Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Smudge- Daily Object Writing – Dec 29

We walked along a line of planks slightly less than the width of our feet, really just a bar raised 3 inches off the ground by way of a divider, between asphalt and grass. It was a high school challenge to keep on that bar for the length of the entire building; a good 300 metres from memory. Interesting, doing that high wire juggling act without a balancing bar. It should have been simple, but, for one reason or another you would inevitably fall off. Holding balance – it was a tricky thing, arms stretched out either side pretending these were counterweights as you crossed imaginary Niagra Falls, that sense of ‘oh shit I’m about to fall’ quickly dealt with by a jerky swing of the arm on the opposite side, rising up on tippy toes, thoughts of failure punching your brain and then you’d be steady again. This was one of those recess activities we indulged in along with roof climbing and drainpipe ascent. Something you’d do after gulping down a 5 cent icy pole. Just flavoured water really – on a stick. Sweet biting icyness balancing against the endless burn of blue summer days, before the ozone layer was dangerous, before sunburn was bad, before we had to care about anything.
At the end of this long thin line of 4 X 2 wooden planks was a smudge on the side of temporary building #3. some sort of psychedelic paint brush cleaning left by a year 12 art student no doubt, but, funny thing was when you’d focused solely on getting along that plank for three hundred meters, this splodge of paint in purple, red and yellow rainbow colours appeared to be moving up the wall in a slow caterpillar crawl, an optical illusion born of eyes focusing on those white planks moving beneath you. Fascinating, almost as tough as trying to see one of those three D pictures inside a bunch of wavy lines but without having to concentrate so hard. We’d kick around outside the rear entrance there playing hand ball, brushing against the dicing fence-line and hope Mardi Marshall the French teacher would come buy, she was WOW! Every teen boy’s fantasy I think, she sure featured in mine! Deep black hair and a sparrow thin body from what I remember and a smile that flashed liked fireworks, a hint of possibility something was going to happen – like falling off that damn plank of wood!.