fit into it, including several impractically large canvas prints that i failed to exhibit due to my belief that art should sell itself, if it has any value. i had them canvases glued to half-inch thick plywood and sprayed with semi-gloss waterproof coat. thereafter my plan was to use old roofing nails, just to be sure it wouldn't come off easy.

we stopped in the vicinity of nelson lakes and ran into a couple of roadworkers who didn't mind us taking a few turnips from the farmer's field in exchange for what i nailed to the fence there and then.

on the way to the west coast towns are few and far apart, landscape changes drastically from wide-open, endless grapewine fields and pine plantations, both equally stupefying, to that of narrow mountain-river gorge dressed in native forest. one follows buller river till it reaches the coast, where the road splits at westport and eventually becomes somewhat less traveled - provided you take the dead-end way over the karamea bluff.

the end of the line! the wild west; a small holding surrounded by forest, a center stage for drama and comedy, tragedians' paradise lost and found - again, we shall re-enact the rise and fall of humanity, the struggle of spirit against flesh and many a sacrifice offered, albeit on a smaller, more intimate scale of our humble abode. won't you join us for a quick tour?

we are on the border of Bungaville, as it was...

...in the carriage courtyard...

...at the back of the castle La Bung...

...through the side portal, lookin in...

...our own private Pandora box, we wish we haven't opened...

...no doors to open in the bathroom, no windows either!

it rained in no time; we rolled in the wet mint, naked...

...and then it didn't stop raining for three weeks in a row. our firewood grew mushrooms, no matter how i stacked it and re-stacked it and where i build my woodpile; fog and condensation would creep undercover and make it rain from inside. slowly but surely i lost track of what calamities came after which blessings and got down to the gritty dirt of it all, waist-deep in dung and sinking. simple, tangible dirt, filled with life and goodness; sour smell of cooking compost; red-and-yellow striped 'tiger' worms wriggling and crawling among last-year straw from the farmer's busted hay stash; carefully saved food scraps, cow manure, hair, puss, rot and decay - the moving force behind healthy, natural cycle of organic produce.

have you ever seen a clump of worms entangled so? and did you know that a cow manure pit can easily cook your food, warm your house and fuel your truck? when enough manure and organic waste fill confined closed space, anaerobic reactions takes place that produces methane gas and a potent fertilizer as its by-products. look up biodigesters on wikipedia, it tells you how to make one in a week for about three hundred bucks worth of concrete, sand and flexible plastic. nutrients go back into the garden, soil remains fertile and no fish gets poisoned from fermented manure flowing into the sea.

the end of the road... yeah, you'd have to come all this way to see this mountain of hay eclipsing sight of a national park which takes five days to cross by foot. in the name of dairy, i bless thee stinking abomination. let us drink the juice of murdered infants and be healthy and strong; amen!

maintaining old news is a backward task, let me tell you... the present is a haze, a thick halo of tasks to be completed, and this 1080 drop is screwing up my days... Lana's spending more time out of bungaville than in; garden is neglected, no bread baked, no curtains to ward off the chill of the night - second winter with no curtains, apart from half-stiched, half-pinned hanging over front door. we've been living in perpetual mess with no permanent place for things to live; sometimes it takes better part of the morning to find that one sharp chisel (or an oilstone) or some gloves or a rag to wipe off that silicone, to keep the rain out. natural materials for construction, what a hoax! give us torn plastic, rusted tin, a bit of cement for adhesive - i shall build us post-apocalyptic bunkers, earth-quake proof, tsunami-ready, withstanding anything, be it an invasion of hostile tribe or a direct hit of scud missile. only using junk that is already here. no buying materials, too expensive. i'm not digging up my cash to pay for petrol, either - not at karamea's pump station murdering fuel rates. we used to contemplate friends coming to stay in our paradisiacal land, used to imagine cooking delicious meals on the fire and going on missions together... may be not, can't afford to have friends these days. to get close to someone is to be susceptible to emotional damage which is to follow naturally and inevitably as dreams of common living fall apart and crumble. one is better off without dreams; go on ploughing through a thick volume of spanish-for-dummies, go on taking off for morning runs, keep salivating into didjerido: perhaps going through the motions will see me in peru communing with indigenous people that have preserved zest of life. my spirit is cold, i don't mind, i like the chill factor. it cleanses the air of impurities and kills slugs in the garden. i'll be thawing out later... when Lana bakes some cookies.

there was morning frost last winter, a silver furry coat of iced crystals growing on every stump, stone and blade of grass. first time we couldn't believe it: it made us prance around child-like, wide-eyed and slightly out of our minds.

