Pensive Prowler #7 by Dmetri Kakmi

This House is Haunted

I have lived in this house for twenty-three years. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere. After all this time, the very fibre of my being is imprinted in the walls. I can walk around in the dark and know exactly where I am, without bumping into furniture or stepping on the dog.

When I drop off the twig, the plaster and the hardwood floorboards will retain an impression of my passing and transmit it to the new owners. That’s if developers don’t buy the old weatherboard Victorian first and knock it down to build the bland ‘town houses’ that spring up like cancers in this seaside suburb. Or if the water levels don’t rise and swallow the flat isthmus.

I remember being terrified when we first talked about coming here. I flew into a panic. A voice inside me said, ‘You’re going to die in this house.’

The voice didn’t mean that a madman would come and shove me in a garden mulcher. Though that might still happen.

It meant that I would live here the rest of my days. This house that will contain the entirety of my life; and at thirty-three or thirty-four I didn’t want to think about such things.

At that age you want to fly, not be tied down.

Things were fine when we moved in and found a place for the furniture and the pictures and the books. The feeling of immanent death dissipated and I saw that I might grow to enjoy the slow pace and the quiet of our little compound in the middle of these neat, orderly streets, filled with houses and families, living cheek by jowl, sometimes speaking to one another and sometimes not.

It’s a pleasant, airy home, modest and inviting, filled with pleasing amounts of light and shadow that shift with the day’s sun. The garden makes its presence known through French doors and the many mirrors strategically placed to capture the deepening greenness in spring and bring it indoors.

I even found that my writerly self flowered in the quietude, where there’s time to sit and contemplate without interruption. All in all, I’m lucky to live here and the house has done well to add us to its list of occupants, like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House.

The previous owner, Mrs Cameron, moved here in the 1940s and died in the room that now serves as my writing room. This being the industrial western suburbs, the widow saw fit to run the place as a boarding house for men who worked the nearby shipyards and train yards.

I imagine it was a rowdy residence in those days, filled with boisterous men’s talk of an evening and cigarette smoke mingling with jasmine in the yard. The radio always on. Or maybe Mrs Cameron ran a tight ship; and perhaps a man snuck to her room at night to take her in his arms. Who can tell?

Sometimes, on hot summer’s afternoons, Mrs. Cameron’s presence is so strong in the house you feel you might bump into her in the hallway.

I know she hates closed doors. The door to the present-day bathroom, which used to be the entrance to the original kitchen, is always open. No matter how many times I close it. And I feel her press close when I cook in the new kitchen, which used to be a room oddly fitted with a sloping, rickety shower stall.

That’s an old house for you. They’re filled with uncanny presences. You have to drive them out and impose your own stamp on decades of previous occupancy, until you too become part of the fabric of the structure.

During our first years here, I kept finding mementos in the backyard: coins, tobacco tins, chipped plates, men’s lapel pins, cuff links, a perfectly good woman’s ring with a stone once, tin soldiers, a pipe. You name it.

The residue of the past rose through the soil to greet the present in silent acknowledgement.

An elderly man stopped on the street one day and said he boarded here when he was young. He looked at the house with such a surfeit of wistful longing that, briefly, I contemplated asking him in. But I’m a selfish sod and didn’t want to be stuck with him. Afterwards, I wondered if perhaps the pipe or one of the elegant cuff links was his. Or maybe he’d walked past to capture a precious experience. (It’s easier to think kindly of people when they’re not around.)

When all is said and done, that is all that’s left of anyone, isn’t it? Memories and objects. Even houses go on standing, for a time at least, while we vanish off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.

Makes me wonder what they’ll find when I’m gone. Lots of hats probably.

‘Look, another hat.’

‘How many hats did he have?’

‘Hundreds probably.’

‘Weird old bastard.’

‘Mad hatter, more like…’

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Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #6 by Dmetri Kakmi

At Flinders Street Station I Sat Down and Wept

Since you asked nicely I will tell you what’s been happening in my life lately.  It will interest you if you’re a writer. If you’re not a member of the very sozzled you might like to block your ears until I finish talking.

Long story short. About seven years ago, I wrote a short story appropriately entitled The Long Lonely Road. Loosely based on a tale I heard while growing up on an island in the Aegean Sea, it’s about what transpires when a boy and his mother take a day-trip to the countryside. The end result is a genre mash-up, with tonal shifts and unexpected byways.

