Saving the Kids

 

Kids’ time in gaming centres curbed in China. 

Tuition industry earlier curbed. 

Now a popular billionaire actor scrubbed from video platforms amid a crackdown on celebrity culture. 

Hopeless on our side.

Capacious Void

Broken spoke on the front wheel meant an outing a piede this morning, dropping into the repair shop en route. A couple of days ago a soft fall on the overpass on Millers saw a middle-aged pair sail by on their bikes touching distance, without the merest enquiry. Yesterday on the other hand two people stopped offering assistance and suggestions for the spoke. The river was drawn in closer afoot, a direct, friendlier greeting. On the bike some days it was taken under the left arm and carried along up to the power station like a parcel. Pacing along with the flow downstream one was almost enticed to kick out the feet like in the Russian military march. The black plaster stallion on the upper storey of one of the show-off places on the Strand had hardly been sighted on the bike; in the saddle glances away from the water were rare. The horse stood close against the glass as if looking out onto a daunting crossing. After a short time living opposite such vistas occupants quickly lost interest. Around by Fergie corner old Paddy Bricks had placed a kind of terracotta warrior sentinel on one of his balconies. Or at least his wife placed. The pieces had been sold at Going Going Gone in Richmond a couple of decades ago when Paddy was building and Bini supervising works. Back then Bin would often accompany wives of clients on shopping expeditions for their interiors. You could bet B had needed to diplomatically defer to Madam’s enthusiasm for the sage/warrior. Along with the daily new case numbers, hospitalisations, ICUs, ventilators and deaths, the hours of sleep needed inscribing (usually in the two stints averaging four and three respectively). Just recently there was the countdown for rejects from Smokelong and Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, two notoriously trigger-happy outfits which could come in even 24hrs later. (Currently both were mulling excellent pieces, outstanding flash that in both cases had been honed through countless revisions following a good number of earlier declines. The usual process. Oh! for those stupendous glories of first drafts taken up more or less instantly and appearing in gleaming form beneath handsome banners. In at least two cases with Frederick Barthelme at the New World Writing desk, no more than 5-6 hours in total—from time of submission mind.) The void has taken its toll on output lately. There was resistance to sitting down and memorialising, in whatever form; if the impulse bubbled up from beneath somehow with some force, some urgency, that was another matter. Alone in the room; take-outs: one point five distance even with passersby. Telephone phobia more or less and emails and other messaging empty of content. An extreme example of this latter yesterday with Era. For our Whatsapp we could manage with the aid of G. Trans, but for live converse forget it. Era was not a candidate for phone sex either, no more than Neet, and the reliable Ni continued to cool her heels after some cross words 4-5 months ago. Therefore void entire & utter. In the salt mines Solzhenitsyn had heaps to write about; Genet too in the cells. This was another kind of animal. Add the suburban grid—and within the confines of five kilometre radius during this latest lockdown. In the newly gentrified quarter here neat front gardens almost throughout, empty verandas and balconies, dull conservative paint schemes. Some kind of sporty Audi it may have been in fire engine red in Willy positively hurt the eye footing past this morning. Missing Geylang Serai on the equator, where Kamala Harris was currently offering assurances for liberty and free passage over the seas to the Chinese overlords (who were forced to dance the tightrope with the powerhouse Mainland). Another mad notation of recent times was the record of the pushes that had been started again after the strained tendon. Forty-five now first off. Run breathless to the desk to record. Was it managed comfortably? Perhaps an intake of breath was needed for the last 2-3. Record. Then the 30, how did that go? OK? Not strained too badly? Last 25. Often between the last two sets a run was needed downstairs to the bathroom. Duly noted.

Singaporean Artist

The Singaporean artist who dreams big – from giant bunnies to huge blocks of ice

Channel News Asia 

20 Aug 2021

The lady was not kidding.

In which context the Leibovitz pic of the Rushdie, McEwan, Amiss ratpack comes to mind.

The Scream

There is a woman in the city here walking around and conducting her day-to-day life with the memory of an argument, a screaming match, that had horrible consequences. Or rather, that ended badly; badly in the extreme. It would be wrong to ascribe the end result as a consequence of the argument. Hopefully the woman concerned could keep that last thought at bay.

            The couple had been together over fifteen years. He drank a great deal, smoked like a chimney. A wild lad, though wild in the context of the art world. Not a wild, hard man.

