The Eve Arrived

Darts man Jamal helloing from ten metres, before coming up to the teh counter. The champ had once beaten the world champ, or former world champ, at an informal tournament somewhere in the region. At the counter Jamal told of a fellow player met a week or two ago, just yesterday or the day before reported dead. Strained/pained visage from the tall Malay, standing close and delivering soto voce like a secret in confidence. Busy morn at Mr TT, a long queue at the counter. Christmas tomorrow. Who doesn’t want to celebrate? asked Jamal. One man and his family was now counted out. (Seemed the deceased may have possibly been Christian.) The man hadn’t ever called around to these parts; he stayed somewhere Jam couldn’t recall. Jamal himself might have had only a very passing acquaintance with the fellow. Having offloaded some little part, Jamal returned to the front veranda seeking a place at the tables where his circle congregated. At a loose end this last week and more with his plant closed.

Publication news: “For Pity’s Sake - Literary Veganism

 Hello all

One more publication to announce before the curtain falls on ‘22.

Literary Veganism up in the States again, with an animal lovers’s omnibus running to 2.2k words, Singaporean & Melburnian material combined here. Freely available,—

https://www.litvegan.net/2022/12/creative-nonfiction-by-pavle-radonic.html

All best all round, for the season & the year ahead

Pavle

Publication news: “Heavenly Bash” - Impermanent Earth

 

Hallo everyone

Hope you all are doing well.

Another publication to announce at Impermanent Earth, after an earlier piece of mine was published by that project last year. This is a recent flash from the current monsoon season here, regular pours mid-afternoon pretty much like clockwork.

See how you like it, freely available—

https://impermanentearth.com/archive/pavle-radonic-2022/

Pavle Radonic – Impermanent Earth impermanentearth.com

Greetings all-round

Pavle

Art For Whose Sake?

The boys & gals getting in the clinch aren’t distracted by the body art? It actually progresses the momentum, does it really? Possibly it may be the case for those raised on cartoons and porn. Foreign cultures you could not possibly judge from your distance; nothing to do with you.

Burung - Bird (Yogyakarta bird market)