When I was reasonably pleased with it and knew I couldn’t do more without damaging its delicate spine, I sent it into the world — to be rejected over and over again. Finally, broken and dejected, the poor thing limped home and refused to go out again.

‘It’s a jungle out there,’ it screamed.

Seven years had indeed taken their toll on my baby. It was a mere shadow of itself. It was now a skanky teen who hadn’t shaved and needed a bath. Gone was the lustre of the newborn, the shimmer that convinced me that if I love it then surely others will too. Now I looked at it with pitying and, admittedly, pitiless eyes. The only solution was to lock it up in the attic and forget about it.

By this stage I had amassed numerous rejection letters in the name of said story. Normally editors, if they bother to answer, say thanks but no thanks. Not this time. (I should add they were all from Australia.)

Here’s three of the best:

‘’Thank you for sending us your sweet story, but it might be more suited to an ethnic magazine.’

‘It’s not wise to mix genres and change pace like that in a short story.’

And by far the best: ‘Guy can’t write. Suggest English lessons.’

You can understand why I started to think that maybe I’d written a pile of crap. It’s possible. It happens. You write something. You love it, but you’ve lost perspective. You’re so close to it, you can’t see it’s a withered foetus that ought to be flushed down the toilet. It’s up to an outside party to see it for what it is and put it out of its misery. (I guess I just lost the pro-lifers among you.)

In my delusional writerly hubris, I thought I was being clever. Take a simple story, play with genre expectations and then toy with the outcomes through variation of perspective, mood and tonality. Editors, I believed, will instantly recognise my genius and fall over themselves to publish. How wrong could I be?

The rejections weren’t just nasty. They were hostile and patronising in ways I hadn’t seen before; and that’s coming from someone who’s been in publishing for almost three decades. Now that I think about it, the only other time I received such negative feedback from editors was for a story called Haunting Matilda. That too was trounced for going to places writers aren’t supposed to go; however, when it was finally published, it was shortlisted in the Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy Novella.

You’d think there’s a lesson there for me. But no. I’m too full of self-hatred to draw positive instruction from anything. Say hi to Negative Nancy. As far as I was concerned, The Long Lonely Road had reached the end of the road. It was time to ditch it.

And then, about a year later, in an idle moment, I took it out and had another squiz.

I still liked it.

Off it went, this time to an online publication in Croatia. ZiN Daily is the public face of a writers’ residency on the Istrian peninsular on the Adriatic coast, an area of particular fascination for me because of its history and architecture.

The editors’ letter popped up on my iPhone on a Wednesday evening as I waited for a train at Flinders Street Station.

Thank you for sending us your beautiful story. It is with great pleasure that we will publish it … The way you succeed in combining the atmosphere of the traditional oral history/mythology with the pace of modern fantasy genre is really powerful. The classic tragic drama that is at the core of the story opens an amazing artistic dialogue between the Mediterranean culture … and that of the authorial faraway Oceania. The characters are drawing the reader into the depths of archetypical settings where everyone is invited to get mesmerized, frightened and overwhelmed…

I was overwhelmed, too. After seven years, an editor who knows how to read and sift through layers of meaning connected with a piece I had almost given up on. She didn’t think I was nutty and untrained. She read with respect and care and she understood.

I was so relieved, I sat on a bench on train platform number 12 and wept.

When I recovered, I saw yet again the small-mindedness of the Australian literary scene; it’s not as switched on as it thinks it is and it’s still in the grips of ‘the garlands of journalistic prose,’ as Patrick White observed.  Anything that takes risks with language and tone in a storyline is rejected. Beyond that I saw that my chief virtue — perseverance — had paid off. No matter what, I always bounce back and I believe the ability to do so is paramount for a writer. If you don’t have determination in this industry, you might as well not get out of bed.

That and a thirst for revenge. I love the sound of sharpening knives in the morning. Don’t you?

You can read ‘The Long Lonely Road’ here.

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Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #5 by Dmetri Kakmi

Clothes Make the Man

Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons fame recently showed her fall/winter collection in Paris. As expected, breathless accolades and stunned summations followed. Even the Met is finally acknowledging the Japanese fashion doyen’s avant-garde creations by putting on a retrospective of her ground-breaking designs; and I, of course, wish I had filthy lucre to fly to New York, see the show, buy two or three of Kawakubo’s pieces from the 22nd Street Comme boutique and fly back to Australia.

