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magnificent

Thursday 4.55pm

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This project was assisted by Arts Tasmania by the Minister for Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts.

3

A Short Answer

Gifts of Unknown Things

Dangerous Ages

Our Ancestors

Mr Palomar

Music For Chameleons

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The Trial

America

Metamorphosis

The Castle

The Diaries 1910 – 23

Animal Farm

Sunday 10.50am

Scuff marks on rubber skirting boards. Kick marks. Shoe marks. Long, deep gauges in the plaster wall. Your bed. Cables and wires and instructions for the uninitiated. Unopened fruit salad and lukewarm latte awaiting the return of the patient. Shoes on the bed, heels pointing inwards. Postcards from well-wishers and an Indian talisman still in it’s wrapping. A hand-towel and a ribbon tied to the rail. A gentle reminder. A note to one’s self. Did I mention the radio? Barely audible. Someone’s pressing piano keys and making a sound. I think of our new piano and the love of my life. Fingers dancing. Shoulders alive. The humming keys compete now and then with nurses and their work. They come and go. Shoot eyes towards us as they pass. They walk with that confident movement that people who do good things for others always have. Assured. Busy. Not afraid.

The bed is made. Floral sheets, abstract cover. You can feel the folded iron marks, not yet softened by the nights sleep or the days rest. Too many visitors. Too much care.

Pink flowers from someone’s garden and a labelled Cyclamen in a pot. There are instruments and code alerts, small flashing buttons. Nothing too obtuse. Nothing too overt. There are gifts on the high shelf by the window. Things that other people have brought. Reminders of tastes lost and loves still present and surrounding. Bottles of extra virgin olive oil and Balsamic Dressing. Devondale milk cartons in blue and white.

There’s Mortein fly spray for the places we can’t reach. A white hand cream called PEACE. Should you need it.

Nurses read your charts, twittering like greedy gulls. Snapping at the numbers, wittering beneath their hair as they flick the sheets of paper between sharp fingers. The fruit salad’s still sitting there in a crumpled white bag. Will you remember our lunch date yesterday? Will you remember my hair?

Safety belt tossed on the bed. No one to hold in. No one to spare.

No one fights. No one hurts. No one’s losing their cool. No one’s upset. No one’s in tears. No one knows.

Your coffee’s getting cold and I’ve nearly finished mine. They’re labeled so we don’t forget which is frothed and which is skimmed. Chocolates and biscuits and sweet things wrapped in sharp boxes. Photographs in albums on the bed.

5

Down and Out in Paris and London

Homage to Catalonia

Franny and Zooey

The Catcher in the Rye

The Timeless Land

My Brilliant Career

A Many-Splendoured Thing

The Works of Oscar Wilde

Up the Junction

Quiet As A Nun

The Hobbitt

Bring Larks and Heroes

A Difficult Young Man

Thursday 12.21pm

Physio, speech, OT, transfer. Table trolley scuffed above the floor. Wheels cursing as you pull the rounded edges with orchid hands. Look above. Brown stains between the ceiling tiles. Crisp down lights examine. Marisa, Louise, Philippa, Dawn. Ward red. Ward orange. Ward blue.

Eye lashes collecting near the edges of your sight. I see one on your cheek and ask you to blow it from my finger for a wish.

Cajun chicken salad wrapped too tightly like your sheets. You pick off the gherkin. Push the tomato to one side. And then into a paper bag fastened to the wheely table with an office bulldog clip. My leg brushes the bag as I slide in closer beside you. When’s the Royal Hobart Show? I ask.

‘Now listen’. You look me in the eyes. Then nothing.

‘Let’s talk about James and Esther’ I say.

‘No let’s leave them both out of this. Their lives are so pretty. And then we’d need to talk about prettiness wouldn’t we’.

OK.

