The Damp Duck in Flood

Furious Fiction 6 March 2022: David Muscio

Context: Prepared for submission to Australian Writers’ Centre Autumn 2022 Furious Fiction competition. Challenge criteria include creation within 55 hours of a short story of < 500 words that must (i) include a character that commits a crime, (ii) include some kind of door being opened and (iii) include the words chalk, talk and fork.

The Damp Duck in Flood

Some obstruction behind it was blocking the attic door but it yielded to my more determined kick after a tentative push failed. I sought refuge above the rising waterline. I started this business after reconstruction from the last flood three years ago. The Damp Duck had become a good business. It was now covered in slime and silt and will take years to recover.

This was now to be my higher place to wait it out. My family had already been rescued in what I’d call a longboat, a flat-bottomed dingy, more like a barge or pontoon, adrift at speed with the current. Passengers were taken to a school gymnasium where others arrived and settled into traumatised clusters on the floor. They watched anxiously as the names of the missing were scratched in chalk on a large portable board below the sports honour roll. Safe and dry was all that mattered then.

This claustrophobic space, despite its elevation, was dungeon-like. My “working in confined spaces” certificate was about to be tested. It was dark and, frankly, smelly with the odour of unidentified bugs escaping the rising water as I was. I could talk on my mobile, friends knew I was here, and I could sparingly use the torch app to explore my surroundings. Some illumination was possible with a press of my fit-bit. The phone charge read 47 percent.

Among the surplus equipment stored up here was an antique cutlery canteen. I thought canteen a curious collective noun, evocative of an imminent banquet. My thought then led to Alanis Morrissette’s ‘ironic’ with ten thousand spoons when she just needed a knife. I mused how forks don’t float, not even among the slick and slimy flotsam below. Alone with my thoughts and what I have left undone.

Just before I entered the attic I sensed movement below in the unsecured restaurant, suggesting looting taking place I was in no position to challenge. The retiring figure, out of the corner of my eye, I recognised was Bernie, carrying my antique clock. An occasional customer, I thought “you’ll keep”. Crime doesn’t pay well when little you can steal has enduring value and risk of detection is high. My phone charge now reads 28 percent.

Outlasting the swirl is a solitary terror, reminiscent of the Drover’s Wife’s wait, self-reflective and wary of the snake’s intent and timing. This liquid stench is my allegorical snake. Possums were here, I can smell their excrement. Charge now 19 percent.

Alone, getting cramps and wanting a toilet. Not like the movies at all. Reflections of self can wait. First be rescued. I hear the chop, chop, whirr of a helicopter above. I think of Billy Joel’s ‘Goodnight Saigon’, mimicking that same sound and the quiet prelude to the refrain “and we will all go down together”. Not this time Lucifer. I stumble to the skylight, kick it out. I’m wetter now on top but more visible, a dangling rope ladder my uplifting passage.

Hitchcock’s Silhouette

The following article was entered in New Philosopher’s writing award XXX111: Identity for subscribers and was shortlisted (10 selected)

The introduction to episodes of the series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” featured a corpulent Alfred moving lethargically into his hologram image until congruence was achieved. Only when this persona, a fleshed-out silhouette, commanded center stage would Hitchcock address the audience with his trademark lazy drawl of “good-evening ladies and gentlemen”. A Metaphor for identity, he seemed to say this is me and strap yourself in for the macabre to come.

Identity, or selfhood, presents as a lifetime quest for authenticity. We frequently mistake the illusory for the real, shaped by the expectations of others and our own contentions ill-defined and unresolved, suspended for later consideration. Through life stages we continually ask ‘who am I now?’ Or, standing in front of your wardrobe, asking what do I need to wear for who I need to be today?

There are times we view our identity through the lens of others who know us well. We are predisposed to seek a second opinion on our self-evaluation. Some actively plan or project-manage their selves, others passively allow identity to form with minimal intent. Apparent inconsistencies arise when those in a close relationship with us make connections with selected strands of our identity. Looking through different facets of the prism of our accessible self may reveal multiple diverse aspects of our identity. Our presentation of self to others may be mediated and confused by dissembling and insincerity. Some personality types, such as covert narcissists, own impenetrable identities.