wake up breathing in crispy air and breathing out tepid vapor; go for a run and come back to the house and coal range freshly ablaze, last-night oatmeal re-heated and steaming, when we were good and agreeable to each other. a spoonful of peanut butter for nourishment and perhaps a slice of dark home-baked bread that Lana kept giving away in quarter-size loafs to neighbours until we realized that none of them care for an alternative to bags of fluffed-up air sold at the shops as bread.

these days Lana fights 1080 cause and saves the forest; i am a recluse, a prisoner of bungaville on my own accord and not a subject to expressions of affection. living together is a matter of convenience, we could have signed a contract to make it official but we both know that the freaks under our skin won't tolerate such hypocrisy. there are responsibilities, such as to our mothers who keep sending us postcards, pickled preserves, jams, mother's concern and painstakingly hand-woven garments, lying neatly folded on a high shelf; there are lithography prints from stone-age printing press coming in the mail from my russian aunty, we have no wall space for them; there are a few wicked people i've been meaning to send a christmas card to (tell you that heavy clouds had been gathering in the distance, pregnant with rain, no doubt, but not a drop; the forecast is gloom for the rest of the jolly days and there's a also a rupture in the space-time continuum causing distortion and ripples in the narrative, which might be confusing but in no way altering the cyclic mood of the doom); like a mayan calendar i'm bound to repeat what i've been doing a year ago: running around covering and uncovering piles of borer-eaten wood with bits of tin and plastic, precipitating and growing mould in my head, wading through mounds of rotten silage and aged rimu sawdust, cow-dung stashes and lime pits; forgetting not a garden to fertilize, fence to erect, rust to take out and trees to put in; locate calculate predict sunspot growth circles, lunar tide waning and gaining; remembering remote bush locations and other important information, such as whom to bribe with homemade chutney, muscles off the rocks and ground-fallen fruit to get free stuff. i've discovered compulsive-possessive hunt-and-gatherer gene previously dormant in my blood, scavenger type X. or may be i got bit by a bug. insects take over, without as much as giving you an eviction notice.

barren landscape of a pilgrim's infernal sahara has been clouding and unclouding, not a drop though. my brain is dry and desiccated, like that of Egyptian pharaoh dusting in his sarcophagus on the ground floor of some european museum, among other dead relics. freeze-dried and desiccated for about how many days now i've been meaning to commit a great escape (let alone to write you all a lousy letter) yet every time i dare to venture out yonder, the gravity of my past sins pulls me back with equal and opposite force. taking off is not permitted, not in the land of la Bung.

last time i left for alaska i didn't make it out of the driveway. i was positively psyched up and must have stumbled about frothing at the mouth, as much for the sake of appearances as to let the steam out. i used to scream at the roots and stab heavy clay with a bar of iron; it would sink deeper and i'd be running out of breath to pull it out and i screamed again and again, jerking at inanimate objects violently and driving towards total and final destruction (did you know that comfrey has 35 percent protein content, just like soy?) it is a tantrum throwing i have excelled over the years. shy to perform in public, i reserve my best for those i love dearly; its women that are closest to my heart (however pathetic and shriveled from disuse it may be) that never fail to inspire me.

can you pass me a glass of water?, i ask

are you writing mean things about me?, says she

i get up and get water myself

she knows, before even i do, i'm up to no good. sitting around with that 486 laptop humming busily space code transmission, plastic cpu fan noise scribbling endlessly into my ear its soft purring signature of imminent breakdown. all things mechanical, i've been told, are dying from the moment of their conception; especially, cars. my water ran out.

what about this vehicle of flesh and bone, then?

the reason i haven't written is, i could be building more shelves. we need storage for spices and marmalade jars, preserves and pickled brains... you never know when you gonna need them. it's raining again.

i've been of late straight as a national candle, no medicine, no music, no art. no warped passages to travel through, no dreams to speak of - sterile promontory, bungavillian kingdom in a nutshell. i am no prince of denmark, my wax leaks when soften by the heat. lazy, effortless degradation. from the candle holder onto the table and onto the floor, dripping lament... god knows, i tried! to get away as far as possible and find my true self. well, so far i found my pitiful self, my arrogant self, my loathing self... but no one i'd like to invite for dinner. my friend, where art thou? what happened, why is that there's such a distance between us - a phone call away in theory, in practice - an unsurpassable gaping schism, a precipice that makes me dizzy whence i look upon it? it seems to me no meeting at all is better than the meeting of the feeble and the meek. in all this busy-bee activity i have amounted to nothing, gained no ground to stand on. tis old news but they won't go away. a writer, i could never be; i am a soil conditioner... i intend to bury myself, my phony lifeless self, and let something else grow. there will be chirping birds, ticking alarmed clocks and cups of tea; soggy after-noons and cold crisp mornings, soaked jackets left overnight in the rain and many a fat fart. worms and poos and suspended animation, meandering and waiting; for my lord is gone and i'm but a servant, treating myself to the pantry. as days go by, in fear for the return of my master, i do the chores half-heartedly, just enough to keep up the appearances of being occupied in case He might show up at the door and ask:

