Graeme Wend-Walker 2005

My quotes; a few from Come Dance With Me to help it on its way into the world:

What is the world but little pieces of pictures and who can see a whole one?

(p35)

~ ~ ~ ~

Django was craning his neck to see out of the window. 'Are there sharks down there?' he asked.

'All kinds of things,' I said. Such a deep dark blue, the water below us, then a fringe of white surf as Kahului Airport came into view back in 1993. The palm trees were moving a little as if they didn't care one way or the other. It was a dull day and those trees put a jungly smell in my mind.

(p144)

~ ~ ~ ~

I can never get used to the passage of the self through time and space and the passage of time and space through the self. The years in me surged up like acid reflux to mingle with the travel hours I was trying to digest while the miles lay like a lump in my stomach and half-forgotten songs spun in my head...

(p178)

Masterful, all of it.

Graeme

Graeme Wend-Walker 2003 (2)

From: Graeme Wend-Walker
To: The Kraken
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 3:01 PM
Subject: [the-kraken] The International Fork You Ate

Greetings to awl!

I haven't posted to the Kraken for about two months. But I did, during that time, meet a few of you, as I wended my way around the world. Special greetings to those of you I was able to meet. You know who you are (at least as well as anyone does).

As an adjunct or appendix or (forward-lookingly) aperitif to our annual event, I remembered the fork you ate, and cast yellow paper into several corners of the world. Follows my belated report:

Whatever my original plans, once en route I found myself disinclined to leave yellow paper in public places. Partly because they were not "my" public places any more, partly because I was travelling in a time of war and unease. Partly because I felt, as a traveller, more than usually between things, and that's where I wanted to leave yellow paper; not thrust into the world, but left quietly in places which, as a university student, I am required by law to refer to as interstices. And partly because the quotes I had taken with me began to seem to be of a piece, and seemed to me to want to address themselves to other travellers, rather than to locals. So I left them in the hotels I stayed in, in drawers and wardrobes, to be found I hope by other unusually in-between people. And perhaps then to make their way even further afield.

Here are the quotes I used:

The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road might be taken.

- The Medusa Frequency

I tell you what I have paid years to learn: everything that is found is always lost again, and nothing that is found is ever lost again. Can you understand that?

- The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

More and more I find that life is a series of disappearances followed usually but not always by reappearances; you disappear from your morning self and reappear as your afternoon self; you disappear from feeling good and reappear feeling bad. And people, even face to face and clasped in each other's arms, disappear from each other.

- Fremder

And here are the places where yellow paper was left, some places where people and things might be lost, found and dis/appeared, and from where any road might be taken:

Quails Inn Hotel, San Marcos, California, USA

USA Hostel, San Diego, USA

Chelsea Centre Hostel, not in Chelsea at all but in the East Village, New York City, USA

Hughes-Parry Hall, Bloomsbury, London, England

Ngoc Mai Hotel, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

Princes Hotel, Cat Ba, Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam

Old Darling Café, Ha Noi, Viet Nam

Kind of nice to be back. Hope everyone is well.

World being,

Graeme

Graeme Wend-Walker 2003

The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road might be taken.

- The Medusa Frequency

Happy birthday to you, Russ. I hope this day and all the days of this year find you well and keep you that way.

In trying to select a quote, I was aware that my favourite passage is often a longer one, some oceanic passage which I am swallowed by before the whale of it spits me out its spout, and I find myself looking back and wondering how I got there.

Of course your books also frequently feature sound bite sized chewy quotables which lend themselves particularly well to being picked up by strangers.

So I've gone for one short one (above) and one long one. As for locations, something other than last year's melancholic disjointedness was called for. Instead of supermarket frozen-food cabinets I left the sheets where I thought I might have liked to find them: on seats in trains, and in a second-hand/antique/book shop: in picture frames, in mirror frames, and protruding rolled from vases and teapots.

The long quote follows. However many times I read it, I always must stop to laugh with the line, "Both men looked at me with expectation."

Thanks for everything, Russ.

from PILGERMANN

THERE WAS standing before me a tall and noble-looking Turk with heroic moustaches, a red fez, a scarlet and purple jacket worked with gold. I judged him to be sixty or so. He put a large hand on my shoulder and drew me a few steps away from the others. He looked at me in such a way that I knew he was going to say something that would make me his friend. He said to me in Greek, 'What if I say to you that the universe is a three-legged horse, eh? What then? What will you say to me?'

I said to him, 'It is because the universe is a three-legged horse that the journey to the red heifer is so slow.'

'Ah!' he said. 'You're a Jew then.'

'How does that follow?' I said.

'A Jew will consider anything,' he said. 'Are you or aren't you?'

'I am,' I said.

'I need you,' he said. 'Do you need me?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Done!' he said. My price was twenty-five dinars but he counted out fifty gold dinars and gave them to the pirate captain. 'This is twice as much as I have asked,' said the pirate captain in Greek to the Turk. The pirate's name, by the way, was Prodigality. He had formerly been a slave named Thrift who had in trading for his merchant master put by enough money to buy his freedom, and having done so he changed his name and went into piracy. 'Why are you doing this?' he said to the Turk.

'I am afraid not to,' said my new owner. 'I want Allah to take notice that I am taking notice of my good fortune.'

