Obit

It stayed in the mind pinching & nagging, the kinda thing that all too often happens to writers, catching them unawares, while minding their own business. Really, there was no call to stick your nose in there, especially such sensitive matters. This though did stick fast, through the latter part of morning and again on the bus getting out for lunch. Darn thing. Coming on so much so in fact that one was actually forced to go back in the evening to buy another copy of the newspaper. The morning paper was always given away afterward to one of the uncles or aunties interested to flip through the pages; even wrapping paper was better than junking in the recycle bin. (The suspicion was all refuse was actually burnt in the Republic. The mess of junk people threw into those blue bins made anything else impossible, even were there a will.) One certainly didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, nor more importantly the grief-stricken living. But, by golly! What the heck was that? At bottom very much an important question. An Obit 4 inches x 6. When photos of the departed accompanied text in the English language newspaper the pics were invariably super flattering. Flattering shots of 70year olds, 90year olds the same. The incidence seemed to be more common on these shores. One only flicked the pages of course at the tail end of the morning ritual. All of the paper was dealt with summarily, but esp. Biz, Obit, Sport & Life. (One must say, the paper in question did hold quite compelling pieces occasionally, not all of them syndicated. A psychiatrist who had been head of the local Institute at one time was truly first rate.) The particular smiling deceased here had stood herself at the foot of a curving wooden balustrade, perhaps 10-15 years before her demise. Possibly she had been a handsome woman in her pomp; it was difficult to tell. Lustrous dye, high heels. Silver bracelet and good trim. But it was the dress that was the thing. Taste, aesthetic judgement was not evenly distributed at the creation, of course. One versed in fashion could describe the article more satisfactorily. Rich baby pink the first thing, classic Barbie tone. A mermaid effect was created with ballooned shoulders and tightening at the hip, where a large, flowering rose at the midriff shed large petals along the trunk and down to the ankles. One leg swung over the other and the foot mounted achieved the inverted cone. The colour accent continued through hair, lippy, fingers & toes. It was only the hands that gave away the age. There must have been a long zip behind; in front the dress seemed pasted on. In any circumstances highly overblown and in this particular usage especially. (Galas at the upscale clubs, weddings & the like, perhaps could be imagined.) The rhyming stanzas attached confirmed Christianity, hopes of reunion, the higher world & eternal life. Even in the case of the prosperity gospel, such a presentation seemed problematic. That attire could not have been chosen for the casket; it was difficult to conceive such a thing. And this was certainly not to say the heart of gold beneath the fabric could be questioned. Only, the journey, the life passage—stringing the dots together toward the final, earthly outcome and the aspiration… One was not to judge. The role of the scribe was often disagreeable, like that of the messenger. Only a polite question raised here, finally, centring on this class, this culture & society that could produced dissonance of that sort. (Not at issue this or that individual case.)

 

Publication news: Soaring - Airplane Reading

Another air travel piece of mine has just been published by the guys at Airplane Reading, who share a serious interest in the subject matter.

A short-short again (400 words), freely available on the site here, —

https://airplanereading.org/story/579/soaring

All best

PR

Chrysalis 22_May26 - 350

 

 

 Not every single guy would react like that, but there was no doubt about it, give this one particular chap a bakery, one raising crisp, fresh loaf on site, good variety and some pride in product; add pastries, cakes, pies, croissants, tidbits, &etc, all of the same high standard, what you automatically found was all the girls therein—for this one particular, not so very special kinda guy—all the girls serving there suddenly, as if by magic, appeared the sweetest, most scrumptious and completely delectable sorts imaginable. Transformed into lovey-dovey, heart-piercing-melting-confounding desirables. As if the weirdest spell had been cast. Put same out on the street, on a bus, at a bar, passing beneath an umbrella, going out on the town, nothing whatever like effect, according to this particular guy. It was something of the gingerbread house effect that had been evoked in the schoolroom couple generations past, that vividness & overpowering compulsion. Similar was found at markets, fruit stalls, delicatessens, occasionally behind chemist counters, for this particular guy. (Nurses of course, but that was common.) Not so much cafe baristas, waitresses, checkout chicks & shopgirls. Not evident in kitchens and less so again offices and even dance halls & concerts. Decidedly much less so, at least for this certain kinda guy, with his own curious kinda wiring. The gym might have been supposed, yoga, library, lecture hall, cooking classes, whatnot. Mistakenly. Broccoli, carrot, even turnips, potato & onion displays could better set the scene and serve the purpose. Clothing stores another no-no; carefully lit bookshops & galleries unpropitious, even where compelling portraits & still lives graced the walls. (A painter friend of his, excellent and committed female artist, had taken offence at the account of a gallery visit once, where a patron there had been described as a far greater and more captivating work than anything on the walls.) This odd connoisseur wondered about porn & fashion victims. Were his own reactions so very rare? Surely there were others similarly constituted, the chap always continued with his point, like a dog at a bone.

