Come, take my hand. No, really, take it. Come on! Why be so weird about it? Okay, fine. Stay close though because we’re going on a journey and I’ve got a stiff neck so won’t be able to look around to see if you’re there. Sure you don’t want to take my hand? Well, okay then, just remember it’s here if you change your mind.
We’re taking a trip through time and cyberspace — mostly just time though because this tale involves an awful lot of it; both wasted and productive — to see how a socially awkward Australian became a socially awkward Australian who also writes a bit. Steady your nerves and prepare yourself because this adventure will be filled with curiosity, apathy, bitterness, elation, contempt, adoration, despair and koalas.
Let’s begin by wandering backwards along the calendar path, past the three hundred and sixty-six days, around the sonnets and haiku, through the gardens of free verse, and into the gallery of procrastination. To the left you’ll see five hundred and fourteen original posts and if you take a moment to gaze off to the right, you will notice the five thousand, three hundred and fifty-three posts that have captured a heart. If you listen closely you might be able to hear a crowd’s worth of whispers and shuffling; that would be coming from the two and a half thousand people following us as we travel — don’t worry about them though, they’re some of the most wonderful people in the world.
We’re almost there now. Are you okay? You’re wheezing a little bit. Sure, we can stop here for a breather. You’ve actually picked a pretty good place to pause because we’re right in front of post number one, the one that started it all. It’s nothing special really but if you’re observant — I know you’re observant — you’ll see that the words from this post actually appear about ninety days from here as the lyrics of a catchy tune. Granted, it’s an acquired taste, that sound, but I love it.
Alright, that’s enough resting, let’s keep going. You ready to take my hand now— no? Okay. As we’ve passed the first post you’ll have noticed that we’re wandering through a whole lot of emptiness now. The reason for this is because even though everything was started by the first post, this path was created several months before those words came into existence. Don’t worry though, we’re not going all the way back to that point because there’s nothing to see there—
Look! There he is now. He’s why I dragged you along here. A quiet Australian guy, he created this path a long time ago so he could reserve a specific username on what he thought would become a very popular place for online wanderers to tread.
Right now he’s in a bit of a limbo stage. Not long ago his girlfriend dumped him and his serene period of coasting through life was brought to an end. During and after the break-up he had a lot of things to say but didn’t actually want to say them to anybody because, well, he knew people generally don’t like having to deal with heartbroken sappiness. He’s got a few things written down, a few drafts saved, a few notes hidden from public view on Facebook. Then one day, he wrote something that although still sad and whiny, wasn’t completely bad. He put that piece in a Facebook Note and was surprised. Very surprised. People liked it.
He continued doing this for a while and started to think that maybe his friends weren’t lying, started to think that he would be interested to see what other people — those he hadn’t met yet — thought of these poems he was spinning out. And that’s where we are now. He’s just about to post that first piece because he remembered that a long time ago, he had reserved a username on a social blogging website called, Tumblr. You see? You see why I brought you along now? It’s because we’re following the path of how Tumblr became such an important part of this Australian guy’s life. Take my hand now? Oh, okay.
Look, he’s about to post that first piece now. Watch what happens, this is great.
…
Nothing! Nothing happens. I know, right? Absolute crickets. The look on his face is priceless, like a mix between complete disillusionment and curiosity at what he did wrong. He just leaves it there though as he assumes people will eventually discover it — hint: nobody does. After a few more of these silent posts, he stumbles upon a place — he’s already in the place but he finds a place inside the place — where he finds other people just like him, people hoping to see how their writing affects others. Look, there he is introducing himself to the first friends he’ll make on Tumblr. He’s so cute and new to this. Oh, okay, he’s new to this then.
Look what happens when he posts now. People are starting to like it. Hell, some people are even reblogging it to show other people. Let’s get in close for a moment. Okay, take a look into his eyes. See that dull throbbing light and the slightly glassy sheen? Yeah, that’s the addiction beginning. He’s found friends, he’s found readers and he’s found things to read. He’s settling in for the long haul. He’s so fun to watch at the moment, he’s talking with people, making fun of them through replies. There’s even an entire month of cicada talk because he was so glad to find someone else who understands the ferocity of the noise they make.
We’ll skip forward a month or so now. He continues posting and finding new friends, readers and things to read. People are complimenting his rhyming word-play and he’s got some ideas about things he wants to achieve. That addiction is still showing and he’s looking a little surprised out how things have panned out, he never thought he would actually start calling himself a writer. Watch him now, see him scratching his head and wondering why a lot of new people have started following him? He was featured. He’s aware of what a feature is but not really expecting to get one so soon. He continues posting; at least once a day, even while working sometimes.
Come on, you can go back and read all his old pieces later, we have to skip to a rather important moment now. See that? Isn’t it pretty? No? Not really your style, makes it too hard to read? Oh, fair enough that. What you’re looking at is something that he discovered he could do, he could shape his poems into representations of the poem’s subject. He doesn’t know it at the moment, but this form of poetry will earn him quite a few fans — and many detractors too — and see him approached by many people asking if he has ever thought of putting together a book. He laughed it off at first. …
Come on! Why are you so slow? Take my hand— still no? Here he is announcing that he has self-published a book. It goes on to sell hundreds of pages and become the best selling, self-published book in his immediate family. You can probably see the confusion in his eyes now — the addiction is still there too —and that’s because he’s not sick of it yet. If we had followed this path back a few more years we would have seen that he was great at starting things and then losing interest. This particular interest just keeps making him come back to the wonderful place that started it all, Tumblr.
We’ll slow down a little now and watch as he starts experimenting with his concrete poetry and begins writing more prosaic work, investing more and more time into the writing. Even though he’s posting less frequently now, the addiction for reading is still there, look, he spends as much time on Tumblr as ever.