If identity is constantly morphing, just how enduring are our personal characteristics? Are prejudices formed at an early life stage capable of change? What is the connection between attitude formation, our acceptable self, and the capacity to change one’s mind? One can speculate how tolerance might be learned in constructing identity; an antidote to gender enmity, racist postures and willful ignorance of the needs of others. It seems many are missing the compassion gene while allowing the selfish gene to direct choices.

Memories of experiences offer one guide to developing our sense of who we are. They mimic operant conditioning as we embrace the satisfying and reject the abrasive. Memories can deceive and become unreliable. A memory once captured as a primary source may become a secondary one as our mind tends to make a photocopy, a facsimile or memory of a memory, in order to file it for later retrieval. Much can be lost or obfuscated during this transfer from a lived experience to a reflected one. And some memories need to be expunged or consigned to the ‘forgetary’.

Toxic relationships may also impede the delicate iterative process of constructing an authentic self. They mitigate against clarity, often presenting a clash of values, opaque as a bathroom window. Critical to identity is forming and ‘fixing’ values, fixing in the sense of affirming contested values. Formal education is ill-equipped for this task so we must rely on our own conscientization and discrimination. Perhaps values congeal like animal fat if left unattended. Do we take the intellectually lazy route of narrowcasting the inputs to opinion formation? If society expects us to become more conservative with advancing age this implies our minds are on a stand-by setting, not turned on to receive new ways of recognizing and addressing wicked problems. An evolving identity, being continually critically re-examined, would reject the imputation of somnolence.

The stress of identity building, the zone of discomfort and anxiety, exists in the gap between who we currently perceive ourselves to be and who we aspire to be. Our intimates may detect just a few shards of color looking down the vortex of our kaleidoscope, missing many others. Consider the role of casual observers who truncate roles in public, observing just a slither; journalists attribute present time roles when situations emerge as motorist, pedestrian, or elderly woman. Can we recall when our identity was first badged as an ‘ist pursuing an ‘ism?

Erudite analysis of identity may claim a primary cause of actively choosing a life purpose. But do we consciously consider what our potential might be and articulate a plan to fulfil our purpose? Active identities, rather than complacent ones, look for opportunities to flex their potential. Conversely, psychological therapy points to hesitancy in letting go of emotional baggage as an act of will. We appear to carry referent or false conclusions from a conflicted adolescence throughout life, deferring the need for breaking and reframing our identity paradigm, acknowledging the need for a reset of life’s trajectory.

Perhaps contrarian extremists are comfortable enough with their identity and don’t particularly want their perspective-analyzing facility disturbed by credibility. Confirmation bias and the availability heuristic binds them to a world view at odds with a majority that draws on more widely accepted evidence.

Identity in the twenty first century has become entwined in mental health. Asymmetry or dissonance between who one believes themselves to be and who others judge them to be is a trigger for an identity crisis. We may look back through our history and forward to an imagined future for answers to maintain equilibrium and affirm authenticity. In addition to conscious regard for one’s life purpose, identity is bound by personal agency, the authorship of one’s life script, a recognition of one’s capacity for change. I surmise you don’t have a mission statement for your life. Agency demonstrates actor potency and impact rather than passive acceptance as an individual that life happens to in an arbitrary, uncontrollable manner.

Introspection is surveillance of the self, memory its brittle cuticle and ego a trash rack for identity waste. While engaged in exploring and creating our identity we contend with the noise of influencers competing to be heard. The experience of trauma may erode our confidence that we’ve got this under control as external forces tear apart our best laid plans for a self that fits comfortably. A journey of stolid equilibrium should ensure your eulogy matches your elevator pitch, but life seldom runs to script. As John Lennon reminded us, life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans.

It would be great to experiment with freedom and without accountability or commitment. To create a safe play area in which to try on alternative identities. Imagine we could borrow from the cartoon contrivance of the portable hole or Ralph Ellison’s invisible man. We could run amok with impunity. We generally operate within the boundaries of social convention rather than personal invention. We variously enjoy or endure quiet moments of contemplation behind barriers labelled ‘under construction’, during which time we form jaundiced or enlightened views.

