Sew­ing hooves into a jacket

The LaTrobe Read­ing Room at the State Lib­rary of Vic­toria is pos­sessed of such a tran­quil, schol­arly ambi­ence that, in order to remind the reader of the per­fect serenity he or she is priv­ileged to enjoy, it has had to be ran­domly seeded with unoiled chairs which scream at the light­est touch like a bed full of cli­max­ing banshees.

I have returned to the LaTrobe after nearly eight­een months as a res­ult of a dis­cus­sion with my friend Oscar. He believes that I will start writ­ing again after sev­eral months of writer’s block if I start apply­ing some rigid struc­tures to my work­ing life: to become what he calls a scaf­foldist.

I have decided that the first bit of scaf­fold­ing to build is the elim­in­a­tion of all dis­trac­tions from my work envir­on­ment. How­ever, since my home office fea­tures such won­der­ful but deadly dis­trac­tions as the hat col­lec­tion, the sandwich-making facil­it­ies, the edit­or­ial con­sult­ant and the edit­or­ial consultant’s elastic mouse on a string, a sim­pler pro­pos­i­tion has become the elim­in­a­tion of the work envir­on­ment from the distractions.

Hence the LaTrobe. Find­ing a quiet desk and briefly mak­ing a lonely ban­shee very happy, I care­fully spread out sev­eral dozen spiral-bound note­pads, each per­fectly unsul­lied but for a single squiggle of an idea on the first page. I have encountered my first problem.

I often say that I carry a note­pad with me at all times in case of an unsched­uled idea, and in many ways this is a com­plete lie. What actu­ally hap­pens is that when, late in the morn­ings when I need an unsched­uled idea to learn the vir­tues of punc­tu­al­ity and clock on before lunch, I empty all of my pock­ets except for a single five dol­lar note, walk out my front gate and wander ran­domly to a point just bey­ond sprint­ing dis­tance of the house.

I then stare absently at noth­ing on the hori­zon and say to myself, aloud: ‘Wow, if I had a really good idea right now I’d have no way of writ­ing it down. I’d def­in­itely lose it forever.’

There is a news­agent just bey­ond sprint­ing dis­tance of my house. This year he is spend­ing Christ­mas in one of the nicer bits of Tahiti.

For con­veni­ence, I tear out the first page of each of the note­pads before me and tip the remainder back into their sack for the tram ride home.

What I find in three months worth of notes is at first more than slightly dis­con­cert­ing. Some of my scattered thoughts have included:

• If you could sew hooves into a jacket, whose would you do it to?
• Do New Zeal­anders have dom­in­atrices? If so, what for?
• Gull­ible Alchem­ists Are Eas­ily Lead

Then, just as I’m loop­ing a make­shift noose made from spiral bind­ings over a handy beam, I read this:

The Feud

1974: two out­stand­ing sci­ence stu­dents com­pete for their faculty’s Excel­lence Award and the love of a bril­liant math­em­atician. One gets the girl, the other the medal. But the wrong man gets the wrong prize, and both remain bitter. 

2006: now dis­tin­guished pro­fess­ors, they are once again nom­in­ated for the same prize — this time the world’s most pres­ti­gi­ous sci­ence hon­our. And the bril­liant and beau­ti­ful math­em­atician is back in town. From nom­in­a­tions to award night, a cam­era crew records the degen­er­a­tion of their rela­tion­ship into open feud.

And then it all makes sense. In an instant I can see where the appalling alchem­ist pun fits, who is sew­ing hooves into whose jacket and why, and more than any­thing else I can per­ceive the cir­cum­stances under which one might deploy, with dev­ast­at­ing effect, a Kiwi dominatrix. 

I can see it all. Because it’s a film.

I’ve got to get back to my com­puter. I shove all of my notes together, grab my pen, lean back and unex­pec­tedly per­form a reverse somer­sault. It is the LaTrobe Read­ing Room, after all.