As  you’ve probably guessed, I’m a Comme des Garcons groupie. (Another thing I have in common with John Waters!) Kawakubo just has to sneeze into a Yayoi Kusama designed handkerchief and pin it on a Milled Nylon Suit with Frilled Lining and I will buy it.

Kawakubo’s garments don’t fit easy categories of clothing and fashion. They’re an aesthetic challenge. Her designs are more like augmentations that turn human form into ambulatory work of art. The clothes aren’t mere drapery for the body; the body become a vehicle for the clothes, often disappearing within folds, veils and over-size hats.

By experimenting with cut, texture, colour, volume and silhouette, Kawakubo extends the possibilities of the body; she distorts its proportions, often into grotesque shapes that recall her controversial first showing in Paris. It’s only when you see the garments from the 1981 collection that you understand why that inaugural outing was labelled ‘Hiroshima chic’ by the press. The unsightly lumps and bumps, coming out of unexpected places, are tumours and abscesses in the wake of radiation poisoning. The clothes were an insult, a parody of high fashion. Everyone was outraged. Yet here she is still going strong at seventy-four.

I’m intrigued by Kawakubo’s designs because to me they perfectly embody the writer’s dilemma. I mean that the clothes are the perfect vehicle for a writer’s deepest wishes and worst fears, namely to be simultaneously visible and invisible, wanted and unwanted.

I speak now as one who suffers from body dysmorphia. That means I believe I’m uglier than I probably am; I genuinely see myself as a unsightly cartoon character. Here’s an example. Strangers often tell me that I resemble George Clooney. Kind as that might be, when I check the veracity of the statement in the mirror, I see Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean. It’s that disproportionate. The way I see myself physically is incompatible with the reality of the situation. This warped perception of myself means I avoid being photographed and there are days when I can’t leave the house, all of which leads to anxiety and depression.

That’s why I hide behind hats and glasses. It’s camouflage. But it’s also an attempt at something else.

Clothes reveal who we are and who we would like to be. They are a little bit fantasy and a little bit wish fulfillment. If you feel low, a good outfit can make you feel splendid. Clothes can lift your spirits, they can turn the dark Id into a light-filled Eden.

One of Tove Jansson’s Moomin characters sums up the situation perfectly: ‘Isn’t it wonderful how a beautiful hat can change one’s looks … one feels free, dangerous…’

I believe that. I also believe in not looking in the mirror; it can ruin the day.

This is where Rei Kawakubo comes into the picture. Her clothes are simultaneously ugly and beautiful, innovative and ridiculous. They clash with preconceived sensibilities and present a conundrum. This uncertainty forces the eye and the brain to reassess and to ask questions about notions of beauty and ugliness; what is acceptable and what is not acceptable; and to hopefully come up with new ways of seeing.

Kawakubo’s clothes fulfil my best and worst fantasises about myself. Wearing her, I can be handsome and ugly. It’s like being a shape-shifter or a chameleon. Your presentation constantly shifts from one thing to another to suit mood or circumstance. Signals are mixed, confused. People often do a double-take to affirm what they think they saw. Equally, responses can be flattering or outright hostile. Men are especially affronted. ’What do you think you’re wearing, mate?’ is a familiar refrain when I wear Kawakubo’s blue plastic coat with the white stitching and the patchwork pants.

Fashion designer Marc Jacobs said that he likes Kawakubo’s clothes because ‘it’s not about dressing for other people. It’s not about buying clothes to attract or seduce. It feels like a gift you’re giving to yourself.’

It’s a bit more complicated for me. I dress to please myself, to make me feel better about peering out of this face and about living in this body. But it’s also a disingenuous form of public exhibitionism. A kind of theatre, if you like. I dress to draw the eye in order to repel it, and I repel the eye in order to attract it, which is reflective of what goes on in my mind when I look in the mirror and see the Hunchback of Notre Dame staring back at me.

In a way, Kawakubo’s clothes have become my uniform. They are the face I present to the world. I feel naked and exposed without them. The clothes stop people from thinking about my face and my body. They see what I want them to see. They see difference, rather than why it was adopted.

And when I write at my desk, I hide inside a voluminous black hoody by Issey Miyake and deconstructed black overalls by Yohji Yamamoto, Kawakubo’s ex-lover.

Monk-like, I disappear.

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Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #3 by Dmetri Kakmi

Shut Up and Write! 

I’m sick of the professional writing industry and, by extension, the role a writer is expected to play in society.