Leaving the intensely personal self-making aside, we may also consider macro-identities as groups cohere, sharing characteristics often erroneously referred to as national identity. Confessions that as a society we have made mistakes that ought to be acknowledged are regarded by the blinkered as ‘black armband history’. Identity can be a collective concept, such as ‘Australian’, but few of us tick even most of the criteria boxes. Recent examples of whitewashing attempts in Australia include implanting a cheer squad for western civilization within higher education (Ramsay Centre) and a revision of the school history curriculum that omits or redacts all the bad bits that make us question our integrity and ethics. We despair when our national leaders purport to represent us to other countries, claiming their idiosyncratic values as ours, misrepresenting our identity. We ask ourselves “who are we in society?” How can we make positive changes to a shared identity by conniving with our fellow humans? Can we breed out something as pervasive as paternalism? Our ancestors expressed views we would no longer countenance, so clearly our identity is not the cumulative sum of theirs. “Parts of our national histories may be rotten. Though they can’t be replaced, the values and actions that facilitated them can” (Cherry, Myisha. Who Do We Think We Are? New Philosopher. No.33, #3/2021, p86) Like continual replacement of planks on a ship, or renewal of axe heads and handles, we have created something new in our unique identities.

Are we destined to be disappointed with our efforts at identity creation and maintenance or are we content with a satisficing snug fit? Are any parts of your self receding from the outline of your hologram or dangling outside it? We strive for congruence with our own silhouette, filling it with an acceptable self. Like Hitchcock, don’t just lean in to listen, move in to become your authentic self.

David Muscio

1402 words

A Non-governing Government

Systemic, endemic, pervasive. Yes, Bernard (The great public policy mystery: just why is the Morrison government so inept? Bernard Keane Crikey Jan 17,2022 https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/01/17/scott-morrison-inept/) we have a crisis of inadequate government and public administration. Government ineptitude is indeed a public policy nightmare. Scott-the-Announcer has repeatedly shown hesitancy and incompetence in the face of decision making. He is always late to an issue because he is looking for the right sound and sight rather than strategic insight to solve a problem. He seems never to anticipate, just prevaricate.

Is there an area of public policy and attendant program management Sco-Mo hasn’t stuffed up? Refugees, Covid, Aged Care, Women’s Safety and an endless stream to follow. Is the most critical flaw his failure to think ahead or constant lying or automatic preference for corruption? Does anyone know what sort of advice he is getting from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet? Who, if anyone, is he listening to in order to make such poor precipitous judgements?

He oversees an integrity and ethics free zone quite at odds with his assumed Christian principles. In any of his former roles was he subject to the merit principle to earn them or has sycophantic networking always worked for him? In an act of self-harm many voters will regrettably still vote for the ineptitude of this do-nothing government bound tight by the shackles of vested interests. To paraphrase Scott-the-Announcer’s prefix to each random thought bubble, how good is Charles Dickens? With supernatural prescience he provided an apt description of this government’s modus operandi thus:

“It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honorable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done.” (Dickens, Charles (1857) Little Dorrit, p108)

Across an expanding range of public policy issues, the Morrison government has shown how not to do it. Being there is not enough for good government; you need to actually do something.

No, we don’t need a military Brian

Defence strategy and capability is insurance against potential actions of an uncertain enemy. The Australian psyche wallowed in a siege mentality; apparently many have lusted after us. Newspapers heralded “The Russians Are Coming”. They have been quite tardy.

Brian Martin challenges us (‘Submarine Sideshow: Does Australia even need a military?’, Pearls & Irritations, November 21, 2021) to consider doing without this insurance policy. Given remote chances of actually needing to repel attack, we could try self-insuring.

The ‘chicken coup’ defence posture tells us, while we spend so much on building walls around a diminished lifestyle, we miss opportunities to improve what’s inside the chicken coup.

Have we done our due diligence as to where threats will come from and in what form they will arrive? The risk is minimal as Martin suggests. Is it not likely that a much more powerful nation than our own would come to our aid if armed conflict occurred? Let’s self-insure and spend the money on adding value instead.

Negate the pugilistic combat mentality that delivers human rights violations and costs squillions. Self-insure.

Sow’s Ear Not Silk Purse Made From Scotty’s Pork

As Bernard Keane points out (Crikey, November, 2021 ‘Morrison’s high-tax, big spend, do lots (for mates) government’) the Morrison government is in fact doing lots, its crony capitalism spending and taxing at record rates.

You just can’t help yourself ScoMo. Your shallow brain has come up with the slogan “Can Do Capitalism; not Don’t Do Governments.” The smug assurance on this one has ironically invited the commentariat to come up with satirical variations to sheet home government hypocrisy. My tentative contribution is “Can’t Do Capitalism; Won’t Do government.”

