Stereotypical Proemia on Predictable Subjects

Abstract

Stereotypical Proemia on Predictable Subjects John Kinsella (bio) stereotypical 1 The old bloke who wants to kill off the bush and all its inhabitantsshoots an environmental officer in the back near Moree in ne nsw—the shire officer (whichever) said, ‘It shouldn’t get to this’ … meaningshe sees where the murderer is coming from? We’re used to this double-speak around here where they bully you into being fenced in by carrallies, herbicidings, phone towers, clearing, bauxite mines … if youoppose, it shouldn’t get to this. Pure lyricism. All that transferencefrom here to there: dead everything but crops of wheat and barelyliving analogues of death served up, aluminium we encase and show-case. Elegies twist to grow prophets of the markets. Propitiate. stereotypical 2 The gully is replete with black-faced cuckoo-shrikes—must be six of them, fledglings out and about vergingon fullness. That many cuckoo-shrikes, darting out at allother passing birds, causing a ‘28’ to halt its glide,drop tail, and latch awkwardly on to a branch, songbirdsin chaos where juvenile cuckoo-shrikes test predationand work insect-actions, have to give way—spread out,locate elsewhere (if nearby) and lighten the pressureof arrival on the old habitas, their birth place, theirstarting points. But for now, it’s a kaleidoscope of feathers,three tones on the foreground, three tones in the background. stereotypical 3 With good grace roos cluster where shooters have gone;you want to warn them, but it’s their ground and how [End Page 59] do you explain that out of twilight, crossing from bushto green-tinged field, the cock-a-hoop will come with lustand cull and adrenaline. Where do you ward them off to?Back into the hail of lead, that cliché a half-reasonable editorwill chop away lest critics savage the ease, the lazinesswith which you deploy this sad, sad truth? stereotypical 4 Pinioned to here on the compass of heritage, paternityfrom crosshairs to theodolite, from survey maps to mud maps,the choices of flight or steady steady (as she goes) brings hereinto limelight or highlight or matter-of-fact humdrum.The whirring strips of bark from upper echelons of York gum,moment for the smooth under the rough, skin shed to flapand tease anxieties as night hones the valley’s peculiarities.‘But wait, there’s more’ … bikies surveying from topto bottom, lines of sight a farside of potential clubhouse?Come home to roost? Interlopers? Questions of claim/access? stereotypical 5 We were down in the city near an old stomping ground (of mine)walking on the thin foreshore near Applecross jetty where manywomen were jogging with little dogs on retractable leashes,pausing to watch these little dogs shit politely in skerricks of sand;and I was telling Tracy and Tim how I’d ride here on my bikeand how I went to the old tower on the hill (I said this to Tracy only),but we all felt hemmed in and crushed despite mown and herbicide-managed green grass because the wedding-cake houses vyingfor supremacy with their many storeys and satellite dishesand swimming pools came down upon us and pushed ustowards their rivals across the river. Some workman (their servant?)parked near the public toilets watched the jogging jogging jogging womenand an effete young couple sat on the grass near the jetty and atestrawberries and whispered close to each other and occasionallyburst into horsey laughs, shutting the world out. The removalistscame and took one of my teeth—an old molar dating back to there. [End Page 60] stereotypical 6 As the New Australia entrenches itself in Toodyay, the visionfor the future (as they say) is for the 20-k-squared Felicitasbauxite mine on the cards for south of the town to eat outthe heart and boost (Boosterism: read Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt)the shire. An eleven-year-old girl walks past our eleven-year-old son sporting a German Iron Cross tattooed on her neck,and a Golliwog Shop is about to open on the main street...