7

A Self-Portrait

The Ecstasy of Owen Muir

Les Enfants Terribles

The Wapshot Chronicle

The Looking-Glass War

The Power and the Glory

Men Without Women

Death in Venice

The Existential Imagination

Tales and Fantasies

Old Blastus of Bandicoot

Our Village

Voltaire in Love

Tuesday 09.33am

The sky is bright blue. Iridescent. People tell me its been grey and wet for months. An inky black swell on the island. I’m ordering the coffees. Did you plant tomatoes this year? A man with a cellophane cake is crossing the street. Ladders on roof racks blind each other in this strange light.

9

The French Lieutenant’s Woman

The Feminine Mystique

The Generous Earth

Bomber’s Moon

The Conversations at Curlow Creek

An Imaginary Life

The Great World

Prizzi’s Honour

My Life as a Fake

Jack Maggs

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Educating Alice

Welcome to the World Baby Girl!

Tuesday 09.41am

Creamy Light Yoghurt. Now Even Creamier. A single Lindt chocolate ball rolls across the table. Wiped clean. Disinfected by a lady who says thank you. Two pencils. Half drunk latte. Apple juice from breakfast. New lady in the next bed holding a rolled towel to her chest.

You’ve had your hair cut. I reach out and feel the weight of your pendant. Gold and diamond. I watch the side of your head pulse as you speak.

11

Sammy Going South

Monsoon Diary

The Virgin Blue

The Slave

The Flower Show

The Toth Family

Climbing the Mango Trees

Fall on Your Knees

Those Women Who Go To Hotels

Swann’s Way

The Blind Assasin

The Tiger Ladies

The Budda of Suburbia

Tuesday 10.11am

I don’t want any more chocolates.

13

The Millstone

Shiver

Snowleg

Enjoy!

The Diviners

My Invented Country

Bearded Ladies

Too Close to the Falls

Holy Cow!

Eat Play Love

Stasiland

Love in the Time of Cholera

Life of Pi

Tuesday 11.48am

I am watching your mouth move.

The lady next door asks for another folded towel and a magazine. All of your flowers are dying. You’ve had your belongings packed up into coloured plastic trays.

Are you going somewhere? I ask.

Yes. Tomorrow.

15

Pieces of Light

Dirt Music

Silk

Eva Luna

Half Asleep in Frog Pyjammas

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

The Poisonwood Bible

The Kitchen God’s Wife

Like Birds Like Fishes

In Search of Love and Beauty

Snow Falling on Cedars

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Heddy and Me

Wednesday 06.12am

I’ve slept in your spare room again. All these people. All these words.

Don’t be afraid. I whisper in my sleep.

17

The Orchid Thief

The Road

The Inheritance of Loss

Out of Africa

Au Revoir

An Historical Geography of Europe

Leicestershire

The Old Woman, the Wife, and the Archer

Reveilie for a Persian Village

The Towers of Trebizond

Baghdad and Beyond

Perfume From Provence

Looking for a Bluebird

Wednesday 09.04am

Bonnie Tyler is playing on the radio. Your son is sitting on your deck watching the sun dance through his girlfriend’s hair. Everything as you left it. Everything is fair.

19

Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind

Wives, Mistresses and Matriarchs

Myself When Young

Hedingham Harvest

White Rajah

The Diary of Opal Whiteley

Lawrence and the Arabs

Simple Embroidery

English Costume

Junior Needlecraft

Costume Jewelry

The Book of Total Genius

Hoyle’s Rules of Games

Wednesday 11.48am

A woman crosses my path on the stairwell. Holds my elbow as she passes. Smiles. Sorry. Smells of lunch. There’s someone sweeping leaves beyond the Manager Customer Services door. As I walk by, an orange and white leaflet for the Good Shepherd meets my eye.

Do orchids bloom in spring?

21

The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

The Sexual Life of Savages

Backlash

Hello Myrtle

Children’s Party Book

India

Eat My Words

Fit for a Bishop

Food and Friends

Austrian Cooking

Japanese Cooking

The Commonsense Cookery Book

Wednesday 12.08am

Chicken and gravy. Roast potato. Western Star butter. Premium Quality Low Fat Ice Cream. You look tired. A slice of multigrain bread sweats in plastic as you reach for a spoon.