D’aww, here he is meeting a lovely girl and shooting the shit with a snarky bitch, you can tell he’s constantly amazed at how close he has grown to the people he’s found on Tumblr — he used to believe online entities couldn’t really illicit real-world feelings — and the addiction still burns.
And here we are back at the beginning, or the present, but definitely not the end. I know we’ve rushed through but I would have taken longer if you had decided to hold my hand. Still no? Okay.
Where did he go, you ask? Hi, my name’s Luke — or Rakuli —, nice to meet you. Thank you for letting me show you how Tumblr changed my life and transformed me from an awkward Australian into an awkward Australian that writes a bit.
Dugong and Me (for Nicky)
I met a new pal
And he came from the sea
He was my best friend
His best friend was me
He was happy dugong
He did not move so fast
But we watched the world
As it slowly passed
He knew no tricks
And he was a little fat
But I did not care
I am accepting like that
Me and a dugong
Living lives afloat
Hoping to avoid
Passing motorboats
We bobbed along the top
And shared all sorts of glee
Out in the ocean
Pal dugong and me
Kind of like a cow
But I would not touch his milk
And the flab upon his sides
Felt a little like good silk
Dugong never talked
He never did much at all
But I forgave him that
He had so much fat to haul
How long we were together
I could not rightly say
‘Cause time stood still
While we played away we each day
One warm night
As we swam in the river
We got hit by a boat
And we were torn to slivers
Friends for forever
If “forever” to you means:
Up until you die
From man’s water machines
.. .-. .-. .-. .-. .. .
Ok, Luke, old boy, put down those toys, as the time -. .-.
time has come for you to be a man. You have to show your stock, and wrestle a
croc, to prove that you are an Australian. It fights like a blizzard, that wretched lizard,
spinning and turning to bite at your face. If you beat that bastard we can
go and get plastered because you would have earned your rightful place. The ladies will
love ‘ya, after we’ve shoved ‘ya into the river to spar the beast. If you don’t
make it then you made the
mistake and died as an Aussie
is ‘spose ’ta at least. So
Luke old boy
put down
your
toys
and
come
to
the river with your bares hands.
Show us your stock and wrestle the croc, and we will see if he or you stands.
Writers seem to have been getting a lot of press lately, haven’t they? Most of it good too! Glowing, in fact. If you were to believe everything, you would think that writers excrete cures for cancer and build homeless shelters out of used tissues once the cum on them dries. Writers can immortalise you and bring you to orgasm with little more than a probing preposition and a firm set of parentheses; they just make you comma all over the place.
But have you stopped to think about who might be creating all of these little odes? Did you read it? Well it must have been made of words. And if it was made of words, it must have been written down. And if it was written down, someone wrote it. And bingo! Writers! Writers have been writing about writers. Making themselves look ten foot tall and made of benevolence.
Would you trust a polar bear to sell you the benefits of hugging large, white-furred mammals? No. Why trust a writer to sell you on writers? Don’t you think it’s about time someone actually revealed what a writer is really like? I mean, without a writer writing it? Never fear, I am here, using a speech-to-text program to dictate to you what writers really are.
Writers eat human infants. Regularly. You will often hear a writer refer to “Wednesday Night Baby Roast”, this is not a euphemism. Nobody really knows where they get the children from — many suspect that writers uncovered technology for human cloning quite some time ago but have an unwritten law that forbids writing essays for submission in scientific journals — but a Wednesday night will often see a writer dining in on slow-roasted baby, glazed with giant panda puree served alongside potatoes prepared in a unicorn milk bêchamel sauce. I can almost see the questions in your mind: “Only one type of vegetable?!” Yes, only potatoes. Writers eat far too much endangered animal meat and not enough greens.
Writers only ever write for one day of every month. You would think that with their output they would be writing twice a month at least, but it’s just one day. Because writing is so easy. They release that one day’s output in little dribbles and appear to be productive far more often than they actually are. Most of the time when you see a writer at their computer they’re probably just trying to organise a writers’ poker night — where they use the souls of orphan puppies as chips — or they’re trolling the comments section on YouTube. And when you see a writer with a notebook and pen in hand, they’re more than likely just doing a sudoku puzzle — stolen from the newspaper in the community library — or the notebook doesn’t belong to them at all and they’re drawing small penises and naked women across the blank pages.
The bread and butter for a writer’s work is the astronomical simile. And they control weather and cosmic events with reckless abandon. Sure, you might have spent a wonderful rainy day inside with a writer reading poetry to you, but the writer made it rain, and in doing so, ruined fifteen little league soccer grand finals, four weddings and countless cum-tissue homeless shelters. When a writer compared you to a shooting star, the writer conjured the meteor. Your breath may have been taken away by the wonderful description, but the meteorite took out a hundred square kilometres of farmland in Siberia. Daylight savings was a concept invented by writers so they could sleep in even later and still catch a sunset. Have a think about what that love poem you found on your pillow may have cost. One thousand, two thousand lives?
According to the spit on the breeze, writers are emotional and sensitive too. Um. Yeah. That doesn’t mean that everyone else in the world possesses the emotional range of a startled penguin. Writers are emotional and sensitive because they are human, they just like to tell you they’re sensitive so you think they’re crying when they over-season their baby roast. If I told you one of my defining features was that I have two eyes and a full head of hair, you’d probably poke one of my eyes out and shave my head while I was sleeping. Writers are doing the same thing to you when it comes to emotions.
There’s many more things about writers but they vary, oddly enough, about as many times as there are writers. Writers are hideous creatures continually using their craft to convince you they’re more than another fleshy sack of same-as-you. Don’t believe a writer is different to anybody else … except for the baby eating and laziness and ability to control the weather and things.
(Source: blog.rakuli.com)
Wednesday 1st of February to Wednesday 7th of February