If government is not doing, why persist with it? A return of Scott-the-Announcer will result in more overweening triumphalism, a suite of new lies, a do-nothing policy hiatus, solutions to problems we don’t have and deferment of those we do have. Preferment of mates will continue unabated and unchallenged with no Integrity Commission.

The mantra is inconsistent, the logic flawed, but will voters detect it or again vote contrary to their interests?

Not Us France: Open Letter from Australians to President Macron

We are not offended. We take no umbrage. We feel no outrage. We accept that your ‘liar’ accusation was directed at Morrison personally, for which he ought to accept personal responsibility.

Sco-Mo has copious form for failing to tell the truth, to misrepresent, to twaddle, swerve and spin. He conceptualizes any and every issue as a political problem requiring a political solution.

We want to tell you, people of France, that we don’t accept his account of diplomatic discourse. We reject our PM’s attempt to mediate our collective relationship with France through his clumsy, disingenuous misrepresentation of the truth (otherwise known as lying). We respect your calling out of his weasel words and direct you to Crikey’s dossier of his lies and falsehoods to further support your condemnation. https://www.crikey.com.au/dossier-of-lies-and-falsehoods/

A Claytons Leader

Scott-the-Announcer has been called a liar by French President Emmanuel Macron. A master of dissembling, Scotty doesn’t understand non-lying. As Nancy Sinatra sang, “you bin lying when you should a bin truthin”. A leader without agenda, Sco-Mo promised little and delivered less. This is the age of rear-view mirror administration from a Claytons leader, a self-made man clumsily constructed, the archetypal vacuous pretender.

The weekend edition of the SMH (Oct 30-31, 2021) brought “froth and bubble” (excerpt from The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison by Sean Kelly) and Ross Gittins “Praying for costless climate change”. In this, and other public policy arenas, Sco-Mo has arrived late to the party. The plastic plates and cups have been binned but the chimera remains, caught without a rationale for inactivity, his speech a predicate searching for a subject.

Holding back the tide is proving vexatious for the Federal Government while its constituents lament opportunities wasted and momentum lost. When both the ethics and competence of this government is reviewed it will reveal a legacy of lies and falsehoods, distortions and obfuscations, for Sco-Mo’s daughters to emulate. Who will step forward as the new arbiter of what is Australian and the real Australian Way?

Scotty’s Road to Damascus? — Counting Down

He may not see the light, but no doubt he’ll feel the heat at COP26 in Glasgow next month. Incoherent yabbering about plans and pathways, vague thoughts on targets. “Technology not taxes”, or is it “Technology not targets”? Hard to pin him down on a revised concrete emissions reduction target, much less a date. Australia’s […]

Scotty’s Road to Damascus? — Counting Down

On Reading Pip Williams’ “The Dictionary of Lost Words” (Affirm Press, 2020)

My imagination holds a place for somewhere evocative of the Scriptorium. My Uncle Bob, an orchardist on the Hawkesbury River, maintained a garden shed full of books with a covering of fairy dust, or so it seemed in my boyhood. I approached it as a magic place. Pip Williams’ book evinced this same infusion: words and their subjective meanings, experienced, felt and dwelt.

Readers are reminded that there are words for men and words for women. Some are particulate matter that have left both, rendered anachronistic by changing mores. Some are Cinderella words that are just right; others totally inadequate to express a sentiment. There are risks for men who engage in feminist discourse. Why no male equivalent of nag? We could try badger, bully, harangue and harass. My own creation is harassle, a merger of the meanings of harass and hassle, and gender neutral.

The whimsical air current that bore the “bondmaid” name-slip aloft to settle out of sight is reminiscent of Forest Gump’s feather escaping from his book in the final scene. We have been sub-optimal custodians and nurturers of language when we allow words with color and precision to escape into oblivion. The harsh education of Cauldshiels reminds one of the fact-driven pedagogy of Dickens’ Hard Times where one was forbidden to wonder.