            In the usual way, even the couple’s closest friends didn’t know too much about their intimate, private life. One of the circle suggested the man, a prominent local musician, played an important role as step-father to the woman’s son from a previous relationship. The same person too who had commented on the fatherhood role suggested the man had been struggling recently with his ageing. Early/mid-fifties’ life position worsened by the booze; there was the beginning of various ailments.

            The argument, the screaming match, took place in the inner city apartment the pair had bought some years before, an apartment sitting on the 24th floor of the building. Wild screaming it had been. She from one of the rooms indoors and the man eventually from the balcony.

            A sudden silence arrived from the latter after the man, the woman’s partner, flipped himself over the balcony railing.

            In such circumstance there might not have been any scream once the rail had been cleared. That was the likelihood.

            Clearly, there had been no thought of the danger to anyone happening by on the ground beneath the balcony. (Nothing further had resulted.) 

Some kind of sudden impulse involved, a sudden trigger action, whatever precursors there may have been earlier. In the months and years earlier.

            The first report of the incident had not mentioned the screaming. It was a close intimate of the pair who later divulged that part of the matter.

            In an unrelated event thirty-five years ago, a cousin had thrown herself down a well up in our Montenegrin village. Bacila se. Thrown herself; when in fact in a case like that Cousin Jovanka must have let herself slide down from the rim of the well.

            It has surprisingly gone now from memory how the news reached us. The earliest memory of the reception was Bab’s quiet absorption of the shock. Very little was said. Some words from Bab had been expected; there had been almost none. 

 Jovanka had been Bab’s niece, the pair having spent a good part of Joke’s youth together and developed a fondness for each other. Memorably, Bab had defended Jovanka more than once when she thought her interests were not being taken into account by her parents and her sisters.

            We were all assailed by the event ever since of course, all the particular details involved. The long climb up to the village, which would have needed well over an hour at Jovanka’s age. All the determination and settled resolve. A set of her best clothes Jovanka had taken up with her and left beside the well. Her ready burial attire. On top of the clothing was her wedding ring. 

            Assailed across all these years, regularly and inescapably. In night visions and waking. Jovanka’s sons and daughter had suffered how much more. The partner of the musician at the balcony in her case too.

            Gnawing memory. Always there. You could not shake a fist at the horror; take the head in hands like in the Munch painting. The memory could not be dislodged. After receding in the usual way it always returned.

            It was the first anniversary of the balcony jump a few weeks ago. Possibly there had been some kind of commemoration for those most nearly affected.

            In the high rise living in Singapore desperate leaps from the upper storeys were common and regular. One of the neighbours in Geylang Serai said the jumpers always did it in other neighbourhoods, not their own. A strange quirk that was perhaps understandable.

            Mother had fixed in her head that Jovanka had gone to her father’s well for her act; not the house where she had married. A decision that in Bab’s mind spoke loudly. There had been hardship in both houses for Jovanka, but it had been an argument with her father that had eventually precipitated her action. Another source had the other well chosen, the house of Jovanka’s husband.

            In the cases of both Jovanka and the vaulting musician there had been no prior attempts. You might guess the thought of suicide had occurred for both previously. Different as the actions were, one would guess so. It was impossible to know.

            There had been some sharp words, not screams, with Jovanka’s father some while before her act. The musician had apparently been wildly argumentative; arguments with the partner seem to have been regular and dramatic. 

            The slide; the leap. Complete emptying of mind in the moment—that most surely. 

A sudden lunge in the one case and a much longer passage for our Jovanka. Fixed and unequivocal mind. Silent screams came later perhaps on both sides.

 

 

                                                                                                                     Melbourne 

NB. Published by New World Writing July 2021, in a trio with the general title Code Red.

 

the electric chair

 ...lacking a little current just lately.

Publication History 2010-24 (April)

 

PUBLICATION listing — April 2024 update

 

 Pavle Radonic

 

 

Print

 

“D’Afrique” - Wet Ink March 2010 (AU)

“Grattan Street” - #23 Wet Ink 2011

“The Romance Influence” - #23 Wet Ink 2011

“Rise & Shine” - Southerly Literary Journal Vol. 71, No. 1, 2011 (AU)

“Ibrahim & Ismail” - Antigonish Literary Review #187 2011 (Canada)

“Cunnamulla” - Time To Write NMIT Journal annual 2013 (AU)

“Street Shoot” - Ambit Magazine #221 2015 (UK)

“The Biggest Name of Them All” - Aethlon Literary Sports Journal Vol. 33/1 (US)

“Southernmost Point” - Contemporary Literary Review India (2016 annual)

“Lord Shiva in Singapore” - Contemporary Literary Rev. India (2017 annual)