On the one hand professional writing courses churn out automata without individual style, and on the other hand celebrated names are trotted out to utter trite phrases best left to high school students and self-help groups.

Here’s an example from a contemporary. ‘We should always be evolving and searching for ways to keep opening our sense of literary possibility. The hope is that we will find expression of the full scope of our lives in fiction.’

There’s two sentences too many in that earth-shattering pronouncement. Whoever it was that said, ‘If it’s worth saying it’s worth saying briefly’ obviously didn’t shout loud enough for this fount of wisdom. We might add that if you have nothing to say, remain silent. Don’t blather. Leave room for solitary contemplation, a writer’s true luxury in these distracted times.

The problem is that platitudes like the above are flung at regular intervals before starry eyed hopefuls like fodder to sheep. They in turn rush to join writing classes, convinced of their inalienable right to express themselves and to be heard. There to create more vapidity. And on it goes in a never-ending cycle.

Harsh, I know. But I speak from experience. I’ve been at the coal face of writing and publishing for most of my life. As such, I can tell you that most people who seek the aid of an editor or a manuscript assessor don’t need an editor or a manuscript assessment. They need to learn how to write. They need to learn how to construct a sentence; they need to learn how words chime when placed next to each other; they need to learn about punctuation; and they need to learn how to present a manuscript.

If all this sounds trivial, a handmaiden to all-important story, think again. A display of these crucial elements puts out a clear signal. It tells a publisher how serious you are as a writer. How seriously you take yourself as a professional who shows pride in your craft; and, more importantly, if a manuscript shows promise but doesn’t yet come up to scratch, you have the wherewithal to work with an editor to make it work.

Most people who submit manuscripts for assessment don’t even know how story works. They don’t know how to construct scenes that move the narrative forward; they don’t know how to introduce characters and how to develop them; they don’t know how to write concise dialogue, or how chapters operate as individual units and how chapters function within the overall framework. I won’t even mention having an individual voice or style. And yet they’ve written a 1120 page magnum opus that has the loopy logic and halting flow of a Donald Trump speech.

It makes me wonder what they learn at all those amazing writing courses they attend. If they’ve attended one. A number people I’ve worked with don’t even read. Why? Because there’s nothing out there that appeals. How do they know if they don’t read?

One student told me his novel will be better than ‘anything Nabokov ever wrote.’ And he hadn’t written anything yet. When pressed on the question of the great Russian, the champ admitted never having read Nabokov because ‘Lolita is child porn.’

Speechless.

One can only despair because, ultimately, you learn to write by reading. Lots. And then you augment that by writing. Lots.

It’s rare for new writing to hit you between the eyes, to leave you breathless and to make you feel as if you’ve been shot out of a cannon. It’s even more uncommon for that writer to have the nous to keep silent and let the book do the talking. That is after all what writing is about. Writing is communication. If the writer has to explain and answer at gab fests, the book has failed. And if the book hasn’t failed, everything else is sound and fury. It’s marketing.

Nowadays it’s not enough to write. A writer must be an intellectual, a stand-up comic, a sparkling personality. A book is no longer a book. It’s a ‘product’ that must move X number of units to justify existence. An author must have a ‘brand’. I tell you if I hear one more writer say they’re going to see their publisher about developing their ‘brand’, I will run screaming for hills that have pick axes in their eyes.

Oh, for the silence of the writer!

So few understand that the art of shutting up is paramount. Withdrawal to the mind’s private citadel affords the greatest luxury a writer can hope for: calm, peace of mind to work on the next novel, short story, poem or essay. The work that comes out of deepest self and not from Twitter.

That’s why I love Australian author Gerald Murnane. He’s written twelve novels in forty years.

Readership is as low as acclaim is high. Public sightings are as rare as truffles on a Detroit kitchen table, and he does not travel outside his home state. He rarely appears at gab fests, he is not a social media sensation and the only time he makes a controversial statement is very likely when he judges the local yabby competition in the town of Goroke, where he lives. Perfect!

Murnane, I feel sure, has taken very much to heart Dorothy Parker’s dictum: ‘Hold your pen and save your voice.’

For me the ideal writer should not speak. He or she should be a silent watcher, lingering at the edges, like Nosferatu, and giving everyone the shivers. Not one word ought to come out of the mouth. Rather every thought ought to be put on paper and transmitted to the world, without once emerging through the natural vocal facilities. Because to understand silence is to understand how words work.

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Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.