NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING

she finds a spot in the car park after a few maddening minutes of circling graffiti on every available surface not reading any of the spray painted words listening to the radio and trying to stay calm the economist in the studio saying that australia has to be about the future and that means asia and the politician on a telephone feed replying that a global meltdown means global problems and the way forward has to be with a global mind frame turning the car off and enjoying the way she can kill their voices carefully getting out of her car stepping away gingerly because she turned her ankle friday hopping off the tram moving through a chaos gallery of public explosions graffiti artists have a few milliseconds of attention to play with then again there’s a limited permanence high exposure audience in thrall if only for brief moments of parking being stopped in that one concrete space later she will remember this is the first instance of the words hive mind appearing before her a tag that’s what it was called graffiti artists used tags instead of names maybe there is an honesty there it didn’t matter who their father was or what name mother chose limping away from her car to the bookstore with a joy division song playing memory doesn’t show everything who knows what’s in there no words or title only the first line ian curtis intoning so this is permanence so this is through her mind again permanence which might have been a declaration of pain yet makes her feel as little anguish as graffiti so this is permanence is just a resonating sequence of syllables rising and subsiding in letters that require a brief hiss at the beginning and ending limping along like a gimp wincing with every step keeping the expressions minuscule doesn’t show emotion in public if she can help it which isn’t always true because she laughs out loud on her mobile when speaking to a friend so the ankle is as much a secret as she can make it hobbling along an inconvenience rather than an agony needing a book because she didn’t want to move yet moving because she needed that book it’s too hot out here there are too many people liable to bump or mill about on the footpath she gets through without needing to say excuse me excuse me excuse me please this is not permanence soon enough she’ll be back home with her book and she will get into her comfy armchair and not move again for hours within the bookstore it’s the christmas rush there’s no time for browsing people brushing past swearing under breath wanting to shove barely containing themselves emitting some kind of frantic sound from their hectic minds dogs could hear it or smell it if they let dogs in here they’d be barking their heads off as animals often do in horror films in the presence of something unholy picking up a book she needs to rest her ankle it’s a pocket of calm maybe no one wants books from the cultural studies section this time of year for presents for friends or family for a kris kringle the female eunuch probably hadn’t ever found its way into an xmas stocking but germaine greer would cackle if she was to hang pendulous from the family mantel wishing she could make those kinds of friends with writers she enjoys and has come to know as if they were eternally present at birthdays being unwrapped or when there’s time enough to curl up with them on an armchair such welcoming faithful dutiful loving spectres like greer or curtis singing about permanence and hanging from his neck almost twenty four years old and that song about permanence is called twenty four hours she now recalls one of those songs she’s listened to hundreds of times never catching all the lyrics yet she can hear his voice so this is permanence she imagines ian curtis still hanging from a beam decades later a final guttural song recorded in a purgatory studio the lyrics never emerging played over and over in the endless pendulum of his feet swinging free of time below perhaps that is true for everyone and not just her and this ghost pain comes with the illusion that it will never end even when it’s something as stupid as a twisted ankle and the worse the pain the more convincing the illusion of permanence but she still doesn’t feel sad for him it’s only a song attached to a few random biographical details seeing a book on the shelf picking it up for no other reason than it says hive mind on the cover she will later point out in an email to her friend edouard that this is the second instance in a total of three for the day writing that she can’t remember seeing the words applied to people in general as if it’s a recognised phenomenon or common term maybe it is now it had been made official by some pseudo crypto jungian rejigging the collective unconscious with a bit of sociology psychology history in the cultural studies demimonde emerging on youtube radio television coaching america’s newest magazine gloss sweetheart through her latest paparazzi breakdown putting the book back as a total mind numbing fucking irrelevancy in any case giving up on the idea that she might hunt through the biography section for dad’s christmas gift to get that particular farce over and done with limping to the book by jim shepard she wants to buy hating the cover but knowing shepard is one of the few writers who can give her that literary transport that she needs right now the tyranny of epiphany a tiny bubble in her mind popping among a billion other bubbles especially wanting to be jim’s friend as with germaine but probably not poor grand mal ian and just chat about music movies books or the weather polar bears preferred on the south pole it wouldn’t matter what they talked about really and she is sure that jim would like her at least as much as a facebook friendship allows he might correct her playfully about polar bears being only on the north pole and penguins living on the south pole never the twain paying for jim’s ugly book getting out while the going was good feeling lucky not to have had an xmas rugby style scrimmage at the counter limping along a temporary cripple stopping to rest by the wall next to the car park sweating panting thinking about the time she saw betty cuthbert in a wheelchair at an awards ceremony with videos playing on big screens of younger days how permanent that is for the golden girl winner of three gold medals for australia breaking sprinting records with that open mouth sucking in air and national noise and love and the pain is so bad that she can barely hobble to the car thinking that 100 metres in a breath over 11 seconds in 1956 still seems so so so quick recalling jason from human resources paid only $36 on ebay for a gold medal from berlin 1936 the nazi olympics hopping the last few metres on one leg to her car as though this is a gruelling olympic event with the medal metals for victory being tin or lead or rust and the winner is raised by a curtis rope rather than asked to step up on those three steps for the honour of listening to some stadium muzak getting into her car not with a yell of victory but with a squeal in the privacy of her cabin as her foot knocks against the doorframe the radio announcer says well I wouldn’t have said it was hive mind but we’ll all have to decide for ourselves laughing at his own joke and then going to a song that had nothing to do with anything