'If Allah's taking notice I don't want to look bad,' said Prodigality, and counting out twenty-five dinars he put them into my hand.

Both men looked at me with expectation.

'Can I buy myself back?' I said to my new owner.

'Just as you like,' he said. Prodigality wrote out a bill of sale to him and he wrote out a bill of sale to me. I then gave him the gold that Prodigality had given me. 'Now you're a free man,' said my former owner. 'What will you do?'

'I'll come with you freely,' I said, 'as we need each other.'

'Thus does the will of Allah manifest itself in human transactions,' said my new friend.

'Wait!' said Prodigality as we turned to go, and taking my hand he put into it the remaining twenty-five dinars of the double payment.

'What's this?' I said.

'Allah wills what Allah wills,' said Prodigality. 'Let it be altogether circular.'

'I am obedient to the will of Allah,' I said, and put the gold back into the hand from which it had originally come.

'Let it be noticed by all who have eyes to see,' said my new friend as he received the gold, 'that Allah has taken notice.'

'It's a pleasure doing business with you,' said Prodigality. 'It's spiritually refreshing. It's only a pity I can't afford this sort of thing more often.'

With many expressions of mutual esteem we parted, and as I walked away with my former owner and new friend I marvelled at how Prodigality had been able to rise above the practical considerations of commerce. Certainly with my gold and diamonds and the plunder from the other pilgrims in his coffers he could afford to be generous but even so it seemed remarkable to me that gold and silver and gems could produce in him that degree of moral sensitivity that enabled him to behave so handsomely.

Graeme Wend-Walker 2002

from TURTLE DIARY

There was a week of nature films on the South Bank and I went to see one about sharks. The film was made by a man of apparently unlimited wealth who fitted himself out with a large ship and any amount of special underwater gear for shark photography. He and his companions all agreed that diving among sharks was for them the ultimate challenge. They were particularly keen to encounter a great white shark, a rare species and the one most feared as a man-eater. They went from ocean to ocean looking for the great white shark and I couldn’t help wondering all the time how much it was costing. I think the money spent on even one of the special diving cages would keep me in high style for half a year at least.

For a large part of the time they followed whaling ships, photographing sharks feeding on whale carcasses. Sometimes they took their pictures from inside a cage but often they swam fearlessly among the sharks. They swam among blue sharks, dusky sharks, oceanic white-tipped sharks and several other kinds but they were continually frustrated by the absence of great white sharks.

Eventually they found a great white shark which they attracted with whale oil, blood and horsemeat. It was a truly terrifying creature and they very wisely stayed in their cage while the shark took the bars in his teeth and shook it about. The wealthy man said it had been fantastic, incredible, beyond his expectations. His friends congratulated him on the success of the expedition and the film came to an end.

I found myself resenting that man, however unreasonable it might be of me. All the money in the world does not give him the right to muck about with a direful secret creature and shame the mystery of it with words like ‘fantastic’ and ‘incredible’. The divers were not the ultimate challenge for the shark, I’m certain of that. Socially they were out of their class, the sharks would not have swum from ocean to ocean seeking them. It would have gone its mute and deadly way mindlessly being its awful self, innocent and murderous. It was the people who lusted for the fierce attention of the shark, like monkeys they had to make him notice them.

Money can do many things, even the great white shark can be played with by wealthy frotteurs in posh diving gear. But they have not really seen him or touched him because what he is to man is what he is to naked man alone-swimming. They have not found the great white shark, they have acted out some brothel fantasy with black rubber clothing and steel bars. Aluminium they were actually.

It was raining outside so I took Yellow Paper to the supermarket. Everyone goes to the supermarket and it’s a place where a lot of decisions are made but we don’t expect to be confronted with existential literature there. In Bi-Lo they have these rectangular frames for putting pieces of card in with the prices on them: ‘Helga’s Bread, 700g. $2.95’. I slid Yellow Paper into one. The thing is, the card they use for the prices is yellow A4 too. It might take ages for anyone to notice.

I thought the frozen food section seemed right for a piece about sharks, so I put Yellow Paper on the shelf with the pre-crumbed, pre-lemoned fish fillets. I did that at Coles too. I put one in a display box for recipe books. I put one in a ‘WHO’ magazine. I went to the video shop, found Turtle Diary and put Yellow Paper in the box. That was probably the most sensible thing I did. I was going to put one on the noticeboard in the lobby of my building, in front of the lift, but I didn’t. Instead I put one in each of the stairwells, at the landings between floors. I don’t think many people use the stairs.

At the top of the stairs there is a door that doesn’t go anywhere, it just looks out over the rooftops. I put one there.

The piece sums up the spiritual/imaginative void in modern society. The interesting thing is, the speaker (Neaera H.) technically has ‘not really seen him or touched’ the shark either. The difference is that she is faithful to the idea of the shark, which is where the shark really lives; she finds more shark in ordinary existence than the divers do in the ocean. You don’t need to go anywhere or spend any money to do that, because ‘naked alone-swimming’ is what we already are, which we would see if we could drop our ‘brothel fantasies’. I like the Kierkegaardian echoes in this. The most important thing in the world may be something that doesn’t (in the dull, conventional sense) ‘exist,’ but which we must nonetheless reach for in fear and trembling.

Graeme Wend-Walker - profile

Research postgraduate, Sydney, Australia