Five elements maketh the traditional Javanese man: a job, house, respect, wife and a bird. 
         In the last category a substitute seemed possible, cat or dog coming in a couple of mentions. One of the commentators somehow included a kris, sword, and another a horse in their list.
         Along the gangs and narrow alleys in Jogja the birds hung high in the cages were usually missed until the song unexpectedly alerted. Tall, roomy cages for mostly minute birds that often needed searching through the bars. Like in most cities, birds of the air were almost non-existent in Jogja, even pigeons uncommon, and this despite a couple of strong neighbourhood associations in the urbanized kampungs off Malioboro. 
         In these narrow passageways too domesticated owls could be regularly sighted — hantu, which also served as the word for ghost. Otherwise night starlings flitted along the river and through stands of trees where they remained in the city. 
         After three or four weeks of the ever-growing impression the weekly Burung — The Bird needed to be purchased from one of the pushcarts up beyond the station. As commonly in Indonesian cities, the newspaper had been chanced upon hanging as if to dry on the front of the cart. On the cover an odd orange-breasted native with a crow crown had drawn attention. At Rp12,000 the newspaper was clearly for well-heeled enthusiasts. (The pigeons were the lower end of the fraternity, two single sides devoted to them in the pages of Burung.) 
         Chirpy Superior Bird Feed paid for page one prominence, as did a medicinal spray treatment of some kind. The accompanying digest of features within promised tips for strong-voiced chirping and breeding that could make one rich. 
         Together with other such material came thirty-five pages of announcements of triumphs and prizes in the various singing competitions in Central and Eastern Java, and also notices of those upcoming. (Jakarta and the West was too distant and must have had a separate magazine devoted to that quarter.)
         Four million rupiah was the lure in one particular competition; mostly the range was four to eight hundred thousand. Clearly well-regulated and keenly contested affairs. 
         Many of the names of champions derived from Western popular culture — Superhero, Satelit, Komandan, Master, Baron. Thirty-five pages of fifty, sixty and more winners per page amounted to a cast of a great many thousand in the singing contests alone, where lovebirds dominated. The famous lovebirds—English usage—from the pages of cheap poetical inspiration; they were native to other colonial quarters, not in fact equatorial South-East Asia.
         There had been word of a prominent bird market in Jogja at the first visit to the city the year before. Some time ago the market had down-scaled and moved further out of town. There was little to hope for of course; but then the birds along the path kept announcing themselves. One final prod arrived a few days previously when a visit to the French Cultural Centre found a becak driver under a tree out front with his bird hanging high in the branches above his seat. The chap certainly did not live in one of the houses of that particular quarter.
         Two short commuter bus rides amounting to little over a half hour altogether found the place, with a young guide easing the venture. Eagerly inquisitive smiling fellow passengers lugging bundles, sharing the fragrance of their vegetable purchases and chatting with their fellows needed to be left to continue on their way. Only a couple of months herself in Jogja, the guide Mahshushah knew the market from passes in the buses; enquiries along the way sufficed otherwise. Without designated stops for the local vehicles one needed to keep an eye-out for the numbering and nicknames on the windscreen.
         The Arabic Mahshushah—Special Person—broke down among friends to Cusy, and for Westerners Susi. Born in Madura off the coast of Surabaya, Susi was an orphan brought up by her grandmother without having known either parent. Since settling in Jogja she had found a place in a pesantren where she was studying and teaching in the afternoons. Through Faris's student groups she had found the American convert.
         Lovebirds predominated at the market, over-coloured in their particular tone of fluroscent yellow and green. At first hearing their casual twitter was equally unimpressive. No doubt a tin ear did not help; possibly one needed to listen more carefully. Much other similar twittering was audible in the aisles of the market. The musicality that was particularly noteworthy and striking during the morning was in fact that of Susi's limited English. Repeatedly in answering questions and other exchange the young woman fell into a pronounced sing-song lilt that must have been a carry-over from her concentration on the Holy Book. 
         La-di-da-da-di, sir. 
         There were a dozen girls dorming together and encouraging each other at the pesantren, where thus far Susi had mastered the two first chapters and the more difficult last three of the Qur’an.
         Susi was perfectly right of course to above all pity the birds and other animals in their cages. A traditional Muslim girl in baby pink dress and scarf, while we were still in the first aisles Susi announced she could not like a man who kept a bird in a cage.
         The lovebird colouring was almost as suspicious as that of the young chicks which had been spray-painted in novelty garish tones in order to entice young TV children. (The colours would fade over time, the vendor reassured after guessing the unfavourable reaction.) 
         Tails, beaks, speckling and subtle eye-shadow such as one saw in more venturesome young girls of Susi's kind on the streets and buses produced more allure than this love bird high colour. 
         For Australian eyes it was surprising to find caged mynahs. 
         Under close observation through the bamboo rails a large black rooster's lustrous feathers appeared supernatural—thin streaks of silver on some angles as the bird turned in the cage, then corrections as it turned again restlessly in its tight circle. A canny witch or dukun would have made capital from such an iridescent show-piece. 
         Though birds predominated, numerous other animals were also sold here—crickets, frogs, lizards, rabbits, cats and dogs; some of the quick-darting rodents seeming themselves capable of flight.
         Susi guessed correctly that the piles of bananas were in fact feed, hung up and part-peeled for smaller birds. Rocking cages overhead where birds dashed themselves against the bars underlined Susi's point about the confinement. 
         With some effort and the recall of native documentary one could imaginatively assemble something of the forest and jungle that had once held this extensive bird-life. Remnants of habitat remained of course even on Java; Kalimantan was becoming a draw in the adventure tourist market.
         One was reminded of Babi's old mountain kampung joke concerning the trapping of the all too elusive creatures of the air. A dash of salt on the tail of a birdie and you were a chance, the sly old devil always delivered po-faced. 
         Surprisingly, when the joke was shared with Susi and then relayed to a couple of old hands seated among the cages in the shade, one of the men understood the matter differently. 
         Oya! they did something similar, he replied. Sticky jack-fruit sap dabbed on the wing by way of a long bamboo prong. The man went inside a hut to fetch the kind of thing they employed. Once one had applied it to the feathers you had the prey keeling over and falling into your hand from the perch. Without jack-fruit—in the city for example—Elephant Glue worked equally well. A helpful friend from the adjacent stall displayed a half-used tube.
         — Fighting, fighting. Still to be found?...
         There were numerous roosters through the grounds in many different corners, many with their own scintillating colours that recalled precious stones and metals. Long entrapment seemed to have muted the majority.
         Man shook his head, chin wobbling.
         Tidak huh. No more…. Maybe shush-shush perhaps, on the quiet? Signing crossing of the lips.
         Laughing the fellow came clean. Ya, ya. The old fighting contests with the associated gambling had not been stamped out entirely.
         But polisi, polisi huh. Gotta be careful….Keep a step ahead of the blue-boys.
         Even in the big cities the cock-fighting persisted.
         Ducks, turkeys and some other fly-ins got a large, high enclosure with a tree and pond. A second such held a giant coiled snake whose skin was recognizable from expensive fashion leather advertisements— pregnant it turned out. 
         Someone said this enemy of man was from Kalimantan. The male partner lay just below water-level in an adjacent pond almost invisible. Three or four chickens these snakes consumed a number of times a week, when rats or mice had been the guess. The pair of snakes had been fifteen years at the market, the adjacent stall-keeper informed. 
         At one point earlier in the morning there a woman startled when she was seen feeding a child from a packet of KFC.

