Publication news - “Sparkling Form”

Hallo everyone

Hope you are all very well.

Another publication to announce. 

“Sparkling Form” is a sequence of flash from a few years ago now, centred on the Sub-Continental diaspora in Singapore. Being an online journal based in Chennai and run by an interesting editor, Modern Literature makes a perfect fit.

A little longer this piece 2k., open access here—

https://www.modernliterature.org/2020/04/27/sparkling-form-by-pavle-radonic/

Sparkling Form - By Pavle Radonic - Modern Literature     1. Escaping the sh_tholes for a place in the Sun Adjacent table at KV the other day a couple of Indian lads chatting over lunch, fattie with a girly voice and his opposite number bearing a questionable SPUNK tee. Pair was planning an attendance at a comedy film that evening it seemed; considering … www.modernliterature.org

Cheers & safe passage 

Pavle

The Old Anzac

Something from the archive to mark the occasion here in Sydney, day 11 of quarantine after landing back in Australia.



The Old Anzac

Three x 3.6 lengths of spout with two short returns, stop-ends, pops and downpipes. Not a massive job, even for a single tradie with a half-pie adequate helper. Ordinarily. For a plumber that gets out of bed each morning.

Seven or eight days in a row—bar one—Greg was due out. Seven or eight times it was a hundred per cent. Raring to go, a couple of times the night before on the phone. Hardly any playing up these days, doin’ nuthin.

In the mornings the voice immediately told the story in the first whisper, the first low croak. 

One of the problems was Easter. A lot going on. 

Everywhere else the town was dead, vacant and ghostly. In Greg’s corner there was a lot going on through Easter. 

A new early-thirties girlfriend was another factor. His stomach muscles were killing him, the old dodger complained in a squeak one morning. Often the girl wouldn’t leave until 4am.

— I’ve got to take everything I can get at this stage, he hoarsely whined that morning.

It was the girl more than the gear these days. Natalie might have popped the occasional pill, but that was all. 

Once or twice one of the usual rogues led Greg astray with an offer to shout him that was too good to refuse. Turning the phone off to shut them out didn’t always work; his place in Jackson Street was easy to stake out.

Then there was Anzac Day. Greg had never worked on Anzac Day. Anzac Day was the only sacred day in Greg’s calendar. During the big project down the road that had stretched into the third year, we had worked Good Fridays, Christmas Eves, birthdays. Not Anzac Day.

The old man had built a flat out the back of the house in Chelsea for granddad and grandma. His big mistake. From then on the marriage went down hill. Greg’s principle had always been that a good gal was one who could be separated from her mother. The ones who clung were bad news; there would always be trouble brewing . 

This was in the time before Greg needed to take whatever he could get.

Gran gave granddad a hard time. The old Anzac however outlived her all the same, fetching ninety-four with one leg four inches shorter than the other. 

Two days he had laid on the beach at Gallipoli, before they got him onto a relief boat. 

The English doctors wanted to amputate. They had no experience with gun-shot wounds. An Indian doctor who had served in the Boer War decided to re-set the leg; give it a go trying to save it. Granddad would have been fucked otherwise. On his return Gramps worked as a chauffeur in WA for a large wheat farmer, the only job he could find.

Same as every year, Greg watched the dawn service on the telly. Hour or hour and an half. Early wakes had been the order of the day in the past. Nowadays it was hard hoisting Greg up before eleven, but not for Anzac Day. 

Parliament House, Canberra had the last regular job. Fair while ago now. Since it had been little projects here and there.

Eventually we got to the guttering Wednesday round noon. Greg needed to be picked up and driven out in the Beast. The Christmas before he’d been done for .09. 

The passenger side on the Beast didn’t open, nor the tailgate. Ignition switch had to be drawn from the socket and pressed with the alternator light ON. First start every time these ten years, never failed.

Quick pit-stop at the scrap merchant in South Melbourne to cash some odds and ends. All the lads in the yard knew Greg. 

Segue into the office. Greg knew the boss, he had the run of the place. 

The 1860’s brass bushel and peck pans that the yard had picked up along the way was something worth showing. Original government measures engraved and marvellously formed. The pans used to do the rounds of the farms in the horse and cart. Undeniably impressive.

On the job the ladders were arranged, a string line stretched, before the brackets were hammered up. One. Two. And three. Properly spaced.

The first cut of the gutter though brought the realisation— the wrong angle brackets had been ordered. 

45 degree instead of 90s. Forty-five was the angle of the cut, that was right. But the bracket required was the 90 that fitted two 45’s. 