'what have you become, my son?'

it must be the medium that stops me from getting under your skin. before i turn a computer on i'm full of inspiration; as soon as the machine starts up, my mind becomes a blank dull photocopy not worth going over: you've seen this before, it's been plastered on your subconscious notice board long enough to become a permanent blur. these dots, commas, reiterations on same old theme. surely, there's been same dog lying in the same puddle; same tune blaring through the speaker tuned to the same station, played ever since the radio has been invented and radio waves bought and sold. same cornerstone to stumble on in the dark for a hundredth time. i know it's there, i stumble out of habit. out of sheer despicable renunciation of a possibility of change. i go running every morning, dragging my feet along the same path. no deviations, no stepping left of right, only to follow the designated route for the fear of being electrocuted or shot. invisible mind police is ever vigilant and manning submachine-gun outposts set along the perimeter of my brain. there's a self-made prison, full security and rat poison laid at every hole one could squeeze a fresh draft out of. to go back to the world, rattling shackles? can you hear this divine music? silent, omnivorous, buzzing on a locust cloud frequency, devouring all without consideration for age, sex or merit; good-bye, alice, wonderland is no more. no more spirit-of-the-moment fighting of windmills, no more knighted horse-back pursuits of the dames. viva la routine, ladies and gentlemen! safe guided tour under surveillance from inside, a ride on a merry-go-around, why not treat yourself to the same groundhog's day? it's a safe bet. doesn't get any safer than that. it makes me want to puke, rebuke, revolt, upraise and destroy everything i've built. don't come anywhere near me with watery eyes, quotes from new-age books or a change of plan. i intend to get thoroughly sick of my life and then take off, out of sight, out of mind. propel myself to an absolute zero, beyond the sizzle of faintest background radiation, to most remote region of outer space and let out a yelp, a monstrous shout, that will cause ripples the size of tsunami which will travel up my rectum where a nuclear fart will detonate at unsafe distance in a manner of a supernova explosion, and that will be it. except for pungent stench, of course. i guess what i'm trying to say is: stay alive! don't go rotten in your graves (i presume you've dug a few already), keep the mail coming. i'm not much of a communicator these days, i do like to read gossip - uncensored, raw, dripping with juice and bloody, just the way the nature has intended us. keep malfunctioning, you are my favourite genetic mistake! every word pregnant with meaning for the anticipation of what is yet to come. volcano is slumbering, quietly puffing in its sleep. dreaming of the eruption, gathering lava with its tucked-in paws. while human insects conduct their little civilization experiment here and there, build a bungaville-or-two. have a divorce, merry someone else, put kids on welfare support, repeat what your parents did to you while trying to be different. lets build another existential paradigm. make it a paradise. every pet gets its rug, a bone and a chain. i don't care if your pet is a snail in the box: it still gets its bone and its chain. so equipped, one can attach the thing to the ceiling fan and let it spin out of control. i predict a moist spot somewhere on the wall, possibly with artistic impression all over it. i don't care it has no meaning, no context and no practical application. i'm not giving you advise on bleaching bedsheets. i'm not modest anymore, either. take me, all of me, absurd, disgusting, out of my mind. or i will come again and again with more irresistible tongue-twisters, batting eyelashes and hiding a knife behind my back: couldn't pull it out from that fatal stabbing. i was an impressionable baby, defenseless in my pajamas. santa claus descended from helicopter by ropes, a platoon of red-and-white commandos, all-dancing all-singing militant menace of the christian world. happy birthday, they said, and stabbed me in the back, dagger sinking right to the hilt into my tender baby flesh. from then on, i went on crying as if wounded. i hope this explains why i cry. thank you.

if there is anyone to blame, it must have been 'tune in, turn on, and drop out', a timothy leary's mantra, recited one too many times. indebted to the community of defunct pipe dreamers, here i am, at the dead duck creek food coma resort. who would have thought? blue ducks means “no gold” in prospector's jargon. gold or no gold, i don't care, i ran away. i left the city that is never short of bread, butter and supermarket selection of glad-wrapped bits of flesh, neatly stickered shiny apples... there were fields on the side of motorways where vegetables thrive in exhaust smoke; carbon emissions must be most excellent for photosynthesis of plants, i believe. brought to you in sterile foamy trays, as if the plastic christmas has cometh once and for all. make merry! yeah, right. you can run but you cannot hide. not when mechanical birds start flapping their wings in the air right above you in the woods, drooping poison from every orifice. cleansing the forest of pests, they say. as well as all other life forms that happen to partake of the poisoned feast. they gonna drop it anyday now, way over yonder.

