ZineWest 09
FIRST Prize: Glenn Anderson for "Moroney"
Moroney across the road; best place for him. If he was next door he would be more heard and less easily observed. The street agrees two weeks ago
he 'took a turn', an almost sunny euphemism for what we don't know.
'Your turn next!
'Have you had your turn yet?
Four nights he was in hospital.
Something happened. You wouldn't know it now. Still loud as almighty. You think it'd be a bit more sheepish. Our very own hyperactive garden gnome halfway
along Tremendous Street in the suburb of the week. A thankful breakdown, we could all
stop watching the pantomime for four or five days. But when we were watching, we didn't know he was approaching critical mass, ripping into stuff in his
driveway.
As though he owned all matter. His tattooed hip and hairy thorax busy with the drama of garbage night, or the bathos of an oil change, or the
liturgy of lawnmower maintenance. The more he hurries and curses the more he merges with physical laws. Like a little electron zipping around the masses
in his garage and yard. Two masses of car, one of boat and a boat trailer that was registered six times last year by the sound of him going on.
He has the gift of borrowing, swears to embarrassment he'll bring it back, and he does, but that's not the point. I've never borrowed anything
off him in 12 years, though we used their phone a few times when we moved in. Welcome to Moroney world, a world of his own that no-one else can share.
He doesn't get many visitors, a few debt collectors now and then. His extended family must have extended themselves a few days drive away.
Did he physically breakdown or just nervously? What's the difference? His drugs aren't working from here - the alcohol in his blood must act like a
force field. Doesn't medication stop working at a certain point - when your mind has a mind of its own and doesn't stop at the body's request?
Like his body clock is totally wasted; he doesn't know what day it is unless it's Saturday.
His missus is fine as graduated by my missus and missuses adjacent. She slept at the hospital with him. She would.
He can take a conversation hostage, hold up your end of the dialogue as well, his chomping mandible firing off eternal sentences in five minutes full.
He needs three lips and a spare tongue to keep up with himself when he's wound up - is he congenitally overwound or was he wound up by others in his
childhood world? Overstates everything, all the more the screaming obvious; not in any proportion or anything. Every neighbourhood has one and he is
ours and we are his, world without end. Our street is wider than most - we give thanks.
Once he set fire to his garage with a welder. Accidentally we believe, we who phoned the fire brigade while he was still welding. He buys most of his
clothes from the same place he buys his welding equipment.
But I should duck over and say some nominal things and wish him all my best if he's able to talk about his 'turn'. He might just not want to talk about
it, a laugh and a quick segue to the gas bottle on his BBQ and we are away. If two people move at the same time and there is an effect then which one
of them was the cause?
Did he change on the inside after the last turn? Safely turning 180 degrees instead of 360. Does he lie awake at night fearing another episode? Is he
slowly breaking up, on the way to another breakdown further off the grid?
I am watching through the sound-proof one-way glass that the whole street is made of. Through the jaded glass of the undisturbable ant-farm that is
Terrific Street.
Strange, strange, shrinking, unthinking man; the more I waste watching you the more my own world shrinks. The more I'm less than what I can be.
Glenn Anderson is 46 years old, married. Wants to travel more.