Aunt Daisy

I want to start a column that anyone can write anything in (unless it's pornographic or delightfully scandalous in which case notify Kinsey!) It's for people who get ideas and feel the urge to share but can't be bothered expanding or shaping their ideas into any normally acceptable form of prose or poetry. It's for frustrated poets, schizophrenics, suicidal dipsomaniacs—in fact it's for the average student with nothing to commend him to any respectable type literary publication but whose ungrammatical genius is here appreciated by a reading public of the same ilk.

Anyway I've been doing this sort of thing for quite a while—it gives me a sort of feeling of "katharsis" which means the sort of purging relief you get when you come out of a terrifically tragic film and you breathe pure oxygen for a while very slowly. I don't actually get this 'feeling writing all this mess but I was thinking how adolescents are so continually introspective and what a relief they feel when they tear each other into shreds and then try to put back the bits a bit better except next crisis they shatter just as easily, and I thought that instead of all this emerging verbally, it's a pity to "waste my adolescent sweetness on the desert air" as it were, and if I wrote it all down I'd have it as a cute little souvenir to cynically treasure in my old age which at the moment I don't intend ever to reach (how I'm going to avoid it I really don't know but the theory's O.K.—me and Peter Pan both—at this rate I'll fill an issue without saying anything worth the trouble at all) but do please note my constancy of purpose—I always get back to what I was saying— there is a deliberate theme if you concentrate—actually you shouldn't really worry about it—just relax and follow all the little digressions for their own twisted sake.

Sometime this week I must try wearing my aunt's nice old X.O.S. maroon cardy with my beat wharfies jumper—what a combination—by the way I'm not going to introduce people—if you don't know who they are—tough luck—try the "Elementary my dear Watson stunt" . . .

When I'm alone in my room at night I hate the way screwed up cellophane gives a sudden crackle . . . you know this will only stop when I get cramp in my hand; (a) because this is a record of what I'm thinking; (b) because I'm thinking now; (c) because I can't stop thinking so what the hell anyway . . . back to why be introspective—I really feel good at the moment—and that's without any sex-interest at all—usually my fits of depression or idiotic bliss are vaguely connected with my sex-life—the Victorian 18-year-old wouldn't ever have dreamed of having a sex-life but nowadays it's an indispensable accessory . . .

You should see the mist over the city. Up high the sky is as blue as ink but closer no. And the trees on the side of the hill near Weir and the hill too are black outlined against it so that you have the two clarities of blue and black. Clear because of the mist—and the mist itself is coloured because it covers most of the formed and coloured remnants of life and these show through, more or less. Most is blurred like when my lenses are cloudy —but here and there an outline . . . Poor Esmerelda (or Neutron and Child or Peace that passeth all understanding or whatever you like to call it). She's been presented to us undeserving students, to the Chilean Navy, to the Ngaio Post Office, to the S.C.M. Cabin and finally to the staff common-room—she's even been dressed! And injury to insults—omewhere along the line her toes have been knocked off. It must be bad enough to have a figure like that anyway without being deprived of part of her anatomy! . . . The lady behind me in the bus bloody well annoyed me today. After all our noble efforts in Cappicade denouncing journalistic exploitation of Hastings Blossom Festival they go and have the headline "Police Ready for Louts" and it brings it all back again and all true civic minded citizens start to seethe in righteous indignation. Anyway there were two perfectly innocent Vic. students in typical varsity get-up velvet corduroys, desert boots, scarves, blazers—just walking along and she looked out the window and said in her screechy whiny nasal smug Kiwi voice "Louts that's what they are—shouldn't be allowed—somebody ought to do something about "them—I hope I can expect more of my son than that!" And we should worry about town-gown relationships—as long as people over 30 are suffered to continue their miserable existence, the younger generation are going to have hell ... I looked over the water and in the dark shadows under the wharves were reflected blue lights and up on the hill was a green searchlight and I thought "they should change colours because the sea can be blue or green but the sky is only blue"—why should colours be static—wouldn't a green sky be fabulous—a really stagnant water-green—is colour intrinsic in the eye or in the ray? Pink grass: no it would be horrible—after all you've seen the yellow-white grass from under something left for ages on a lawn—all etiolated and unhealthy like a sick sick "queer" . . . this is a lousy type-writer . . . How odd of God to choose the Jews but not so odd as those who choose a Jewish God and scorn the Jews —I hate Eichmann . . .

There's plenty more of this type raving where this came from. Any "Aunt. Daisy Daily Scrap-book" gems gratefully received from the lowest of contributors.

—Anon.