forget the helicopters; they come and go, like waves of embrionic human filth splashing against rocks of eternal beauty - take shortcut into the mountains, where tibetan nomads and their prayer flags hang out in the breeze, long notes issuing forth from long cavernous trumpets and spiraling away to be bounced off barren ruggedness, clear diamond cutting technique of diaphragm breathing and focused, uninterrupted mind. flow and breathing, every river starts somewhere. i sigh and abandon ye hope; composting loo is to be emptied by hand once again. a shitty job involving manual braking of the stool with a gloved hand, definition of 'fecalith'.

collectively, we milk the earth of its juice until it is rendered desert-dry and infertile. there's no fuel for ninety-two km ahead; welcome to dead duck creek, where lonely birds yearn for their losses and hunters in full camouflage getup roam on four-wheel death safaris with machine gun turrets and laser-beam target finders while winter-starved pasture animals hang out by the river, waiting for her to rise up on a rainy day and flush all dung into the ocean, depleting valuable manure that ought to go back into the land.

pasture is limed to correct the ph, sweeten the soil, as it lacks more and more goodness. mushrooms no longer grow in the fields. cows undergo controlled starvation and three quarters of their immaculately conceived progenies are dumped into landfills as it makes little sense to sell them for two dollars apiece to bobby-calf collectors.

behold! the biblical elation of coming to possess and rule our own kingdom, where we dwell in peace, overjoyed and drinking thirstily from the cup brimming with possibilities; every day's a blessing and starts with a prayer. the luckiest people in the world, just hanging out in the rain, by the fire, trickling down pebbled driveway with laughter and we make merry; jolly rogery and bugger all to worry about - no rent, no tv, no friday night hullabaloo next-door. instead, we watch flames in the coal range and raise a thimble of ginger wine to all who are not here with us tonight. tonight we remember our dearest and wish them happiness. because you never know, to-morrow we could be at war and everyone takes sides, house full of flying daggers and pots and pans, culinary-cum-death-bringing show, your host tonight is my grandma and her lethal throw of boiling pasta. she's waiting just under my skin, ready to spring into action, all the way from my school days when all i wanted was to play football in my room and smash a chandelier or two. steal some pocket change. look at fashion magazine cut-outs under my blanket with a flashtorch. i'll dig more graves tomorrow and will probably scream at stones and roots as i raise my rebar to stab at the heavy clay soil... excavating more precious memories, no doubt.

the bloomin' calf, ladies and gentlemen! a corpse, under under each and every tree - slaughter shall be fruitful, and thanks for all colostrum milk!

there are goat people on the rocky south terrace where settlers once tried to put their roots down and found it impossible due to the 'iron pan', a geological layer of hard-pressed stone and clay. the iron pan won't drain the water after the rain and a garden becomes a swamp. when water subsides, it takes nutrients with it out of the soil. a cut away view of a tree trunk reveals such tight circles of annual growth that a stick of rimu as thick as a wrist might be thirty years of age. that's why there's no old trees left standing, apart from the useless and the crooked, hopefully making darwin turn in his grave. goat master abides in the land of gorse and stones, his kingdoms' boundary marked with make-shift fences of tin and chicken wire: the place gives one a feeling of recovery after a global disaster come and gone. now there's peace and serenity, four-legged creatures bleating their greetings at you, chicken hens decorating front porch of partly-built house with runny imprints of poultry goodness and a toothless smile between few precious words spaced out by light-hearted swearing. and gumtrees swaying in the wind, sucking up moisture from paddocks. is this why australia is so dry? on the way back home, loaded with bundles of rimu and manuka, we learn there's someone looking for us. someone who borrowed one of our bikes already. someone familiar and homely, perhaps a dear friend of ours, one who took one's chances in traveling remote one-way road over the bluff without a car or a map just on a hunch of finding out hide-out. people like that i can count on the fingers of one hand. let's see... nina and zach, tyrone... nina would probably walk around our garden, find some little creatures to play with and fall asleep in the shadow; zach is likely to contemplate a visit in his spare time, but would feel obliged to return to his duties of keeping roofs from falling, coastal towns from tsunami's rolling in, controlling president of united states via telebroadcast and attending to other global disasters that are about to take place. it leaves us one candidate... and here he is, on the porch, locked out of the house, cooking up noodles on a butane gas stove... in a minute we shall embrace each other cautiously, me sniffing habitually at his all-season fatigues that normally extrude pungent odour of sweat and dumpster - but not this time!, his patched-up shorts and stripy clown stockings running into ankle-high military boots, sleeveless jacket displaying black-and-white window of textile ink opening into a zombie street riot, fresh from the wellington underground printing press. he is a walking billboard of political message that is soon to become accessory to fashion and thus to be incorporated into the culture that it undermines... new zealand culture, or the lack of thereof, according to paddy, is a simple parasitic organism that sprawls its succulent paws and excretes somnambular poison that puts masses to sleep while it feeds on the corpses of its opposition. how fortunate of me to escape and find myself writing mementoes of a sick boy with impaired vision, extracting grains of sense from hazy fog of days come and gone - have they truly happened?... am i making up my life, unreal behind the veil of reconstituted mish-mash past, and, if so, to what end? who is that lucky one, sitting in the blanketed room on this sunny day, hiding out from the blinding light that stabs deep into the brain through one's eye sockets? what can he do but wait for his inflamed eyeball to be swallowed by blood-shot branches creeping in from the outer rim, enclosing onto colour-drenched retina towards the bloated dark inkspot in the middle that used to be its neat, sharp black pupil? i had clear vision for the first six hours after pulling out an inch-long grinder-brush wire out my right eye: i was surprised how stuck it was in my eyeball. safety glasses, where were you! and lady on the phone, registered nurse, advising me to drive my rusty ute two hundred and fifty kilometers down south to greymouth where they may have an optometrist on saturday afternoon. nonsense! i just need someone to tell me over the phone i don't need to go anywhere. i got rust to deal with, gasket to replace, exhaust pipe to weld, chimney to put up, shelter to build - while there's precious sunshine!