NB. Published by Entropy Magazine, Feb. 2018. The mag has since folded and the archive no longer available.

Witnessing (Maureen)

On the doorstep returning from Bugis a half-familiar figure was found seated on the stone bench by the entry. Boyish hair-cut, the dye just beginning to let through strands of white. Once or twice before the same lady had been found there without any exchange.  
    Maureen?… Oh! Sorry to hear about your cat. Helen told me this morning.  
    Maureen indicated the parcel on her lap. The form within was part-covered by large sheets of paper perhaps—at the time it appeared to have been stiff banana leaf. Maureen patted the body stretched there to indicate this was the said cat. The cat that had passed away overnight.  
    Orangey-brown and black streaks, its eyes half open, it seemed. The form and Maureen’s kind of attention, her gentle patting, had suggested an ailing animal.  
    It’s a lousy feeling, Mr Paulo.  
    Maureen would have been surprised to have been addressed by name, and certainly Mr Paulo here was surprised. We had never spoken previously.  
    Maureen was shy like the cats. Over the term she had been sighted two or three times, and only briefly; at the house and once at the NTUC supermarket after Helen had revealed that she worked there, in the store it must have been, or else only part time, as the supermarket was regularly patronised. In Helen’s conversation Maureen figured prominently.  
    Maureen lived in landed property further down in Carpmael, with at least one elder sister. The cats were a point of friction with one of the householders. More and more cats were being brought home by Maureen and she was spending more and more money on them.  
    It seemed that afternoon too that Maureen might have been Eurasian; some money had come down from either the parents, or the earlier generation.  
    That morning Helen had come into the kitchen early again seeking some chat. Zelna price, desirous of talk, the Montenegrins said. The JW witnessing was part of it, but Helen also enjoyed the exchange. A way had been found with her treading a little carefully through theology, the state of contemporary culture and coming end of the world, her feline devotions and our ordinary household affairs.  
    Helen lived in the refurbished garage in front of the Carpmael house, with a separate entry and her cats having room to freely roam along the driveway and up and down the street. There was some kind of sanitary provision in her room for peeing, but not Number 2. Showering was also in the main house.  
    Helen’s emerging personal history was interesting. Nothing as yet properly nailing the progress to that high feline devotion of organic feed that was carefully prepared in the camp kitchen in her room. If there had once been a man somewhere along the line, it would take some doing uncovering. Could it be anything else, some prospect suddenly denied? Helen would not have stayed down for long; got herself back up and on with it. Crossing to the JWs had taken a fair while; now Helen studied the scriptures and related daily. Gatherings up in Malaysia she was rarely able to attend because of the street feeding. (In Singapore the group was banned.) 
    A couple of her sisters still ran a maid agency in Orchard Road, one that in fact had served in its time the local potentate, friend to Henry Kiss & Marg Thatch. The business was a lotta work, but a lotta dosh was earned too. In her condo in some sought after location, one of her sisters had a wardrobe, or one of the walls of the rooms, hung with branded handbags a thousand plus dollars each.  
    The girls and one brother were raised and schooled by the Catholics; therefore Helen’s level of English. Dad had eventually attained a position as clerk and read the bible regularly. After being widowed, when maids were employed for his care, the father pestered them with untoward attention. Helen had been the one to live with him and listen to his oft repeated stories.  
    A few days before in the kitchen Helen had told of the 150, or 250, years of life of Abraham, the late parenthood of him and Sarah. Moses too may have lived even a longer span.  
    With Greg in Melbourne having passed away yesterday, Helen was asked some hard questions and Darwin’s Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals had been recommended to her. On her side Helen had been recommending a number of times particular verses of the Psalms, which continued unexplored as yet.  
    Helen sent lots of Watchtower material. In order to keep nice with her, two or three of the items had been perused and provided conversational material.  
    Helen was a darling, an irascible old crotchety spinster devoted to her cats and Jehovah.  
    When Maureen called Helen late night to tell of the passing of the cat she asked whether Helen might contribute to the cost of cremation. Some year or two ago Helen had had an association with that particular cat that included feeding. It was an attractive cat, even now in death lying there in Maureen’s lap. Around in Onan Road Bee Choo too had once taken a liking to this cat, Helen in the kitchen offered as further evidence. A number of Maureen’s ailing cats had passed away over the years, but not all of them produced sorrow for Helen like this one that she had fed and come to know.  
    Shortly after 5 at the return from Bugis, Maureen must have been waiting for Helen to accompany her to the crematorium. Or else it was for the money and farewell. If Helen was to accompany Maureen she must have done her feeding an hour early that afternoon, as she sometimes did if there were threatening clouds. The cats could not be left to go without.