“Wife No. 2” - Gargouille #6 Winter 2017 (AU)

“Southernmost Point: Jalan Jalan Johor Bahru” - Think City June 2017 (Malaysia)

“Weddings & Devotions” - Orbis #180 Summer 2017 (UK)

“The Volcano” - Linnet’s Wings July 2018 (Ireland)

“Arthur’s Meteorology”, “Chinese Marriage Market” & “Cunnamulla” - Idiom #23 (AU)

“Billboard” - The Anti-Languorous Project Sept 2018 (Canada)

“Gauguin Again” - Orca Literary Journal #1 2019 (US)

“Fighters” - In Parentheses – Oct 2019 Print/PDF (US)

“The Ukraine Again” - The Tulane Review, Fall 2019 (US)

“The Stocks”  - Genre Urban Arts #9 Dec 2019 (US)

“Serious Child’s Play" & "The Sandpit" - Anti-Langourous Project #6 Winter 2020 (CN)

“Nonno” - Nine Cloud Journal #2 June 2021 (US)

 

                                                                                                                        22

 

 

 

 

Digital

 

“Ancient China: Post-(Almost) LKY Singapore” - Cha Lit. Journal Dec2013 (HK)

“Owner-Builder” - Post Magazine Feb 2014  (AU)m

“Small Wonders” - Eastlit. Magazine Nov. 2014 (Thailand)

“Year of the Goat” - Big Bridge #18, July 2015  (US)

“Favourite Indian” - The Literary Yard April 2016  (India)

“Sequestered” - Pendulum Papers July 2016 (AU)

“Dessert: Payassam” - The Literary Yard Sept 2016  (India)

“Hindu Jazz” - Criterion Literary Review India Mar2017

“Wasted Kiss” - Citron Review April 2017  (US)

“On the Horn” - Pendulum Papers Dec 2017 (AU)

“Burung - Bird” - Entropy Feb 2018 (US); re-issued Literary Veganism June23 (US)

“Singapore 3” - Rambutan #5 (SE Asia)

“The Laboratory” - Map Literary March 2018 (US)

“The Minangkabau” - Bitterzoet Dec 2018 (US)

“Sumptuous Naan & Puthena” - The Literary Yard Jan 2019 (India)

“Game On” - Paragon Literary Journal #16 2019 (US)

“Nano 5” - Public House July 2019 (UK)

“Bread & Circus” -  San Antonio Review Aug 2019 (US)

“Murder at the Haig” - Open: Journal of Arts & Letters 2019 anthology (US)

“Batavia & Bandung” - La Piccioletta Barca #11 Sept 2019 (UK)

“Sparkling Form” - Modern Literature April 2020 (India)

“Subversive Farming” - Wild Roof Journal #2 April 2020 (US)

“Anonymous” - Panoplyzine #15 May 2020 (US)

“Crisis Central” - The Blue Nib May 2020 (Ireland)

“Recusant” - New World Writing July 2020 (US)

“Skydiving” - New World Writing Ditto

“Storm” - Of Zoos July 2020 (SG)

“Strange Fruit (Singapore)” - New World Writing July 2020 (US)

“Smooching Like There Was No Tomorrow” - Ditto

“Threesome” - NWW Aug 2020

"Merciless" - Ditto

“Billboards Up To the Sky” NWW Sept 2020 (US)

“Prayer, Rage, Meditation” - Ditto

"Letter From the East" - Ditto

"Jakarta 1440H" - NWW Oct 2020

“The Heirs” & “The Whip Hand” - Ginosko Literary Journal #25 - Fall 2020 (US)

"Johor Bahru Old Town" - Midway Journal #14/No.4 Oct 2020 (US)

"The Hearth (Montenegro)" – New World Writing Oct 2020

“ ‘Tis the Season “ - NWW Dec 2020

“Up & Down the Tube” - Fleas On the Dog Mar 2021 (CN)

“Blue” - Sunspot Lit - March 2021 (US)

“Code Red” - New World Writing July 2021

“Blue // Riverbank” - Impermanent Earth July 2021 (US)

 “Stash” - Aletheia Literary Quarterly Oct 21 (AU)

“One Piece Dragon” - New World Writing Oct 21 (US)

“Babi - Pork (Crime & Punishment)” - Of Zoos Dec 21 (SG)

“Land of Brothers” - New World Writing Feb 22 (US)

“ Unfathomable “ - Citron Review Mar 22 (US)

"Scenes In & Around A Guardhouse" and "Bomb" - Defunct Mag #10 - Spring 22 (US)

