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