                                                                     

 Joo Chiat, Singapore

NB. Published Dec 2022 by Literary Veganism in a sequence titled, For Pity’s Sake

 

Publication news: “Turned Eye” - Orca Lit. Journal #12

Hello everyone

Hope all is well in yr corners.

A publication to announce up in Seattle again at Orca, which featured an earlier piece of mine in 2019.

A flash of 800 words that dates from the first months in Singapore, “Turned Eye” presents some more of the darker back streets thereabouts.

This one is free on the site. The PDF issue is available for purchase, as well paper copy shipped.

https://orcalit.com/turned-eye/

Turned Eye Pavle Radonic The fatty gleaming Indian doing tricks round Tasvee doesn’t give up easily, especially not after a brief eyeing three weeks ago at first encounter. Ever since beaming her come-on and … orcalit.com

Greetings allround

P

Out From the Void

 

Three or four days later returning from the morning teh there was a big band number coming from within the Void here, some kinda barn or square dance one might have thought going by. Up until recently it had been floral tributes or banners used for such occasions, similar to the congratulatory stands at the entrances of newly established hairdressers, restos, &etc. The LEDs with their messaging were a more recent innovation, flashing day and night all through the term. Almost certainly the music was for the finale now.

Heavenly Bash (Guruh)

Gone half 5. One pour had been waited out after lunch at Mustafa on their benches along Kitchener Road—no, in fact that was Syed Alwi there. Now a second, bigger bash at Tenderbest a couple hundred metres from the house. No way could one expect these roofs & drains to continue coping. Through the afternoon Helen had sent video of the floods in Mexico, after she had been doubted in her report over brekkie a few days before. Big rivers of water down the streets of a town in Mexico carrying cars away? Yes, indeed. One does not hear the half of it in the different quarters of the globe. Again, thoughts of the old peasants up in the hills. Could there possibly be found a lee of a hill in this kind of perfectly vertical pour? Drops of rain this size could only fall one way, straight as a die; force of gravity. The caves would have provided refuge in old Montenegro; and still provided no doubt; it would not be all shed & warehouse dairies such as here in the West of the island, at Kranji. Twenty-five metres to the front porch of the house one would get thoroughly saturated. There were covered walkways the first 150m; the government had erected 200kms of them over the island in the last few years alone. Guruh  in bahasa for thunder mimicked the sound. GURUH! Made the old scarved Malay woman jump in her seat just now. Chap opposite her with his bike helmet on the chair, not a flicker. Perhaps as a child he had sheltered beneath dense forest canopy while it blasted all-round him, and now he could not easily scare. The heavy downpours were in fact not very different in the Montenegrin hills, where Crkvice a couple dozen kilometres from the village always recorded the second highest rainfall in Europe. Under the deafening percussion Ukraine came to mind. Yemen and Syria. (Were they still bombing in Syria?) Gaza or the West Bank again yesterday, which would only get worse with Netanyahu re-elected. A minor lull earlier had proved deceptive; it was powering down still. The Food Panda older guy didn't have the luxury of waiting it out. What to do? his only reply to the circumstance. Chap had spent two minutes securely typing off the plastic bag for his parcel in order to ensure there were no complaints at delivery. Up on the Peninsular the politico kleptocrats who had called the early election were hoping the recurring floods would ensure a low voter turnout, thereby improving their chances of re-election, following which they could install a pliable AG to do their bidding and escape justice. A decent fabric in a scarf would be useful in this if one was suddenly caught out. Just a mere 25m. From the turn-off to the house the eave of the utility building gave good cover clinging to the wall. Five metres of open ground from there, before you made it to the first tree; another five to the second’s canopy, the chiku behind the fence in the corner of the yard. It was the fifteen metres beyond that would blast a fellow to smithereens. Full hour ticked over. Ten minutes more just beginning to ease off slightly. Even this latter would completely saturate. You could not skip over that ground too quickly either, losing your feet was easily done in the wet. Circling round slowly the ricochet off the high ledges in front of the stores at the Haig needed ducking. During the downpours overnight through October—the wettest in the last forty years here—the overflowing gutter outside the bedroom sounded like licking flames. By the calendar the monsoon was still a couple weeks away, though they said it came earlier every year now. 