now this same sunshine is stabbing me through my eyes closed, and i shrink in pain into a ball in the corner of my seat. Lana drove me to nelson the following day, flying trough one-lane bridges and taking over on blind corners, my heart jumping and chill running down my spine: just relax, close your eyes and go to sleep, she says. not only that, she also tries to giggle. i'm sure of being delivered to hospital, the question is - in how many pieces? when a part of your body breaks down and stops functioning, the rest of your life drifts out of focus into blurry background. nothing is important anymore. what use have running shoes if every jolt goes into your brain? forgone all custom of exercises and indeed it goes so heavily into my head every attempt at exerting flesh over worldly matter. i had my retina stitched up around midnight and don't remember any of it as i was under general anesthetic; that doesn't stop the lens from leaking, and i have another week to wait before the cataract is removed. five days later, i'm sitting in bungaville on this sunny day, typing and waiting for more eye drops to arrive so i can swim in their milky steroid liquid and stream down my cheek, rivulets of regret and lamentation for what-could've-been, unable to rest and knowing that i'm doing everything possible to lose my eye. it's growing purple from inside, bound by fractaly splitting branches of crimson red, a sinister version of fake dracula eyes painted on halved ping-pong balls dangling on a spring that you buy from a two-dollar store.

tyrone came to stay for one night only; he had other drinking obligations, riots to start and band happenings to attend further down south. and i'm sure there was a girl waiting for him, too. but first and foremost, there was gwyllam arriving to charleston to catch up with the family after his overseas stint in europe, resulting in deportation for civil unrest. naturally, we got excited to hear news of far-away lands first hand, and thus gathered provisions for two days and sailed off down the road in our bedford wagon. we got as far as stone kingdom farms, a ten minute ride from blue duck, when the engine gasped, croaked and died. we rolled to a halt; flip the bonnet - no apparent damage to the belts, no torn wires. turn the key, engine starts. okay, then. put the gears into forward... nothing happens. into reverse... it goes! so we drive home backwards on the opposite side of the road, to the amusement of cows and farmers alike... to arrive in charleston in the late afternoon, having exchanged comfortable bedford for a work-horse ute. i'm wound up about being late to the gathering and that all magical preparations having been dispensed in our absence.

i'm wrong, as always, when it comes to timing: i have no sense of it whatsoever. so i take a walk to let off the steam while others meet and commune. 24 hours later, i've come back from westport on a new old bike, closed my bank account and done a stint in the mexican garden; gwyllam is nowhere to be seen, the big event we've come for is basically us plus rianon, gwyllam's sister; my hands are not accustomed neither to needle therapy nor to prickle acupuncture and my faith in magic is only resorted later at the bonfire by a stained-glass bottle of the murky brown brew, no more palatable than soaked for weeks seaweed. whoever concocted that ancient potion must have had strong stomach; i feel the life force stir inside me and cozy fire can keep me no longer spellbound with its dancing flames. moon is full and ocean is calling; there, on the sand, is a moonlit stage and pebbled audience of sea lice awaiting our long-overdue performance. off with my shoes, my skinned and hollowed friend of a rhythmic kind behind my back, we appoint rendezvous with death on the beach unanimously by my single vote and take off down the creek to find what's coming to us, possibly followed by tyrone. as one could expect, there were slippery rocks and mossy tree trunks, poke-an-eye brunches and overhanging shrubs spreading darkness from within. i called out into the night, speaking to twigs and stones, and asked them to be my friends and give support to me on my journey; i believe they agreed, silently, as soon as i made a request. soon i was able to move more rapidly and flow between rocks in the manner of a hunter. i remembered my uncle, storming through forest on a mushroom hunt, telling me i also move like an elk; and my good friend from them college days who joined spetznaz and had to pass a graduation test in which a candidate runs 15-km in the snow, swims across ice-cold river, eats from a fresh carcass of an animal and holds three fights with a qualified spetznaz soldier, a fresh one each time. they fell and spat their teeth out, but you don't pass if you don't get up. comradory of hunters... a creature was splashing mightily some place close; i christened it "paddy-fish", a dark and slippery creation of the night, and said onto thee: if i catch ya, i'll eat ya! paddy-fish was slick and black and too quick for my hands.

