Cigarettes & Running

 

Old rocker (your junior) by Lt Collins bouncing on his heels, cowboy hat, bristle, fair look-a-like of Ukrainian Vlad, entertaining himself first of all.

— I killed desire with cigarettes…

Might be a standard of the repertoire, fair chance. We all know what he means, of course.

In his late-20s the painter Si Brisbane had explained that his running provided a means of coping with sexual frustration.

Cupid

No luck with the Chinese lovely reappearing at Brun's yesterday. Instant ardour; of the well-known form. All it took on this occasion was the courtesy returned collecting the tray on the table. When she had first arrived with her party she had been offered a spare chair without asking—she had hesitated. Pleased by it, evidently more than she showed. The chap in-between at his table seeing the situation offered his own spare too. Problem being there was a serving tray on it with a saucer. Put it there, partner. It's fine… There was room on the edge of our table. Girl must have noticed. A quart hour/20mins later when she went indoors for something with her own tray the encumbrance was collected at the same time. That was all it took; an instant. Ah!… Only thanks able to be offered up in the suddenness. Smiles raised once or twice later in passing again; with only befuddlement the other side. (Had she hoped for something?) After the mind was made up for a form of words, there came no further opportunity. She may have been a tourist who would not appear a second time.

Gallipoli (ANZAC Day 2024)

 

The Hari Krishna strangely closed today; supper would need to be taken elsewhere. On Swanston they hadn’t wanted to intrude on proceedings. Numerous of their nationals had of course been herded to the front lines, both wars. The well-known recourse all over. Serving lunch Faisal had quipped, You didn’t go to the march?… With the butchers? Man had gone on to suggest the Brits had been displacing Palestinians from their territories from way back. It long story, Faisal added. Perhaps the finer detail was not quite right; indoors Faisal was challenged later. The day before the PM had been up in Papua walking the track, with the hosting PM (seeking aid) in his golf shoes—an enthusiast, the latter. Our man was shod in sensible hiking boots. 15km on well-defined track now. Stories on the heroism as usual in the lead up, retailed in the newspaper by the local amateur historians.

Free To Look

 

— Excuse me. I don’t want to be rude in any way. Would you have any change, please?

         How possibly to rebuff such petition when you did have the desired in your pocket? A creased and worn old girl like her.

         When a brass dollar was brought up with the silver 50c, it needed to be both.

         A chap on Swanston sitting against a shop window near the library kept bare-chested these wintry days & nights too. In his late-40s or 50s, thin, yellowed folds of flesh over his midriff. One arm had been amputated right the way up by his shoulder, where the nub had the flesh bundled together and roughly sewn. A blinker, sheepish, something of the shy canine suggested.

         One could bypass such figures with minor wincing, like footage of devastation on the screen. Rather more easily too when the eyes were never met.

Fred’s Little Red Books

 

The three weeks Fred had been away certainly told on his shelves in Carlisle Street. Stacked with product lately, a good number of thick spines in soft pastel colours. Sight for sore eyes striking the lad at another thrift shop, in Prahran. Come Saturday he would be back on duty sorting, the man promised. Dancing a little in the tight space between the shelves on Chapel Street; understandable if he had felt somewhat bushwhacked. We had spoken once before when Fred was found in back of Carlisle and he could be thanked for the marvellous find of Baz Dickens’s Unparalleled Sorrow. (Never a whisper on that volume in all these many, many years.) Dancing and dodging. In his colourful leggings & top, baseball cap pulled low. The usual dental at this age noticed on first meeting, despite the man’s ducking on that occasion too. A true featherweight. Was he still using, at that age? The find of the little red book 5”x 3.5" right there on Chapel could be shared with Fred, fair chance. And so it did prove. Fred’s initial guess was The Little Red Schoolbook, but he had both on his shelves at home, adjacent it might have been. That item had been banned for sale here, taken down even from newsagents’ shelves, Fred reported. Real tuition for school-kids, sex & everything else, in language the kids could understand—fucking, cocks in cunts, &etc, Fred further reported. Yeah, that was right. Must have been late-60s. Fred might in fact have been a couple years older; impossible to judge properly. A photograph! Later the thought like a twanging arrow in the brain. It was only ever worth attempting the impossible in portraits.

Gavrilo P. April 2024

 

Sixteen, not fifteen, now reported the young attacker of the Assyrian Bishop in Sydney. Last 24-48 hours an intention to check how old was Gav Princip at the time of Ferdinand's assassination. Turned out twenty; he was executed four years later. And how much evidence did the young Gavrilo have of Austro-Hungar atrocities against the Serbs through his young adulthood? On his way to introduce his new wife to the family up in the village at Boka, circa 1938, Uncle Jovo, a gendarme commander in the Lika, went to visit the monument to Gavrilo in Sarajevo.

Publication news: Soekarno-Hatta Hanging

 Hello all

Another Aero publication of mine has just appeared, again from a while back - 2019, and again Airplane Reading in the States, edited by a long-time editor of New Orleans Review.

Under 500 words, centred on the international hub in Jakarta — highly swanky / soulless now.

All best to all

Pavle

https://airplanereading.org/story/5061/soekarno-hatta-hanging

Soekarno-Hatta Hanging Touch over 35mins on clear, open freeways in Jakarta on a Saturday; as soon as we cleared Thamrin City it was a breeze. As a consequence there would be a 4 hour wait at the airport. Newspaper nowhere to be found for love or money, what was worse; so said the first ass... airplanereading.org

Passing Muster

Numerous pretty young Asians footing along the upper end of Swanston near the library, with the peaks of their caps screening themselves on the nearer approach. By these means they managed to escape the more searing and unsettling examinations of their beauty. One among them this afternoon bore the clear sign of the ordeal on her crown, white upper case semaphoring:

    STOP
ANXIETY