“Wife No. 2” & “Four Short Pieces” - NWW Quarterly - July22

“Visiting the Zen Man Al” - Pendulum Papers Aug22 (AU)

“Harping On” & “Leaping Ahead” poems - Another Chicago Magazine Aug22 

“Weather Report (SG)” – Literary Veganism - Sept22 (US)

“Slowcoaches (The Montenegrins)” - Bosphorus Review of Books - Nov22 

“Turned Eye” - Orca Lit Journal #12 - Dec 22 (US)

“Heavenly Bash” - Impermanent Earth - Dec22 (US)

“For Pity’s Sake” - Literary Veganism - Dec 22

“Crisis Central” - NWW Quarterly - Jan23 (re-issue)

“Voided ” - Sunflowers at Midnight - Feb23 (US)

“Blind Terror” - Panoply - May 23 (US)

“These I Commend To Thee” - NWW Quarterly - July23

 “Murder, War & the Dead” - The Wrath-Bearing Tree (US) - Aug 23

“The Malay Archipelago In Short” - NWWQ - Oct23 (US)

“Bystand” & “Soho in Singapore” - Of Zoos - Jan24 (SG)

“The Heart of the Matter” - QU Lit Mag #19 - Winter24 (US)

“Minus 41 & 35k Feet” - Airplane Reading Feb24 (US)

“Soekarno-Hatta Hanging - Airplane Reading April24 (US)

 

                                                                                                                                    67

 Scheduled

“Appetite” - BULL - July 2023 (US)

“Inheritance” - River Styx - June24 (US) 

“Bereft’ - The BeZine Nov23 (US & Israel)

 

 

 

NB. 1. D’Afrique underwent some regrettable hashing in the hands of an intern at Wet Ink, for which the editor subsequently apologised.

       2. Grattan Street & The Romance Influence were both shortlisted for the annual Wet Ink fiction prize. (2/13 and unsuccessful unfortunately. Judge shall remain nameless. A precious metal in the surname is the hint.)

       3. Cunnamulla underwent another and much worse butchering in the hands of a writing class at NMIT. A writing & publishing tertiary level outfit, supervised by instructors, all without any consultation.

 

The Quiet Don (Тихий Дон) - Mihail Sholokhov

The second volume of the Sholokhov had been bought about forty-five years before and left on the shelf until a friend’s enthusiastic mention of the book. After at first misguidedly embarking on a reading wrong-way-round, the first volume was eventually found. In the English translation the original Тихий Дон (The Quiet Don) becomes And Quiet Flows the Don, followed by the second part, The Don Flows Home To the Sea (600 & 800 pages respectively).

The first fifty pages of the second volume immediately excited, mostly for the evocative sense of place and the strong Slavic flavouring. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky and Pasternak had not read so thoroughly Slav as Sholokhov in this great historical saga. These Cossacks on their steppe by the river that iced up over winter and slowly cracked open in the spring had a contempt for peasantry who lived without horses and knew only well water. Nonetheless, there was more than enough life in common, even with the Southern Slav kin in the mountains sloping down to the Adriatic.

At the time of the revolution father Lazar was a boy; when the Whites were defeated and Denikin had fled Russia he had become a teenager. Third son, fourth or fifth child of the old patriarch Pavle. In those early teen years he would lose two of the fingers of his right hand to munitions from WWI that were strewn over the hills. Eldest brother Jovan would make a pilgrimage to the statue of Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo and at the end of 1953 Bab would take the train from Zelenika up to Sarajevo, the roundabout and only way to get up to the capital for the train to Greece, boarding at Piraeus for Melbourne. Jovan and Lazar had travelled six years earlier: Naples - Port Said - Melbourne.

The Russian émigré Natalia Borovska had taught Bab in the first grade in the village school, where children brought firewood to class in the morning. Sholokhov mentions Serbia as one of the refuges for the fleeing White Russians.

In this reading there was continual re-translating from the lame English back into what could be confidently guessed as the original. 

“…I’m foreign to them from my head to my heel…” / od glave do pete. One of Babi’s common trophes. (“Maturity and good sense needs a long trip from the heel to the head.”)

“Where am I to find her? … I can’t give birth to her” / ne mogu je rodit… (What do you expect, me to birth it?!)

“I don’t know when your telling stories (lies almost certainly) and when you’re telling the truth” / Neznase kad lazes a kad istinu govoris… (By implication a lot of bulldust was being heard, Bab’s rasping note making that clear.)

