Wednesday

The Perfect Storm (2000)


Cover photograph & design: Gabriel White



(November 22) The Perfect Storm. Video by Gabriel White, Text by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-07350-1. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000. 8 pp. [12 minutes / 100 copies].
  1. Fire (9/6 & 7/7 & 25/6-3/8/2000)
  2. Grating your hand … (21/4/97)
  3. The Storm (3/7-5/8/2000)
  4. Don’t want no plot … (23/6/2000)
  5. Fusion (9/6 & 26/6 & 1/6-4/8/2000)
  6. Not the butterfly-collector … (22/6/2000)
  7. Poetry Live (7/6 & 3/6 & 13/2-2/8/2000)



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Gabriel White & Jack Ross: The Perfect Storm (2000)



We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship
– Elizabeth Bishop





Mainly chicks smoking:
•   Office-clad in Elliott Street, dragging on it like an aqualung.
•   14-yr-old (?) walking beside her boyfriend, cigarette in hand.
•   Two women at the table opposite in the Albion at lunchtime. 
    Lisa les déteste.
•   Now, in Freyberg Square, a knot of four nestles in one corner, 
    one tailor-made between them.


Right outside the heart attack
he told her – waddling to town
Give up your seat
to ladies
“Sit on my lap”
Blonde, bluejeans, scarf


Queensland, June 25th: ‘We are still trying to come to terms with 
what happened. We never will – and although every one of us wants to 
forget – we never will. We owe it to the Palace fifteen that they are 
never forgotten, ever,’ a British backpacker said. Others spoke of love 
found and lost, and of working alongside each other picking fruit in 
the Childers district.

The girl in maroon leather pants isn’t eating; her friend with the 
knitted jumper is – stuffing her face with a muffin.


(9/6 & 7/7 & 25/6-3/8/2000)

Publications:



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Grating your hand on a cheese-grater
punching the wall
you even slapped your face once – bloody hard –
in the National Library of Scotland
Who can say
what the petulant girls with their ledgers
thought that day?


(21/4/97)

Publications:
  • The Perfect Storm. ISBN 0-473-07350-1 (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000).



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Monday, July 3rd: Rain and flooding in Auckland – an anticyclone over 
the South Island keeps the weather stalled in the North. Coromandel 
takes the brunt. The creek’s up. Your shoes are sodden, socks soaked 
through, raincoat ineffective. But you’ve done your walk.
   The Perfect Storm “hits” today – so do school holidays: the 
gang’s all here, clustered round the cardboard display for The Road 
to El Dorado – “It’s really funny when these three guys call 
those two gods,” explains a small(ish) boy.


Girl with steel comb
like fangs
adjusts her hair

Cheekfuls of popcorn
keep the boys’ mouths shut


Everybody’s got a radio, everybody’s mouth is open, screaming out 
instructions, commentary … It’s quite a storm.


Dem waves iz beeg
I hope we don’t git sunk
Git outta dere!


(3/7-5/8/2000)

Publications:
  • The Perfect Storm. ISBN 0-473-07350-1 (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000).
  • 'The Perfect Storm. Haibun Today: The State of the Art (1/5/2008) [available at: http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/05/jack-ross-perfect-storm.html].
  • 'The Storm.' Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand. Ed. Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan & James Norcliffe. ISBN 978-1-927145-98-2 (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2018): 188.

Notes:
  • There are references throughout to American disaster movie The Perfect Storm, dir. Wolfgang Petersen, writ. William D. Wittliff (based on the 1997 book of the same name by Sebastian Junger) - with George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, & Diane Lane - (USA, 2000).



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Don’t want no plot
    we’re rooting for the storm
        Perfection

The perfect girl in jeans
    to wave goodbye
        hands high above her head

The perfect storm
    it had to happen
        off the Grand Banks

Atlantic grey
    battleship grey
        green signalbox

below the powerlines
    white lines to mark the path
        mark the way home

however dark the night


(23/6/2000)

Publications:
  • The Perfect Storm. ISBN 0-473-07350-1 (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000).

Notes:
  • The 'perfect girl' in question is Diane Lane.



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Did that strident smock-clad girl accost you in Whitcoulls, wanting 
you to paint a still life? Same colours, or different? Did 
you choose different, and daub some grapes with manifest 
incompetence? Did she pounce, accordingly, on better prey? Was she 
promoting an artist’s manual?


More beautiful than death
than a boomerang in flight
the pain of that

stab a compass in your thigh
the sunflowers


At the Inaugural Massey Fashion Awards:

It’s basically just life in general,
& whatever you see                    450 copper studs
that’s what life means             140 belts
to you                             70 hours

Tanya: Cultural native look [palm fronds tied round her black frock]
Chris: Cultural all-round-the-world look [Old Glory wrapped around his bits]


(9/6 & 26/6 & 1/6-4/8/2000)

Publications:



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Not the butterfly-collector
    wriggling on pins
        “I’d take him to the doctor”
            crisped Sean Young

Nor the crossword puzzle
    triangles can’t move
        on the aisle carpet
            flanked by the red lights


(22/6/2000)

Publications:
  • The Perfect Storm. ISBN 0-473-07350-1 (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000).

Notes:
  • The quotation from Sean Young comes from American science fiction movie Blade Runner, dir. Ridley Scott, writ. Hampton Fancher & David Peoples (based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) - with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, & Edward James Olmos - (USA, 1982).



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This is how it is / in this moment / we just want to feel good


Björk/Sinead clone ullulates in red behind the Alleluya microphone – 
now quietening down to decoy us in for orgasm: I cherish this.
   Too much Kerouac in the air. Ramón has a dribble of red wine down 
his chin, as he buys a drink for some splashed habitué with his many, 
many cashcards – almost too drunk to stand. Silvana sits waiting to 
tape herself, looking monolithic. Vega scowls malignantly.
   “She is a cock-sucking woman,” shouts Ramón, egged on by his entourage 
of bozos.


Tonight
walking past George Court’s
I saw the legend

Press # key to start
on a plastic box


I’m tired of being the outsider – from now on, The Insider (Russell 
Crowe). Driving home, I see tendrils of light connecting me to the road: 
like spider silk, or parachute strings.


(7/6 & 3/6 & 13/2-2/8/2000)

Publications:

Notes:
  • The reference to The Insider is to the film of the same name, dir. Michael Mann, writ. Eric Roth & Michael Mann (from Marie Brenner's 1996 Vanity Fair article "The Man Who Knew Too Much") - with Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, & Michael Gambon - (USA, 1999).



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