Lachy McKenzie



A flaneur is a monster with tentacles it uses to steal feelings

You reminded me to think about echidnas, about lumpen, about the curled fronds of ferns. But I couldn't escape my conditioning—classically, economically. Some one cursed OIKOS at me from a passing car, but I may have misheard. Despite your advice, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, becoming increasingly contorted, disoriented, and alone. At times like these even getting dressed is a success. I began to think about echidnas. Worried for my posture I tried to unfurl as unpatriotically as I knew how, inexorably crushing a walk of nearby snails. I fed them to the chickens, abstracted by precocious noon stars, and a crow that appeared to caw in Korean. Still chasing thought, I crawled into the city, built like children competing for their mother’s attention. At intersections we paused and saw, on giant screens, tragedy become commons. I thought about lumpen. You said, events are like objects, they can be folded and kept, they can be broken, they can be lost. I forgot about ferns. I returned home to comfortable disorder. I slumped, once more, into the news, where every time they said urgently I curved the words and heard very gently, very gently.

Lachy McKenzie is a writer from Melbourne/Sydney.
 
 
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