there were speedy shallow stretches of shingle and deep silent pools with god-knows what hiding beneath, openings into mossy dimensions and starry wide openings right above, strings of thoughts and associations and an occasional wire strung across the creek for some obscure reason. the journey seemed to be endless; i started to trot, skip and run, feeling akin to aboriginal native of a long-forgotten origin. my little creek suddenly opened right up and i stood by the faster waters of a river. i dared not risk my drum and monkeyed up the bank, grabbing hold of seemingly flimsy branches to pull myself out and onto the road, back to town, running and swallowing lungs full of air – nothing could be more pleasant than being alive. i was aiming for rendezvous with death on the beach, my mission's objective still intact and getting closer to being accomplished by the minute. i ran into the first bay: nobody there. Second, same story. Just me on the arena of sand and white foamy waves rolling in, the ocean's breathing. i wanted to get nearer; rocks were thundering from the full impact of waves in the narrow mouth of the bay. “Morgan welcomes you”, read a plaque at the entrance of channel strewn with strands of twisted kelp; how homely, i thought. The channel exuded memory of awesome force that burrowed through stone plough-like, one feels it in his guts and in the instinctive straightening of the spine. Waves came roaring in, giving each other plenty of time to froth and roll back. Stone cliffs assembled themselves precariously and felt abrasive under palms of my hands as i scrambled and crawled towards the mouth of the frothing beast; continuous cascades of white foamy cavalry charged and crashed against the fortress of rocks, glistening in full glory of the yellow moon. I reached the final tower, beyond which the bonecrusher was raging, and my knees gave way as i lowered myself before the mighty mother of all creation. here all are born and here all retreat thereafter... my dear mother and my grandma, only wanting to know if i am alright; alanushka, still waiting by the fire for me to come and fetch her, eyes full of mischievous wonder and soft, her features melting in the heatwaves, skin tender as that of a peach: my heart is singing and we resonate together on a frequency only those in love know (i owe you three years worth of birthday presents and much warmth that i borrowed in advance, i've been so bloody cold at times). when we go back she will be milking cows, five thirty in the morning; day breaks and carmel is wiping off tears in the milking shed, changing suction cups with habitual swiftness, all alone; cows crowd in the rear, steaming with intestinal gases and rubbing manure on each other. smell of warm urine mixed with that of sweet infant milk, rubber rings and sucking away hoses substituting for absentee calves. some of them are buried in our garden; i know because i put them there, limp and skinless. still on my knees, i offered my silent prayer. nothing and everything; moon draped in yellow, a wave caught with pending momentum of motion in the air, suspended liquid and precipitation of all things yet to come - what use is to resist, or will oneself to move? ice age collapsed, eternity shuttered in one instance of utter humbleness. in surrender i found new strength, or rather like a flat battery i was miraculously topped up as if every cell in my body was revived by fresh electrical current. i sat upright, allowing current to move me. nothing changed; on the outside the same sky, same cold rocks, same untamed ocean. a long note issued forth from my chest, vibrated on the crescent of the wave and jumped along the shoreline until it escaped altogether in the distance. i scrambled monkey-wise to whence i came from, holding a precious vial of this night in my memory as if not to spill a drop; deliver i must and tell everyone how much i love yous. i guess that's it. but i should have known, words fall short and tyrone is lost somewhere in the jungle - he has his own mission now; back in the camp Lana and rianon are waiting for me to jump out into the light of the dying fire and give them a hell of a fright, and i do. shortly we will packing to leave, long before dawn, our ute load of seaweed held down by a cargo net, each rope a finger strong, also found on the beach. jammed in the middle of it are new-found prickly friends of all sizes, some crooked and some broken, in need of transplanting upon arrival. i hum and sing and cry and yell periodically out of the window, antagonizing in view of nonsensical departure from the mexican dream. if i can't have her now, i'll never have her. a wretched hero grows glowing horns as he plummets all the way through the stratosphere of the divine into banality of daily existence which in this case means milking cows at dawn. why do you have to drag us back to the farm in the middle of this magic night when everything is possible - why, this choice of duty to be fulfilled, for whom? the farmers' own wife won't go close to the milking shed, for whom you slave away at a minimum wage?! reliance, trust, fuck of this bullshit - if you choose to go, fine, i'll go, too. just to see what i'm missing out on, milking cows. clip the caps on, slip in the shit, get shat and pissed on, smell like shit, fucken hey! love it! sad fucking cows and bony skeletons repugnant to command, yet moving udders full of baby juice between their legs, come on! move it! moooo-ooove it! get in there, come on, please, move, you fine-looking animal, don't you want to get this business over with, asap, and be back in the pasture? you are a pasture animal, get it? go home!