It had been a while since Greg had done roofing. Like the old gutters we had taken down the week before, he was rusty.

— It’s always my fault.

— ….You’ve got the shits for some reason.

Greg was a master disarmer. The toughest magistrates in the land, hanging judges, had been made to laugh.

During the afternoon numerous phone calls as usual. Liz to organise the bringing out of her old boiler. $50 bargain likely to give another ten years; well worth keeping as a spare. The serious heavy Steve who packed a gat, or roscoe—to impress the fellas around the place rather than squeeze, you’d guess. Greg had loaned Steve his scales a few weeks back and something had gone wrong. Rock had been trying to get him for days. Rock wanted a couple of hand basins installed in his salon for nothing. A few times he had shouted Greg up in the flat and he thought he owed him. Not considering the use of the flat, the lobbing without notice, having to watch him pull the pud on his couch each time once the gear was kicking in. A couple of times Rock had brought up hookers who Greg poked, while Rock sat back on the couch stroking away, juiced up with lubricant. And he thought he was owed.

Three spout brackets hammered up, a cut and one pop—unrivetted or siliconed. The remainder was for tomorrow.

NB. Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day was originally devised to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who served in the Gallipoli Campaign, their first engagement in the First World War (1914–1918).

Gilded Cage

Macquarie Street, Sydney down on the waterside, where it runs into the Domain. State Parliament was up a way, you remembered from old ABC newsreports. The Sydney Conservatorium of Music it appeared on the map must be the turreted old building directly in front, where Nellie Melba had held court. An anchored battleship behind some trees and Circular Quay, the Opera House & the Bridge spitting distance. In the morning the water had sparkled and late afternoon a burst of sunlight jewelled the buildings on the opposite shore. Drought and signs of autumn across the greenery was unapparent; the world headlines of fires and smoke a few months before had vanished like a bad dream. Christmas Day or Easter Sunday it might have been in the window, without a single mask in sight. (Later on the first afternoon a young Asian woman had donned one.) Yacht sails lonely like Wordsworth’s cloud perfect for isolation. On the plane the first Magnum (mini) in at least a decade had been quaffed; when the hostess offered the tray there had been only a momentary hesitation, as if struggling to recall an old acquaintance. The meals were sizeable at the Inter, the first night’s supper and all the following. (Down in Melbourne at Crown where a friend was being quarantined the man complained of salads day after day.)  Two Kit-Kats, one packet of Smiths crisps, the heavily sugared yoghurt and the brownies have been returned. The brownies were standard, expected fare in five star accommodation, presumably. Giving credit card details over the phone was only briefly resisted like for the Magnum—against the offering in the bar fridge, the Indian at reception suggested, where champers, Chivas, beers & Cokes tempted. Landlord Tan’s adapted garage housing his bike, weights and automotive parts in G. Serai had been replaced by the magazine spread window at the Intercontinental. The high stretches on the toes preliminary to the touches were much easier on carpet. A Mindfood mag on the shelf below the TeeV offered a feature on Future Beauty Forecast and bedside lay the Bible. The best book around, the best, Donnie had told his admiring audience at one of his rallies. Better than “The Art of the Deal,” he cracked. Sameer the Kashmiri had forwarded the Stephen King item recalling his 1979 book which pre-figured the advent of the current President. On the night of arrival the Army man marshalling the bus and making the selections—couples, smokers & the remainder—announced there would be no laundry service at the hotel, suggesting travellers might wash clothes in the bathroom basin using the shampoo provided. (Nonplussed Singaporeans leaving their domestic helpers behind you could understand.) Even in Sing thought had been to up the exercise regime during confinement, adding a morning session. Like in the prisons, some content needed to be found for the stretch,180 pushes fitting for the challenge. In the mirror here the blood rushing to the head was noticeable, the quick draining likewise. Ten paces from window to door. Ten per minute x 30 = 3kms x twice daily. Unlike in some other reported cases, there would be no marathons here during confinement. With the Nutrigrain cereal meagre the resolution against muffins could not be maintained, but certainly the desserts and Kit-Kats were declined. News continued of increasing infections in the foreign worker dorms up in Singapore, the huge warehousing of the young men beginning to alarm the domestic population no doubt. Jakarta and the other Indo cities would face dreadful hardship. Turned out in fact craning the neck from the right window sash a couple of the shells of the Opera House were indeed visible from Room 1209. Location to die for.