We witness again in this novel the restraints on women’s choices persisting in the early twentieth century. Dankworth is the archetypal entitled male who commands a right to spatial hegemony and assumes and asserts superiority over a female scholar. The modern term “waste of space” seems appropriately derogatory. Reference to PM Asquith demonstrates the power of no in relation to suffragettes (see Clare Wright “You Daughters of Freedom”)

Notions of obscenity are explored including the range of uses for the word cunt (explored by a distant relative of mine, Inga Muscio, in a book bearing that title). Note the very different non-sexual meaning Dickens ascribed to ejaculate. The vocabulary of war is instructive also. Where is today’s best equivalent of the Oxford market for a bank of idiosyncratic language from which to make withdrawals? The word quickening has a vast array of alternative interpretations (see Hannah Kent’s “The Good People”) with its connections to fairies and the occult.

One can’t help thinking that, despite the Scriptorium’s preservation purpose, we have lost so much of the richness of our language, swallowed by the cult of youth and American cultural imperialism. The same words can be profane in some mouths and sacred in others. The relationships in this novel are authentic and honest. We gain insight into what it is to be a mother, a soldier, a significant other. The book provides the best ever definition of loss. But let’s not get the morbs and upgrade morning tea from madeira cake to anzac biscuits.

Inputs to Selfhood

What constitutes today’s iteration of the well-informed individual? No aspiration to be a polymath genius, just an intelligent and worldly aware thinker. Do we expose ourselves to an adequate variety of information sources? This self-examination is a personal quest for the making and maintenance of a reasonable mind. This quest should be conducted without prejudice, or ignorance concerning additional and perhaps unconventional sources with which to form a balanced perspective on any issue.

Do we have an obligation to embrace social media, as if to neglect it is to overlook a segment of the media landscape? Is an Instagram or even Facebook account an essential part of the mosaic that informs us, or do we doubt that this medium will lead to matter? We push back against a socially mandated responsiveness because a generic someone has determined how we need to spend an hour or two every day of our lives.

Constantly at the behest of confirmation bias for efficiency of effort, we trim our information sources to those we get on with, enveloped in the availability heuristic. It is challenging to question if the inputs we allow into our consciousness are of sufficient depth and breadth to create an opinion that can be defended fairly under fire from contrarians.

What can be said of extreme contrarians like climate science deniers and anti-vaxers? Are their information sources narrow and skewed? Most likely they are. Yet they offer no sound rationale why they should be believed over those who are informed by a wider, credible and generally accepted range of opinion. A public figure like former PM Tony Abbott declared climate science is crap and contemporary politicians such as Matt Canavan promote fossil fuels. They should be obliged to say why their sources are superior to others. They express tributary positions as distinct from mainstream and inevitably finish in a swamp.

Most days I will read Crikey online and print some articles I may want to refer to later. I do this also with Pearls & Irritations, Medium and New York Times. I subscribe to New Philosopher and Australian Quarterly print editions. I have membership of the Australia Institute, Centre for Policy Development and the Ethics Centre. I buy a Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday (and during lockdown, a Sun-Herald on Sunday). I flirt with the idea of subscribing to the UK magazine Prospect but haven’t yet taken the plunge. I have also looked at National Times and Michael West Media for alternative views.

Further inputs to my intellectual health include participation in a Socratic Society, with weekly discussions of stimulus readings. Infrequent postings on my website Awesomely Astute round out my mind’s activity. I am also engaged, somewhat laboriously, in researching and writing a biography of a feminist in my family’s heritage.

I read and make a record of what I’ve read. I buy books and borrow them. This reading fodder is both fiction and non-fiction. For fiction I indulge only a little in ‘who dunnit’ books and am continuing a retirement obsession to read all of Dickens’ novels. For non-fiction I read lots of philosophy, politics, essays and history and am a latter day convert to behavioral economics. For real-time examples I have just read Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words and am now into Tom Keneally’s The Dickens Boy and will next get into Richard Fidler’s The Golden Maze and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit.

Despite being retired my time is limited so choices are made. I read very little of the views of right- wing protagonists, which means studiously avoiding the Murdoch press and television. I do watch a lot of ABC news, especially during the Covid19 pandemic. I have so far neglected podcasts but appreciate they may offer an interesting source of information. I am not sufficiently tech-savvy to use a range of phone apps to advantage. Tell me what I am missing by such oversights. Enlighten me.

What do you read, listen to, watch, livestream, or search for on the internet? What have you zoomed lately? Do you feel you have nailed sufficient inputs to inform your own thinking? Are you able to counter encroaching bias? So go on, I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours and tell me if my selection is too this or not enough that. This is a conversation worth having to see what nourishment we are feeding our minds in order to be truly woke.