Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Magic mushrooms , LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, all doing the same thing. Putting us into a different state, a place where we might bend the corners of reality and just peer under its covers. Carlos Castanada tripping on Mescalin, distilled from the cactus plant, psychosylibin, was that the thing that moved him to see dead relatives and for distortions in the shape of things to become his new reality.. A journey, yes a journey. Magic mushrooms, picked from a forest a long time ago, in a  kitchen in Richmond, boiled on the stove smelling foul, like boiled socks.  A dim kitchen with an open fireplace that didn’t work and small white tiles covering every other surface. The mushrooms, mixed with several spoons of coffee to disguise the taste, a taste somewhere between vomit and dirt, but you do it for the effect, yet unknown.

Sitting in the front room watching television, waiting for the effects to kick in and they do. Strange things start happening, things seems to gain a halo, a reddish glow. Outside the stars have rings around them and fingers that want to stretch downand touch you. The smell of the Port Wine Magnolia is like a thousand blossom bombs released at once. Back inside Peter and his girlfriend are sitting on a couch, red emanations are glowing from their orifices; their nose and ears and eye sockets and what! Are they growing horns- whoa- too freaky!

I pick up the guitar and start playing – fucking fantastic! Wow what chords and amazing notes – I record in anticipation of a masterpiece. In the morning it’s just a jibble jabble of ploppy notes . Not all it’s cracked up to be. Pete keeps experimenting, probably developing a whole line of addiction down the track. I didn’t see him after that. Just living in a walk through hallway near the bathroom, you do when  you’re young, try these things, sometimes dangerous, something to alleviate the boredom, something to sink your teeth in. Marijuana several years later – Me, meditating. I perceive flames licking the inside of my body and my heart beating on a crucifix just like Jesus – am I sacrificing myself on the altar of another addiction. I think it all stopped then, no more of that sort of thing, just the narcotic of nicotine keeping me company though the next lonely years.

“Come, let’s make a nest” said one Indian Myna to the other. “Oh where shalt we do so”, the female tweeted back. “What about that fist sized hole on the verandah at Number 49″. “Oh yes sweet birdy dear”….. and so they’ve been doing something in there for the last couple of months ferrying twigs and grasses and bits of plastic. They fly on to the glossy white banister and swivel their heads in a quick radar of the situation and before levitating the remaining three feet. I see a tail of feathers disappear into darkness. 

By now they’ve probably got a couple of televisions in there, a lounge suite and kitchen with a decent fridge, and some good bedding. Soon there’ll be sharp young beaks opening in screaming anticipation and I will have done nothing to stop the evil tide of the Indian Myna across the country. Yes I hummed and haaarrrrd about getting on a chair and sticking a tennis ball in the hole or something – but the blood does not run so cold in my veins, are they the global warmers of the bird world I wonder – can I continue to say this does not exist.  

Probably the most annoying thing is the early morning calls to say they have clocked on for the day.  On the banister an alarm of coughs and splutters – no canary song from a Myna – before the first flight back to the nest.  Warm and fuggy it would be in there – in the dark, or does some light filter through from cracks under the eaves – just enough to distinguish an outline – perhaps.  Even as I write a brown and yellow flash arrives on the railing, its yellow feet splayed like snowshoes. It looks left and right and in a spatter of wing disappears again. I don’t mind them myself, but others have a vengeant streak two miles wide, will run them down with a car if they can- I was once that passionate about doing away with Wattle birds when they used to wake me five a.m. ……. 

70’s TV shows, detectives in Chevrolets bashing around corners chasing crooks. Starsky and Hutch, the red and white charger, wheels spinning up to a steel blue haze. The smell of burning rubber on the streets, choking, hanging round like washing on a still day. The Sweeny theme, lying on the couch pretending I was asleep and watching it through slitted eyes. The couch with blue metallic threads and baubles, so seventies, the carpet with psychedelic lines of orange and brown and yellow- who invented that? Carpet, the smell of the trapped dirt when you get down real close to it when you’re searching for a dropped pin or something tiny and small, like a part from an m88 panzer tank you’re building, it’s been carefully sliced from the tree of parts but a little to much pressure and it’s see-sawed over the edge. Frustrating as trying to free a piece of chicken stuck in your teeth, you know that tiny tiny part is wedged in there between a shag somewhere – maybe it’s a periscope for the front or something. Hands furough over the pile and a prick on the palm signals position – FOUND- that one is not for the filtering jaws of the vacuum cleaner this week.  A squeeze on the trippy cement and it’s in place , just the painting required  now, tiny tins of Humbrol paint that smell of fresh enamel, a number seven brush looking like it’s been on a hunger strike, a bare flick of hair adorning its end- a dip into the turpentine to loosen it.  The boys from Status Quo look down at me from their black and silver prison , trapped behind the one dimensionality of the poster, checking every move, my every brush stroke, my every strum on that stupid little Spanish guitar as I search to make the notes comes out the way I hear theme in my head – just like today- 35 years later, some how my fingers mostly go to the right places, the voice comes out of a place unknown to produce a tone, and Status Quo look down at me in their tight jeans and bare chested  wastecoats. The drummer’s sideburns seem to droop all the way to China. 