When a character calls down a heavenly thunderbolt on an antagonist, it could only have been a nebelska strelja, heavenly spear in question. 

Terms of affection, terms of cursing and prayer in Sholokhov were perfectly familiar.

            Seemingly localised rusticity of Bab’s was here put into the rhetorical mouth of Gregor, the hero of the saga, at a public gathering: “We would all like the wolves to be full and the sheep whole, but…” (Siti vuci, cijela goveda; common in narrative, usually expressing temporary order and balance.) Some of our striking language on Village Uble was cultural inheritance from centuries past.

The old patriarch Pantaleimon, Gregor’s father, in his fit of uncontrollable rage (Vol. II, p. 526) brought to mind old Blagoje Todorov at Ivovici, the husband of incomparable Jelena, first cousin of Grandad Rade. Jelena knitting her husband a sweater was pressing him to try it on, to give his arm or shoulder for measure. It had been untimely; Blagoje was in a foul mood; something was not right. What does Blagoje do when his wife won’t be shaken off? What he does is take the knitting in hand, collect a pair of shears and cut the handiwork into little pieces. There you are then!...

Early in their marriage Pantaleimon had beaten his wife Ilicniya with his hard fists, like other women of Village Uble and of the period generally had been beaten. The husband of one of Lazar’s illicit lovers had been tied to a tree in front of their hut for her beating. Kurva Lazar Pavlova! / Whore of Lazar Pavlov.

Pantaleimon’s eldest son’s playfulness with a nephew would read as cruelty to a contemporary reader. Feeding the young boy sour milk the spoon finds the lad’s chin, cheek and forehead rather than mouth. Mach laughter resulting at the boy’s expense. In the same passage another episode has the lad asking permission to urinate close to the house. No, he must go further off. And then further too. No, further still again. Until to great mirth the boy does it in his pants. 

Nothing very exceptional in some forms of upbringing, where a little fun must be devised and cannot be resisted.

Sholokhov’s depiction of deep affection and love is of its own particular kind too, possibly reading rather lamely for some. It is delivered most tellingly in three or four lines in the last section of Volume 2, when Duria tells Aksinia of her brother Gregor’s expected return. Gregor’s wife, who was loved only dutifully, has died; the passionate illicit lover Aksinia has been caring for the children of that union. News of Gregor’s wounding and likely trial before a Soviet Commission, where even a death sentence is possible (despite his subsequent service with the Reds), none of that can prevent Aksinia’s smile at the word of his return. After hearing of it Aksinia escorts Dunia out of the “hut”—there are few houses in this period by the Don—and suddenly snatches up her hand and kisses it. Was she glad at the homecoming, the sister asks in a “broken tone”. Yes, just a little, only a very little, Aksinia answers, “trying to jest, to hide her tears behind a tremulous smile”.

The gruesome, brutal killing in Sholokhov carries echoes of Homer and Shakespeare.  Numerous passages make gruelling reading, the last near the end of the book delivering a particularly horrifying example. A Red has pleaded for his life; eventually he made a hopeless run for it and was shot and sabred. Presumed dead, as the body was beginning to be stripped of its jacket and eventually trousers, the killers find the man is in fact still lingering. The scene is brief, the kind of thing that film treatment hopelessly ruins; unfolded here on the page the horror of inhumanity seizes the brain. (749-51)

It turns out biographical evidence suggests Sholokhov was a ruthless Bolshevik, pitiless in his personal judgements. The pity he reserved for his writings.

 

 

Notation

Sitting by the radio during the war must have been something similar, premier dan in his pressers become a kind of Churchillian figure delivering the somber news and attempting to rally spirits. Many months now a routine recording of the daily totals had taken hold—infections, tests, ICUs & ventilators, all duly noted in the diary. Deaths had been rare here at least, a number of months ago the last. In the media Hiroshima Day had passed without a single mention; even before the virus it had been falling away. Finally the morning after The Progressive in the States duly carried a feature. A couple of days ago a young magpie had been observed up above the medical centre opposite the station, flinging itself against the dark glass of the window on the upper storey. The poor deluded bird launched itself repeatedly from the top of the balcony rail, again and again into the reflected trees and sky in the glass. A couple of trains had passed while the hopeless attempted flight continued. Not a bad metaphor. A few mornings ago a sudden episode of phantasmagloria resulted in a surprisingly strong spurt, which reached onto the middle of the chest and the rolled up tee. It had been quite some while since there had been anything remotely comparable. Fitting in this season of record-breaking feats in Tokyo.