she did it for carmel. carmel's got two kids, hard-working husband, a bag-full of horrible stories from childhood days (a book on its own) and a bottle of vodka in store for the occasion that presents itself regularly enough to give rise to such rumours as that of naked carmel riding through town at night on a horse. she denies it, naturally; yet i have seen her jump in front of speeding above open-road limit car driven by local cowboys and bring it to a screeching halt with both hands outstretched as if to manifest an invisible wall in the middle of the road. carmel is a raw deal, sweet as could be in her handle-anything kind of laughter, wrinkles in the corners of her eyes laughing, too. i understood why Lana had to go back only afterwards.

* * *

bush lounge, karamea's one and only gig venue that housed memorable benka borodovsky bordello band, the mad gypsies hailing from... auckland, out of all the places. i think i was their flute player, a blow-up image of a children's doll, complete with black as coal eyelashes, that complained of being mistaken for a twelve year old. their front man was a thin ginger-bearded madman that i've encountered before at similarly obscure events in the altered-state haze of musical sabbaticals. the guitarist, however, i knew well from meatbix outfit: happy bar, wellington, some years ago, third day of meatwaters festival, where i met Lana for the first time...

i was a sort of a gogo dancer "touring" with meatbix in their cramped van, fishing for luck from a bucket of tapes to pass the time, mostly old relics, giving away limited copies of my new film work to complete strangers whenever we stopped... i've just come back to the venue from the screening of bernardo bertoluchie's Dreamers, straight into shroomin and boomin jazz that had everyone stand still for the entire set of ear-wrenching cacophony, a noisy pyramid based in chaos that kept building and refining itself as players tuned into each other and at last mounted a pinnacle of pin-drop silence, in perfect harmony. have faith, o brother, and let waves of sound toss you about the murky waters, for there's perfect calm after the storm, vibrant with freshness and energy.

outside on the steps there was james, hunched over and making himself small, perhaps a bit drunk, eyes sparkling with a far-off fire set alight by dostoevsky and other russian literary classics: he spoke of drinking vodka on trans-siberian railway and i didn't believe he was capable of undertaking the journey. i didn't know of his train-hopping stints in the states then; he turned up in bungaville once since then, having come whangapeka way (the hard, break-a-leg way) with his personal spanish teacher, craving for open alpine altitudes. i hear he's back from south america, painting surrealism in the city of winds. for the love of gossip, come to bungaville, we will tell you of great people and free spirits. free people who are endangered species on this planet. they seem to disappear like shooting stars. so easy to miss! it was Lana who brought me water while i explained to james that i know nothing about siberia. i was thirsty, my tongue moved with difficulty and that's how we've met, in the interlude between the bands. philka the guitarist married carry rae, meatbix singer, that same night: band stopped performing to witness vowels of groom and bride performed with ecclesiastic officiality amongst unruly crowd of out-of-their-heads munters, lost-on-the-way-to-a-better-future youth, passing-through-town hippies and clad in leather beer-drinking gang-biker types anointed by carrie rae with the task of soap bubble blowing; the background to all this bizarre happening were images from a looped porno projected onto the back wall, sliced and diced with meatwork close-ups, porn, butchery, and the ballet. and this is where we stood at, gaping dumfounded and hardly trying to suspend our disbelief for meatbix were known for rendering audience infantile and escalating foolishness into a state of art. they used to employ a goblin with latex bodyparts glued on for the night, a make-up artist as he was, he was also rather drunk well ahead of the show. he got sacked after sending vicky, meatbix fan number one, to hospital with a gashing head wound left by a stool which he doesn't recollect possessing in his paws at the time of the strike. a goblin can't be held responsible for being a goblin. can't take a goblin to court, for justice will suffer from much mockery. no goblin will pay two-hundred dollar parking ticket, no matter how many threats he receives in the mail. i'd like to leave yous on a sour-dough note, so here it is, literally engrained.

