One Question Too Many (Letter to a Friend #2)
Questions, questions – the week has been filled with them.
There are the turkeys, first of all. They’re getting active, I guess, because the weather here in Brisbane is warming up. And when I say active, I mean active: the males make a leafy nest that could house a hundred eggs, some of them speckled.
The question here is what to call them – scrub turkeys or bush turkeys? Opinions differ in my inner circle, with my dad championing bush and my wife scrub. Me, I’m beastly careless. (A bird by any other name and all that.)
Tuesday night was Census night here in Australialand, the night on which adults are supposed to answer a suite of questions about themselves: name, age, gender, ancestry, sexual orientation and so on. It was enough to make me wonder who I really am… And, somewhat tangentially, whether my book-to-be contains a fatal flaw.
Remember my latest GWH (Great Write Hope) – the kid’s story about identical twins? Well, its perfect premise took a hit this week when my wife and son pointed out that the twins can’t be identical because one (Joe) is a boy and the other (Corey) is a girl. Talk about splitting hairs! Anyway, I refuse to accept this spurious assertion. In fact, I’ve gone one step further and embraced the accusation, making my twins freaks of nature. Here’s a chunk from the latest chapter.
SHOT OF NEWS DESK IN TV STUDIO
CHESTER: And now we cross to our reporter, the never-to-be-famous writer, Griffy Treehouse, who’s on the ground there in Brisbane, holding a stupid-looking microphone and nodding a lot. Where exactly are you, Griff?
CUT TO STREET
GRIFFY: I’m in The Gap, Chester.
CUT TO STUDIO
CHESTER: That’s the right place to be, Griff, for once. We’re hearing reports that a real situation is enripening out there.
CUT TO STREET
GRIFFY: It’s a biggish suburb, Chester. [LOOKS AROUND] Nothing seems to be enripening right now.
CUT TO STUDIO
CHESTER: That’s strange, Griff. Very strange. It’s just that our fact-checkers have been back through some old footage, and they’ve come across a kid claiming to be an identical twin. A kid who lives in a gap.
CUT TO STREET
GRIFF: The Gap, Chester. That’d be Corey. She and her brother, Joe, are identical twins.
CUT TO STUDIO
CHESTER: Well, that’s the thing, Griff. Normally a girl and a boy can’t be identical twins. Biologically impossible and all that. So this could be the only case known to humanity. A world first! This could make my career.
CUT TO STREET
GRIFFY: What about my career?
CUT TO STUDIO
CHESTER: I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me, good ol’ gap guy. Now get me an interview with one of those identical kids!
And the questions didn’t end there. It’s Challenge Month at the swim school where I work. In August the kids are encouraged to set themselves a goal in the pool and to go about getting it. The initiative has got me thinking about my own aims. Last year, I wanted to swim all-year-round (at least once a week) at my local reservoir, even when the water was at its chilliest. Tick! Early this year, I sought to start swimming all four strokes half decently. Tick!
And now? Well, apart from becoming a pool deck supervisor (for which I’m in training), I’d like to swim a sub-5-minute 200-metre medley. This is achievable, methinks, but it’ll mean shaving at least 20 seconds off my current personal best. Time to pull out Occam’s razor, perhaps, in an attempt to simplify my strokes even further.
One last question occurred to me as I was listening to Armed Forces, Elvis Costello’s second album with the Attractions (released in 1979). Is Costello the best pop/rock lyricist ever? So many songs (hundreds and counting), so many pocket-sized stories. So much sparkling word-play. (Almost too much?) Such insight and intelligence.
Any selection won’t do justice to the depth and breadth of his output, but here’s a sample from ‘Chemistry Class‘:
Sparks are flying from electrical pylons
Snakes and ladders running up and down her nylons
Ready to experiment, you’re ready to be burned
If it wasn’t for some accidents then some would never learn
Don’t take my word for it. (Although you can if you want.) Using some obscure objective measuring machine, Rolling Stone magazine has placed Costello twenty-fourth in a list of the greatest song-writers ever, pinpointing his ‘knack for motor-mouth lyrics’. (What’s 23 places between friends?)
Case closed?
That’s one question too many!
timm in type 