Itchy scratchy aaaaargh!, Pustules, with scabby hats, dots and pinpricks of sunspot activity all over me–aaargh. Lying steady trying not to rupture, get me a tongue suppressor something to bite down hard on.  Worse than a night of pea soup humidity, fingers and pointing bones of witchcraft all over me. Blankets are shredded and thrown to the ground, just a sheet to cover my embarrassment.

Mum comes and goes with bowls of hot chicken soup – as if that will solve things, trips to the doctor for antibiotics, itching in the waiting room chair looking at the collection of yesteryear magazines, and feeling the pregnant atmosphere of anticipation waiting to give birth. The doctor, standard white coat, the paddle in the tongue- hums and has. The chemist , where everything is in gleaming fluro white and the girls serving behind the counter look like they’re out for a date at a hookers ball, red glossy lipstick and 70’s hair. 

Back home to the torture rack, the couch this time, nothing on daytime television, nothing to get my mind off the itching, the needles that are being threaded through my skin by the ongoing advance of the disease – the prognosis is fine, but with cloudy periods before the clear skies appear. More chicken soup needed. It’s thick and creamy a muted yellow/grey colour almost. That’s how it seems  tiny lumps of vegetable float about with shreds of chicken that taste of nothing and are turned into rubberised croutons. Oh god! can’t I just pick away at one of them? Just one? No, of course one leads to another and another and then it’s all over and there will be scars for a life time – somehow that phrase runs through my head – whether it’s something to scare me enough to not pick away is another matter- Scars for a life time’

We’re all in it together aren’t we? This great swimming pool of life, plying the lanes, up and down in monotonous daily routines, exercising our rights to breathe. Life waits for  no-one- you’ve just got to dive right in – even if you can’t swim – you soon find out. At the deep end you might flail a bit as the soothing cool waters strip the day of its ferocity, the jackal on your tail, but it could turn to panic and mayhem as you can’t float then reach out for the sides – oh shit I’m going under, blurgling sounds come out of your mouth, the sky above goes all wobbly  and indistinct, you hear nothing but your scream, a push and a struggle and your above the surface, threshing for life, splashing with all the others.

Some are more in control than you – or appear to be so. Some are tuned into the Karmic flow, lapping up and down, somehow managing to remember to breathe out underwater and breathe in with their head above. This doesn’t happen for me. I take in gobfuls of chlorinated acid at inopportune moments while I try to co-ordinate the strokes and I stop and choke and start to sink under the surface again, the familiar panic – down toward the aquamarine bottom, the thick black lines that divide the lanes,  then struggle up again and reach out for the tiles along the side, the curvy bar where the water laps and gurgles before being recycled.

There’s kids on the high board bouncing it like a trampoline – launching into the air in a ball to create huge ‘huclkebuck bombs’. Water splashes out from the small thermo nuclear explosion that’s just occurred. The voices, the voices stop the madness, they seem to be suspended somewhere up above the water trapped in a blimp. Time for a Sunny Boy  or a Razz- a block of flavoured frozen water- so simple and idea sugared water frozen almost as clever as ‘bottled’ water. 

Down at Hyundai central the ’service centre’ is a gleaming fluro white facia, a veneer that hides a labyrinth of  spanners and hammers and jugs of oil and crinkled blue uniforms with dark greasy stains. Reception  is ‘professional’, courteous, positive, behind the scenes who knows? Is each  vehicle bay as neat and orderly as the front  desk? Does the mechanic have to wash his hands in solvol after each nut is unthreaded – surely it cannot be so. From my experiences of  less professional outfits there’s probably tools lying about on a bench that  maybe will get put away at end of day.

The smell of brake pad linings and oil drained from sumps, exhaust fumes and oily black hands, where the grease and grime has got right up under the fingernails making a dark half crescent- how do you get that out – with a scraper? And yes that automotive soap has a distinct odour that  impregnates your hands for a few hours.

The mechanics decants oil into the engine as if it were vintage whiskey, the engine lovingly gulps and laps it up, pet and owner, mechanic and car the two are  symbiotic. Plastic sleeves  are slippers on the seats to make sure none of the dirty stuff gets left behind , though sometimes they leave the sleave behind for me to deal with. There’s just a hint of aircraft hangar to the garage area near where the car is parked , all renewed and ready to roll.  At fluro control, my card is licked by the eftpos machine and virtual dollars shake hands in cyber space………