Bystand (Nov23 update)

published by an online Singaporean lit. mag called Of Zoos, Jan 2024.

You’re actually alternating standing-by like the rest and being pinned to the bed mooning, with some mental equivalent of running down the road flapping your hands and mute screaming like the napalmed Viet girl sixty years ago. (God forgive the comparison.) 

So much was foreordained. 

Bucket loads, street after street some days in endless array. Wherever, every which way you turned. All sides & little variation. Caps, crosses, jade bands, silver bangles, didn’t matter, all were deep in together.   

Win an aspic 5-Day K-Pop Experience. 

Government notices, commercial, motivational, spiritual / religio.  Blurred. 

The karung guni were never idly standing-by. Recall the elderly HK-er or Shanghainese cleaner reported in the paper, delivered to her job in her wellies & apron back of the family Bentley. Say die? Never those ones. (The Yanks would have no chance against them.)   

For some reason there were more of the myrmidons here. Some kinda misadventure had cowed the populace. What had undone so many? The coolie past? Meritocracy rammed down throats? Unbroken sixty-year one-party rule you would have to call political by-standing, big time. 

Dyeing & comb-backs. The heat brought the dopiness, yawning and collapse at the tables. Shop assistants, the gold-shops particularly, epitomised the matter, perhaps especially post-Covid. Like hungry dogs hanging over their empty bowls, Bab would have observed.  

Going by one of the bathroom supplies the other day, you actually swung an arm indoors to scoop some cool. Downplaying the heat was State policy. 

The gap between morning & night teeth-brushing had become razor thin; calendar days peeling like scraps in the wind.  

Hal was wonderful, but there was no flame. For Yani & Rina fortnightly management tided over.  

All the strife from the demented Bhutanese down in Melbourne the last six months didn’t help. More troubling still was the looming sale of Bab’s. It could not be avoided; the hour had dawned, obliteration of the last physical remnants.  

With their pigeon holes, no such attachment applied in Sing. In SG the past clung on in the various observances, the ceremonials & festivals. Foisting the alien tongue had done its darndest—remorseless deracination.  

Pulverising over-work. The lass at Toast Box told of her hours: she would finish at 10. But she had not started at 10. In fact, she had started at 7AM.  

Die, she laughed, in the usual, choking way.  

Die. You die, they mock-moaned at their ordeals.  

Once more the library had become a refuge. Twelve years later a return to Toast Box. The Serangoon KV was far less congenial than Buffalo Road, which the pandemic had killed off. Ice cream now in a traditional Tamil resto. 

Shirt & shoes guys showed ugly the way they ordered their drinks. MENU. Abrupt tone reminding of the caste system. It was abruptly repeated when the waiter couldn’t hear over the hubbub. Only the cashiers wore saris. Queues, plastic cups for water, the uppuma rarely lasting to lunchtime. No doubt the place featured in all the government promo; ( recent years Modi had visited). Less punishing than elsewhere. And the colour helped. Rarely was it countermanded entirely; it usually took more than a single generation. In the inner-city down south colour almost always dressed passable white; the immigration arrangement guaranteed that. Lashes & body art remained rare at KV; even nails. And nothing of multi-coloured & speckled. By the stairs around Tekka, the faded loitering signs hinted at livelier scenes in the past. 

Eyelids, shy smiles beneath baseball caps, look-aways on passing. The hints of the entrapment made it more painful here. Before the purpose-built dorms the Mainland construction workers in Geylang had indicated the richness of the Han past.  

Regular scenes of urban slaughter at tables, benches, the concrete at the Voids. 

In Jogja a sculptor off Sosrowijayan had mounted on a little rooftop the only representation of the heat sighted in near a decade: three tin men in poses of utter exhaustion. 

Lately you were pulling some house of horror faces yourself too, Bud. Very little headway on the serene. The old Buddha continued to defy imitation. How did the artists ever get it in that semblance in the first place? More mysterious than Mona’s smile. Living humans bearing such visage, really? Once or twice you had caught something approaching it, memorably in the old painter in Malacca, up on the Peninsular.  

You would think soulful ease could be carried a few hundred metres from the library to the Box. Awareness Place. Evernew on the other side, with some decent shelves at one end. (Decent tag for old classics.) Passing by there was like a breeze. The portraitist Eric’s art supply opposite was not hobbyists either—artists actually grappling.     

Just so happened we had whip-cracking thunder on arrival at the Box that particular afternoon. Made the gal at the register cringe, hunching her shoulders. Window glass vibrating; sprays drifting in. Magnifique. More refreshing than any of the spa retreats up the road in the Arab Quarter.  

Bucketing rain always released animal spirits. You wondered endlessly how the pours were received by the old folk in the lee of the karst up in the hills with the flocks   

The ancestors were commemorated yesterday with a fast for Orthodox Veliki Petak—Great, rather than Good Friday. More than a little inspired by the example of the Muslims, who carried it all through the whole of the Lent equivalent.   

 

 

                                                                                             Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-23

https://www.ofzoos.com/12.1=pavleradonic2.html

 

                                                                                         

	NB. Between times the third Tin Man had collapsed entirely and was carted into the garden of an adjacent losmen, where he lay in an undignified heap in a garden bed.

Publication news: The Two Alis — Hobart

 Hello all

This will look like something from the Apple Isle down in the deep South. Hobart is actually a US mag, one that was involved in a bit of controversy in US lit circles couple years back after carrying an item on wokeness in the industry.