                                                                                                            Sydney, April 2020

Confine

You had to laugh, or at least remember the old reflex. Thought had been to hang the note on the other side of the door: Please Service My Room. JOKING! J But, no…. The other example was in regard to a replacement journal. A writer of a certain vintage needed his hard-bound A5 notebooks for initial pen-on-paper, scratching over the lines with the curls and flourishes. Yes, yes, sometimes it went straight onto the Pad or even in desperate straights the phone, but the h/b and the Pentel 0.7 was indispensable. While a spare pair of specs had been forgotten, there had been sufficient presence of mind for the h/b. Unfortunately stores were closed by then. Damn! What to do? Where procure?... Hey, what about the green A5 Accounts volume bought mistakenly a couple of years ago and gifted to Auntie H? Aunt really had no use for it either, she had been using it as a paperweight on her outdoor chair beside her door for the newspapers. (Old girl would be missing those now. Sometimes the other Cat-ladies in the neighbourhood pleaded some sheets, highly useful indoors. At the fridge on the last night Helen had masked her dolour at the departure.) Well, simply ignore the columns; the black Pentel would pour out its ink smoothly and override all. Only thing was the yellow smear on the covers, like water stain. Well, it was a deeper, more brownie caramel colour. You still had your sense of smell, but nothing discernible there. Testing again…. Nothing. Same tone as that over Aunt’s  breasts on her nightshirts that had raised the unavoidable thought of suckling. Nursing or cuddling at the very least. Certainly there was more than enough audible tenderness for her indoor litter flowing through our party wall. Anyhow, dried now whatever it was. Precious soap & water and leave it on the window sill for drying. Down in Melbourne the stores would likely remain closed into next month. Spill of ink running these many years at about six weeks +/- per volume, you did need some foresight. Caught without would be a calamity; it had never happened previously. In Bab’s back garden shed, stored in one of Lazar’s old chests that he had brought out from internment in Italy on the ship, together with a few other cases, about 150 items now sitting in the archive. Up in Sing another, what, 50-60? (Some packages had been mailed back.) It needed a Dickens-era portrait of the author sitting by his candle quill in hand and nose smudged. No joke.

                                                                                 Intercontinental, Macquarie Street Sydney

       April 2020

New Circuit

A close counterpart of old Chika Matija was twice rebuffed tonight at the Haig. After an unexplained lull of a number of months the man had recently appeared on the streets again. Tonight he approached at the Haig tea stall run by the bearded Tamil-Malay. Hello, hello. Apar khabar?... Where you stay?... For me, can?... Mid-seventies in a nice, loosely buttoned long-sleeve batik, grey hairs springing. Prior to the lockdown the men could find a place at the mosques. Refusing the offer of a teh as compensation, a few minutes later the chap approached the bench by the stop and needed to be warned off. Non-householders congregating was not permitted. In the newspaper that morning four of the regular Haig granddads, including one in his wheelchair missing half a leg, were photographed gathered around the back of the market by the case and trolley store, which for some unknown reason still appeared to be trading. While the teh was drunk and some jottings made a Grab cycling by illegally on the footpath carried a tune as he passed like a bright, fluttering ribbon. Before leaving for the circuit the Buddhist handyman had been congratulated on his ability to make his wife laugh so freely at the dining-room table, a light trilling Hahaha that fitted with her gait in the kitchen. Mornings setting off for her TCM work in dowdy prof. apparel you could not have guessed the inner lightness and spirit. Ramadan still a fortnight off, the night market cancelled, its lights and decorations strung up along the front of the Haig by the labourers giving the look of an aborted fairground. In a number of countries there had been concerns over hidden domestic violence during the lockdowns. Harassment of girls and women on the streets must have lessened, but it was also possible to think that the ladies were suffering now too with the lack of the usual admiration. Reports down in Oz featured people in the suburbs dressing up for the carting of the garbage onto the street; hints offered on how to look one’s best communicating on the screen. (In congested drought regions of India the challenges of distancing and hand-washing told the story on the other side.) On the new circuit down Tanjong Katong Road, turn at Dunman and back along Joo Chiat, it was condoland and bungalows throughout. Big-engined Euro models powering down narrow streets; big dogs here sometimes walked by their owners and the meeting of pets providing a spot of social exchange. In the front corner of one of the Dunman landed properties an old weathered concrete headstone stood up close against the fence. Former days when the deceased had walked the ground here these were large allotments that had been progressively hived off to the developers, leaving this grave now in a tight corner hard by two boundaries back and side. In the end dva metra svakome dosta, two metres was sufficient for all, the old Montenegrins said at funerals, while following the usual acquisitiveness otherwise. 