23

French Provincial Cooking

Good Things

Herbs For All Seasons

Cooking the Italian Way

A Book of Middle Eastern Food

World Food India

South Indian Kitchen

Balti Curry Cookbook

The Margaret Fulton Cookbook

Two Fat Ladies Ride Again

Cajun and Creole

French Cuisine for Australians

New Hungarian Cuisine

Wednesday 2.35pm

A girl with a Champion sweatshirt. Boy with a pram. Grey hair. Fingers rolling tobacco. Work shirts. Mobile phones. Cigarette butts and winter hellebores in council planters. Security Shredding Paper Recycling dodges amber at the lights. Offices for lease above the Commonwealth Bank. Fluoro vest pushes yellow bike. Red panniers. Broken hearts bleeding in the mall. A hair clip. A white scarf. The HR Company. Men in sunglasses. A purple wool coat. The cascading waters of Hobart rivulet flow beneath Wellington Bridge. Wet floor.

Morning Glory.

25

Greek Cookbook

Cakes and Baking

D.H. Lawrence and Italy

Highways to a War

Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania

Pleasures of a Tangled Life

Notes From a Small Island

Mediterranean Europe

The Mastermind Book

The Living Planet

The Way of the River

Nouvelle Caledonie

Wildlife Conservation

Show Day 10.15am

Sugar coated with garden roses. Your room struggles to house the change in season.

White snowdrops force their way through pavement cracks as we walk together through the concrete garden. Beyond the ward. You change direction suddenly and push ahead. But there’s nowhere else to go.

Low Fat Passion Fruit Creamy Yoghurt on the table beside your bed.

27

Tasmanian Mammals: A Field Guide

Complete Book of Australian Birds

The South-West Book

Atlas of Tasmania

World Atlas

Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas

The University Atlas

Ten Great Mountains

Himalaya

Australia Through Time

The Australian Backyard

Roses

Bulbs and Perennials

Monday 1.55pm

The sun is scorching the back of my neck. People everywhere. There’s a white Ute in the pickup bay. Scruffy brown dog on the front seat. Disabled stickers hang from rear view mirrors. Maxi taxis and limping men. A young lady texting from her wheelchair.

It’s PLAY IT SAFE WEEK at the bottom of the stairs. Spot the Hazard. Assess the Risk. Fix the Problem. Evaluate Results. Stickers, calendars, pens.

Women wait for lifts. Men carry plastic baskets full of blood.

The gilt framed tapestry of the crucifixion shimmers in sharp light. A beacon for the man watering plants on the balcony outside.

29

The International Book of Trees

Complete Book of The Garden

What Flower is That?

Open Air Living

Balcony

Modern Rustic

Man and His Symbols

The Last Africans

The Field of Cultural Production

The Family Emergency Handbook

Where’s the Word?

The Pocket Oxford Dictionary

Music for Chameleons

Tuesday 3.15pm

The lady next door left her clock behind. That and a Chinese tea caddy. FALLS RISK. Two yoghurts on the bed. Ex-cop hits back. Troubled MP absent with accused. Pram mum speaks.

Strawberry and apricot. Now With Extra Fruit. You cross your legs and lock your hands together as you read the news. More wilting posies on the window shelf. A new perfumed soap in a gold box. A book called Dancing with Cats has appeared.

Tassie farm hopes suffer a battering. You pick at your cuticles and turn your rings. On page four. Why destroy beauty? You follow the words with your finger until the cheese and biscuit lady appears at the door.

31

Natural Home Pharmacy

Australia Beautiful Great Gardens

River of Colour

The Private Life of the Brain

Right Hand Left Hand

Life A User’s Manual

The Unknown Terrorist

The Line of Beauty

Snobs

Everything is Illuminated

The Other Hand

Dangerous Love

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Tuesday 5.00pm

Chicken Schnitzel. Pepper sauce. Best of Van Morrison. Brussel Sprouts. Minestrone. Frozen Yoghurt. Custard.

Everyone’s tired. Everyone’s late.

33

To the Hermitage

Birds Without Wings

The New World

Wednesday 8.55am

Fresh roses from a family garden. Sugar sweet again.