Great Exhalations

I had awoken to find a sparkling crust had formed on one side of my pillow. Either two slugs had taken residence in my nose, or my flu was progressively worsening. I could feel the gridlock of snot in the freeways behind my face, so I think it was safe to say that my immune system would be earning it’s keep. During one of the most illuminating, if not necessary, talks of the MWF my sickness began to take it’s toll. I was finding it hard to balance the urgency of bodily functions and maintain the solemnity of the discussions. I was desperate to cough out the residue of my illness, but the talk on the writer’s role in political activism was so important, that I was loath to interrupt in any way.

As Pettina Gappah was commenting on the important role fiction plays in subversively bringing political agendas to the fore, my person began to buckle under the pressure of ick. I knew coughing out loud would detract from the discussion, so my only alternative was to cough out quiet. I did my best slow motion cough. A painfully slow lung heave that sounded like a toothless dog gumming a chew toy. My gurgling exhalations had gotten so bad that a woman passed me a tissue. I gratefully snatched it, emptying my throat into the ply. Then she gingerly offered me a blue biro. I looked down at the tissue, which looked an awful lot like a petition against the parallel importing of books in Australia.

My nose is still running, but nowhere near as fast as I am.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Earnest Phlegmingway

I woke this morning to find the influenza fairy had piped a fresh sack of mucous into my sinus cavity. The dull bloat of head pus interrupted all my thoughts. Even the regular erotic daydreams I play during my morning shower seemed slackly monotone and somehow more mucousy than normal. How was I to fulfill my role of festival blogger when the theatre in my mind couldn’t even screen a decent pre-breakfast skin flick?

I decided to dress in a full suit and tie in the hopes that my fashion would trick my mind into feeling better. It didn’t. After ruining a bowl of cereal with something midway between a sneeze and a cough, my flatmate Michelle suggested I try some antibiotics. She galloped up the hallway and returned from the bathroom with a handful of small blue tablets, explaining that they were left over from the time she’d been seeing this guy from Bluejuice. I thought about the number of times my paintings jumped off of my bedroom wall after she had met someone at a gig. I decided I would probably only need a half. I washed down the portion of the pill with some water she handed to me. I almost gagged when I discovered it was gin.  Michelle told me she used to work in a student bar where they served the exact same concoction, named Hemmingway’s Shotgun.

My train ride into the MWF is somewhat blurry after that. I half recall chatting to a group of school kids about why my hands were suddenly so huge and how my feet seemed to be a long distance from my head. By the time my faculties returned, I discovered that I was in the Fed Square Atrium chatting to a group of young writers whose black jeans were so tight, you could count the change in their pockets. The shortest of them had a lisp and $4.25, he asked me what my writing credentials were. I explained that I was blogging for the festival. He smiled a grin of private schooling and told me that I was merely an aspiring writer. Through his supercilious teeth he stated that he himself was an emerging writer. I asked what the difference was. He told me that emerging writers drink free champagne at functions, whereas aspiring writers serve it to them. The denim ring guffawed in unison.

I slid my hand into my trouser pocket, fingering the round blue pills that my flatmate had given me in case my flu began to exit my body via my face again.  I smiled at the stovepipe dohnut asking if they’d all like to try a drink made famous by Hemmingway.

The last I saw of them, two of girls were licking each others face on the floor of the Atrium and the short lisper had pulled up his own chair at Steven Amsterdam’s book signing. He loudly slurred that he’d be signing copies too, as he was almost certain he’d given Amsterdam the idea for the book after sharing a pinger at a lock-in in Fitzroy.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger

Dead Under Fluorescent Lights