Storm

The proper function of making a mark of some kind, striking a blow, proved so much harder again now. In such a time as this what was there possible to say? All the journals were full of pandemic minutiae, when this kind of dread overtopped all areas of thought. In the case of serious illness awaiting an end thought processes wound down and petered out; even terror under bombardment and the like presented a different, more concrete kind of challenge. No doubt our generation was especially unprepared for anything like this. Like the streets now, stretches of mental space were left vacant, contentless; and the inactivity accentuating helplessness. Those coping with children, elderly parents and other such responsibilities escaped the mental challenge. A few days before waking to rain was strange for some odd reason, a little shock transmitted by it. The rains came often enough here, there was nothing especially unusual about that. There may have been some particular kind of lulling sleep in this case and the tropical pelting intruding on deeper unconscious. A dream of Bab associated no doubt added its own disturbance. In this instance her appearance fitted the time more or less: she was found in the laundry concentrated on the detergent she was adding to her soaking trough it must have been. A chemical blue swirl had been carefully measured and poured into a corner of the stainless steel tub that had replaced the older concrete of early days. As these things sometimes went, more strangeness still arrived with Scottie’s mailing of the Woodstock doco, the most recent that had been released last year in the States. There had been some mails exchanged at the time and since then the film had been completely forgotten. Scottie had come upon it somewhere and sent unannounced. MLK & Bobbie K both dead again just prior that same year. An angelic looking young Dylan and his Times are a changing. (In retrospect it was not clear now whether he had performed the song at the festival, whether he had in fact attended at all.) Having been too young for the era the first sighting of Buffalo Springfield’s homely boyishness surprised. All the musicians were remarkably young, like their audience. The thinness that had surprised Scottie was part of that earlier era too, pre-sugar saturation foods. Vietnam of course hovered over all, in the era when remote warfare from the air was something different—though devastating more than enough even then of course. Viewing the film in Singapore after a long acquaintance here and during the current crisis added further dimension. There was the famous story revealed in the last few years of the founding father of the modern republic, Lee Kuan Yew, visiting the Harvard clubhouse during the war with the man who would become a lifelong friend, Henry Kiss, in attendance. After the liberal academics in the gathering had spouted their misgivings about the war, the bombing and mounting ruination, LKY rounded on them unsparingly, famously telling them they made him sick, the lot of them. All that hand-wringing and bleeding-of-heart in the face of the terrible Red menace that was threatening the whole of Western civilisation—and the man’s own little exposed fiefdom down on the equator. Finding ourselves back in the future once more with the old nationalist framework preventing cooperation for our existential challenges, the rain storm, Babi’s careful housekeeping, the young hippies over the green field, left the morning all askew. Walking up for the Buddhist lunches one reserved a special pity for the girls in the bathroom outlets along Geylang Road & Sims Ave, sitting under bright LED among the vanities, the pans and cisterns. At least after the ordered shutdown next week they would be freed from those chambers. This morning the white Toyota man from upstairs coming down to fix himself a late breakfast managed his signature raised brows for greeting. Saturnine they used to call similar in other locales, which doesn’t half cover the case here. The Viet girls from the karaokes have ceased now and the chap prepares regular breakfasts & dinners in-house. Ni came again yesterday for lunch and lovemaking; neither of us could cope without. Last week there had been no need to explain to Ni about the kissing and again yesterday we managed well enough without. The brevity of the episode yesterday left Ni short; in the evening she was thinking ahead about next weekend’s rendezvous and messaged some thoughts about possible adjustments.

NB. Since published by Of Zoos (Singapore), July 2020

Outstanding Performance

Someone doesn’t hurry up this author is going to award himself a rock solid medal of purest, unadulterated gold. No bite for checking. Fully, richly deserved, all the judges agreed. A week ago old Jaf was given a hard time for his rollicking, unceasing drivel. Blah blah blah. The little monster fly…Nobody can catch…Faster than bullet…Blah blah blah. Since all perfect patience and forbearance; nothing else. Quiet and calm. Buddha smiles radiating… The aircraft carrier cannot shoot. Italy how many? Spain…With his health Jaf had no need worry about Co-rona, Co-ron-A. (To the tune of the old hit from the days the man was in fact not a bad little crooner himself. Co-rina, Cor-in-A...) Plenty loaded up already on the Jafaar’s plate how many years now. Dialysis, the growth on his colon, older brother Hussein buried last year. Younger Sharif had recently collapsed. We more fortunate were brought back to the field now. Yes, indeed. Far from the only one in the neighbourhood too taking some little gratification from the new found position.

April Fools’