* * *

Lana is back from wellington, looking uptown in her fancy pre-loved jacket; there's nothing fancy about it, of course, save for the fact that i haven't seen her wearing one ever. she looks fresh, smells fresh, her voice and eyes are full of gaiety and exaltation. in short, she is a fiery little asteroid of joy and unsurpassed beauty. i wonder how long it will last this time. at breakfast carmel speaks of a local drunkard that drinks his wife's money that should be spent on food for the kids instead. the drunkard has frequent lapses into early adolescence, confronting tender-aged youth with hatred and malice only a hard-dealt by life trailer-trash punk can muster, his stepdaughter suffering the brunt of it. a despicable man, worthy of ungodly punishment; yet a brilliant artist. we lament and despise in unison. at home, i'm rendered immobile by the gracious movements of my one and only as she glides and flutters about. i'm leaning against a hardwood pole erected earlier on to support the front porch, feeble on my feet and spellbound. she asks me what i'm thinking about, i dare not to say, and tell her i ain't thinking anything at all. when i finally regain power of mobility i occupy myself with laying lengths of bamboo onto the porch frame. it transpires from simple observation that a certain area of forest floor will be under cover; we launch into ugly argument like a pair of hot-tempered horses taking into full gallop from a standstill. she wants to live in the rainforest; i want protection from weather. she loves all living plants, i cannot convince her that there will be enough water trickling down and soaking the soil from the surrounding bush. in utter futility i turn about face and take a walk down the valley, thinking of all the effort going into the making of this so called paradise that we cannot share. i'm fizzling out day by day. it is not the physical labour that tires me out, it is the clash of my manufacturing ability and Lana's plans that sometimes remain solely in her own head and only become known after i ruin them, often unwittingly. at dinner we stab each other bluntly and eagerly with same old weapons attached to our tongues, reveling in the opportunity to lash out. once in the mountains Lana ate poisonous berries and got sick; it turns out that i hid the raisins from her at the time, she was hungry and ate some berries instead. an interesting detail to find out two years later after the event. we air out dark and rotten fragments of memory, digging deeper than ever. we rain hooks and punches, hit below waist and withdraw in agonizing silence, we use crowbars and plunge hidden knives right to the hilt into one another's backs. we fight dirty and flight desperately only to come at each other reinforced by more flashbacks from the past. we dwell on the past, live in the past, we are the dinosaurs destined for extinction from the moment of our conception.

weka eats weka

i'm wielding a chair above my head, she is one the floor under my feet, i'm snarling like a mad dog. i'm insane, worse than the local drunkard because i am sober, therefore without hope for pardon; she's crying and won't get up. i explode out the front door, prefaced by shards of broken glass. it is a cold rainy night. i contemplate spontaneous departure into the dark and travel into sad freezing wet places, shivering and suffering, anything to alleviate this morbid knowing that i am the trailer trash punk, the malignant fuck-up who dresses his thoughts and his speech to avoid being recognized for a psychopath. one of the many, never thought it was me, though. it was the neighbour, someone i knew or seen on tv, friend of a friend but it was never me, not untill now. now i know why husband and wife are two graveyards, lying side by side. i will stick around, i'm going back for a cup of tea. a rainy night has no attraction for me. prefer the killing rampage in the comfort zone and stifling warmth of the house where i can choke myself with ricecrackers and fall into bed in my clothes. so, that's how lifeless corpses share their marriage under the same roof, how they feed on one another, chew each others ears, etc. all life is gone, i'm drenched like a flat battery. i can't think, can't work, can't rest, can't leave, can't stay. welcome to the dead lover's nest. come - you will love it!

oliver, my friend, - the fragrance, can you dig it?! once possessed, she has no other choice but make you happy in many little ways, too small to be here mentioned and yet unquestionably larger than pitiful desires one might have...

here's where transmission ends, folks. thanks everyone for tuning in onto the la-bung frequency. i hereby dismiss the entire contents of this periodical as a whimsical, delusional and fictitious, not to be taken for anything more than a venting hole of a sunken submarine on the bottom on an unknown sea, corroding away silently while deep-water creatures utilize its coral-invested carcass as they would any other rock formation. i am happy for sunshine after turbulent seas and wish you all to arrive to your distant shores safely and soundly, for the journey, as i found out, harbours many a peril and a monster. i've been baking cookies today, for i know that all monsters succumb to the taste of home-baking. i put enough maple syrup to sweeten them up... come, have a taste!

* * *

bungaville is me and Lana at the end of a gravel one-way road in borer-eaten shack passing our days like two hermits, two lost souls with dream-filled eyes and a bag full of advice on how to live a good life. we are very economical and do not squander the inherited content as a frivolous couple of naughty kids would. no, we save and relish it until the next big bang, big crunch or what-not comes along and demands it all. all we got, in exchange for peace and prosperity. our friends come, our parents come, its a big mess and we make it bigger, funnier, sadder, more epic, more dramatic, more prosaic, more the way it goes, in the universal man-and-woman sense - pushing and pulling and fluctuating, enlarging and deflating and hoping that the spirit survives our worst storm. the arc is made of driftwood and recycled plastic squandered from a local tomato factory. it better endure a few winters... else glynn and dona shall come again and rescue us!