The piece is a Melbourne - Singapore twist, taking a local identity from the Republic on the equator and serving him up a Gertrude Street, Fitzroy (Melbourne) boxing story from the early '80s; one that matched his own involving Muhammad Ali. It is a work that was first drafted about 10yrs ago, one of those that took a wee while to properly resolve. ☺️

Recently the historical crux here has blown up with a new relevance following our King Charlie's visit Downunder and the reception he received from Senator Lidia Thorpe.

Read all about it, —

https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/the-two-alis

Wishing best all round 

Pavle

———

Zdravo mojima

Jedna malo cudna prica ovde o cuvenog boksera Muhammad Ali. Komplikovano, ali u sredinu negde su nasi raniji emigranti dolje u Melburn.

Hobart je Americki magazin, besplatno na link. Samo eto da znate; vise vas necete moc lomit ljezik znam.

Puno pozdrava

Pavle

—dako se vidimo 25!

                                                                  Ali bin Ismail Hussein

Need to Void

The rough-sleepers & foreign workers on their cardboard sheets, half-filled two litre bottle pillows, the domestic workers picnicking Sundays, will all need to find a patch somewhere under a tree, rear of a mall or laneway, where they will be less of a nuisance. The authorities have returned the Haig Voids to their intended purpose.

Attention! (Jan25)

At the terminal and passing the boutiques the adjustment was always needed for the frequent flyers. First-classers even, if not A-listers, might be sprinkled there too. Directly from the street a little shock was unavoidable.

At the gate it was a different story with the budget travellers, the regular uncles & aunties going down to Jogja to visit relatives. The domestic workers returning to their kampungs made up a good proportion, even an old ahma from the neighbourhood at G. Serai was in the mix.

Blush to tell, you were pretty much the coolest dude in that scrum at Gate C18 that morning. Few could have picked the slightly worn thrift shop Levis shirt and the panama dazzled as ever. The Versace specs were likely lost on that crowd. (Sacred Heart, $30.)

Up in the clouds there had been the usual resort for the shuddering & roar of engines. Ni again featured, even now after her passing. No more would Ni reach out like she did in the dead of night in the railway hotel in Jogja, where the shunting & horns never let up, checking whether there might be anything stirring for her beneath the bedsheet. Making her discovery, the slow, shy, yet resolute steps from there would never fade from memory. Ni had had precious little experience of sleeping nights with a man; on holidays she made sure to get maximum benefit. A lover like Ni was extremely difficult to find, as she herself had warned in advance. That memory returned regularly, but for the buffeting through the clouds it was a constant reflex.

All regulation 130 minutes otherwise, without any disturbance. The pilot’s warning of turbulence in the second half of the flight had turned to nought.

A fumble came at Immigration—the visa on arrival needed prior payment, back at the counter on the right.

Almost done and away, when a chap at Customs, a regular Joe, wanted the attention of the white guy.

Yeah, Bud.

There was some noise coming from a big 4 - 5m screen. Jokowi, the ever popular former President, was leaving behind now a little dynastic route for his heirs.

And, oh! That ugly critter Prabowo, newly in the saddle. Air-brushed ex-Kopassus commander, who they said, like Hitler (at least in the Brit. wartime propaganda), had only one ball. In Prabowo’s case the mishap had occurred in East Timor during the attempted suppression. For a number of years the atrocities had kept Prabowo from being able to enter the States. There were some questions now too over the count in the recent election that were being quickly buried.

Someone back in Sing had mentioned the likely reappearance of Prab’s white steed for the inauguration, possibly a second enlisted if the one from the last failed campaign had buckled under the weight.

National anthem! the patriot by Customs informed after some confusion.

Most of the people in the hall, certainly the uniformed officials, were standing stock still. One of the domestic helpers at the carousel was ignoring, likewise ignorant of the protocol.

Though time was short for making the tren into town, it was wise to follow the observance. With Prabowo ascendant, the military would be playing a larger role in government now.

            A week later Agus was employed for a trip out to the other side of Kali Code, the river. First stop was Gramedia in the hope of the Jak Post,

It was almost the hour on arrival. Once it struck 10, a repeat came of the earlier.

The form ought to have been immediately recognised, even at first hearing.

Same again at the store, this time with one or two of the kids in the Gramedia livery leaning against benches, rather than bolt upright. 

Downstairs Agus had not the faintest. A minute was needed for untangling. 

You don’t mean the Security? Military personnel in the building?… 

Of course Agus and his fellow becak drivers, the street pedlars, the angkringan and other hard scrabble folk, knew not a thing about any of that formal scene. In the three years since the local Regent, the Sultan who doubled as Governor of Yogyakarta, had instituted the 10AM playing of the national anthem, they had not entered any government office, mall, hotel or the like, and it might be many a moon before any of them would do.

Two weeks after landing, shortly after the former General assumed the Presidency, the Parliament in Jakarta followed suit with the anthem at 10 every morning. In the media release announcing, sure enough, wajib sikap sempurna stipulated—perfect posture required.

 

Of Birds & Men

The writer & editor A.O. in his usual stance & presentation. How would one describe it? In the TV comedy skit the bystander who has just witnessed some kind of faux pas, and syncing his reaction with the canned laughter helps the audience along. Pregnant blankness. When he and his friend are allowed a separate table in order to continue their usual Sunday afternoon conference at Al Sarah, A.O. answers, Conference of Birds. The reference needed WikiP and then an addition to the TBR. (Another Sufi poet appealed.) The American painter had caused some confusion.