 

 

                                                                                                                      Geylang Serai, SG 

Pair of Fine Old Joes (updated Jan24)

This afternoon Busker Rahim was sporting a large bandage wound on the crown of his head. At first the thought was a Muslim cap, such as the Busker used to wear while back. Man had taken a slide. Wet underfoot. Yep, that was right, treacherous after rain. The other factor we could ignore. (Rahim was back on the juice.) But where was One-eyed Jack, then? Oh. Working at his taxi rank. That's right, up at JC Complex. There the man indeed was found, dealing with a queue that had gotten outta hand. Opening doors, loading the bags, the authoritative manner held Jack in good stead. Some of the oldies were still getting used to riding in the chariots, managing the drivers, all the ins-and-outs. Man said he would come to the table tonight—Al Azhar, confirmed—for the little something waiting for him. No sign. Perhaps he was on overtime. Maybe tomorrow, Sunday. The crowds usually brought Jack round. Having him in the chair casting over that page of his life while a teh was fetched would be mighty fine. No doubt later he'd roll up the envelope and stuff it in his back pocket, before he had reached the Haig slipping out and swept into the gutter. Still, that five minutes squinting at the sheet with his good eye. My oh my.

 

 

 

Publication news: “Slowcoaches (The Montenegrins)” - Bosphorus Review of Books

 

Hallo everyone

Hope you are all well.

A publication to announce, this one appearing in a lit mag over in old Stamboul / city of Constantine once.

A Montenegrin piece starting at first outside a bookshop in Bruny Street, for you Melbournians, now no longer trading it seemed on a couple of passes last year.

Much maligned the Montenegrins, like so many fine, upstanding others.

Freely available here—

https://bosphorusreview.com/slowcoaches-the-montenegrins

Greetings from Sing again

P

Precious Shut-Eye

Man down for the count this afternoon on the Void beneath Block 11 could only have been Jack, almost certainly no-one else. The only other possible candidate was the gnarled old karung guni formerly wheeling through those parts. That man in fact had not been sighted these four months since the return, like a number of others in the post-Covid lull. Size, colouration, posture and above all the trainers immediately suggested Jack Nasri. From 8 - 9 metres distance with eyes closed, one could not be perfectly sure. That sleeping arrangement with the improvised pillows had not been seen before. Who but J could have found comfort like that? In the section of the Void immediately before a big Indian he looked had rolled up his cardboard double at the head for his own pillowing. Young foreign workers on their lunch breaks often used half-filled 2 litre plastic bottles. In Jack’s case the trainers sufficed and the concrete was no bother. Lately Jack had said he had been feeling useless, confused, struggling with wayward thoughts of wanting to go to one end of Singapore and then the other. The last little while the man had taken up with Busker Rahim, who had slid back to his drinking, a few nights last week Jack surprising belting out some strangely impressive hoarse songs on an karaoke system someone had been bringing along to the Haig outside the bus stop. All the sleepers on the Voids and Jack included when they took some shut-eye chose a place against a pillar or wall. Though no one was likely to tread on a sleeper there, the men always chose that anchorage.

 

 

 

                                                                                                              Geylang Serai, Singapore 

Blazing Truth

Fresh green vegetables flown in seemed to be the added selling point on the side of a van stopped in the traffic on Geylang. Further compelling again was the interesting construction: Truth Is Victory. 

Pretty right in anyone’s book.

Publication news: “Weather Report” — Literary Veganism

 Hello everyone

Hope you are all well into recovery!

Another publication to announce, this in an interesting lit mag up in the States.

A long-term vegetarian, the next step has been a bit hard in my case, though I've been working on reducing dairy a while now. The guys at Literary Veganism are more dedicated and purposeful. 

An environmental piece from Singapore again, that crucible of social experimentation. Freely available here—

https://www.litvegan.net/2022/09/creative-nonfiction-by-pavle-radonic.html

Creative nonfiction by Pavle Radonic

  “Weather Report” (Singapore, 2011-2022)              By Pavle Radonic 1. Armchair Travel Which big cat’s pee smells like buttered popcor...

www.litvegan.net

Just as a curiosity, this is what the editor had to say at the time of acceptance:

“The first time I read "Weather Report" I was like, What? But it's rich and gains on a second and third reading…”

A writer always wants this kind of care in an editor!

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur

P