 

 

                         Candied Bakery,  

Spotswood, Melbourne

 

 

Another Thing of Feathers

 

The dead pigeon yesterday going along Crane Road to meet Kieran startled, a vivid white full-breast, head and open eye turned inward to the pavement, against the grey of the steel utility box standing 1.1-2m high. Right there suddenly touching distance, the delicate texture of its feathers apparent in the pass. The numerous dead on the pavements of the last few weeks had been gotten by with far less sting. Around the middle of April, after a preparatory media campaign, the culling of the crows by the shooters had been resumed, with the poisoning of the pigeons ongoing. 

The Honeyeater May26

You read about these and every day they stared you in the face, like the ones attached to the gal’s bag (though even those were oversized); a giant brown honey-eater like this though on the loose, never previously. Not at the library, not the buses or at the eateries. A child could not have managed that bulk, younger teen would struggle. Local or Mainland Chinese, 20 possibly. (There was the same trouble over there of course.) Were this a paying venue, a question might have arisen; on an aeroplane certainly there would have been. This Teddy was not going to fit under the seat in front, and carry-on the question of cruelty arose. 6 - 7 minutes the girl sat with it nestled in her lap, staring a little before her; nothing to suggest any trouble. iPad raised on its stand, 1.5 litre ceramic bottle. When she rose to move off, getting around the far corner of the shelves, the assumption was that the street, the trains & malls was where the serious difficulty lay. 10 - 15 seconds later, however, here she was returned to collect him, before setting off again. Soon pair returned. Otherwise, as far as one could tell, on the surface and by all indicators, a young lass perfectly settled. At the table working steadily. Tall, slim; good quality cushioned phones (which no doubt aided the cause). A few minutes more Teddy was lifted higher against her chest, rather a handsome head over her shoulder, where the length of arm became apparent. Surprisingly long; the nails retracted. Proportions here were in fact probably correct. Shuffling the papers was easily managed with the Furry resting between. There were no school-kids at the tables, all 19 & 20 year-old peers; a good number of both genders carried the miniatures on their bags & pencil cases. In a cold climate the whole thing would have been more fitting, though bearing in mind a significant minority here did live the complete A/C bubble. Bending to write with a pen, now her own chin fell onto Teddy’s neck. Half hour steadily progressing the task, without too much effort. White-out the bear, return him to his mountain-side habitat, no indication of the slightest sort. No doubt the forerunners all the way back to earliest beddy-byes sat patched on the upper shelf in the wardrobe at home. A hint might have been given by a glimpse of a parent, or even sibling. Later only a couple of eyes from passersby; most of the youngsters here had seen the like often enough.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d4_pBwSu6_L-7hFkkTCxp6bg

 

 

NB. Zoran’s Honeyeater video from early Spring in the ancestral village.

 

 

On the Job

 

Making A Clean Difference even rocking from side to side like that, as if in some humorous skit for the former stage. The right hand trailed one of the larger payung with flat end that commonly doubled as a walking-stick. Man might have seen the weather forecast for afternoon showers the rest of April. Two front teeth left a gap in the smiling pass by the front of the table. Go back... Never sighted previously, yet the man wants you to know his intentions at that hour, a few minutes short 8PM. (Surely his shift was not the 12hr stretch on broom & pan.) Mid- late-70s if not fetched beyond, though in all respects the gap seemed more like 2 - 3 decades. (It remained impossible to comprehend how far it was you yourself had gone off now.) Hopefully there was a helpmate of some description waiting at home with a welcoming plate of food; the short sit at Saddam could not have allowed more than a teh. Almost always this folk invited you into their world—there were no walls in their theatre of the everyday. Aged rheumy eyes like his would not distinguish skin tone and a batik top only scrambled impressions. Of course the familiars always offered greetings of some kind, but strange whites too could not be summarily dismissed. Out of the blue sometimes telling life episodes emerged too that almost wrote themselves into the annals.

 

 

 

Bashtik (April26)

 

 

Three or four days after the festival we hiked up to the village. It had been 28 years since the last time we had gone up together. We hiked casually along the new roadway about 3 hours, with bread & cheese in our kit. The descent on the Morinj side four days later would take 2½ hours, the rain that arrived making the descent quite treacherous. Up behind our house a massif named Bashtik stood 1500m above sea level—about 600m above the village itself. With age encroaching, of course, the climb was unlikely ever to be repeated. From the peak the prospect buffeted the brain, like the sudden wind did the body, knees ready to buckle and an odd fear of being lifted from the ground. On a clear day the Italian coast might be visible, they said. The old folk said when the wind was right the bells at San Pietro could be heard from the peak of Bashtik. Towns along the water were laid out as if na dlan, on the palm of the hand. Surprisingly, the village itself was completely out of view; instead the airport at Tivat uncannily appeared from the North. Wild swine was common now up at the heights. A few years previous a wolf had wrestled a rifle from one of our villagers, leaving tooth-marks on the barrel for proof. With the assistance of the vet from town, earlier at this man’s house we helped pull a calf from a cow. Thankfully, the largest animal sighted on Bashtik had been a mouse on the forest floor. The rocky folds of the land and then the levitation on the summit would knock in the brain like the good sense the schoolteachers of old had threatened.

 

 

 

                    Boka Kotorska, Montenegro

‘09 / April ‘26