Handy (lateJuly26)

 

Blown away! Big time. How very far back one needed to go for anything of the kind! The gal simply powered on under her own steam, heedlessly; until the last frontier, as the old player / agarwood merchant Mr Ee used to say in only a slightly different context. Golly! When the lady was encouraged to take two hands to the task she immediately accepted, despite the shaky Bahasa conveying. Tangan, always mangled a bit. (G elided). Hand. It kept slipping. The word kept slipping, not the hand / hands here. Once there was attained a respectable dimension the intention had been to have the measure taken in that particular way; more or less as for the height of a horse, in fact. One always recalled the naughty Angel’s tale of his unusually (?) well-hung Javanese caddy, wasn’t he? After that brief confirmation, the lady here settled to using the other hand for the second branch of the jewels, where again a good bit of relish was found. A surprise; quite clearly fixated. Lying side-on, the usual tickling on the other side could not be offered here for some long while, which in fact made no never mind as far as the gal was concerned. Fully occupied & content; blowing off much steam as she went. Safe to say, almost certainly that part of the preamble, that particular tangle, had never been experienced by her before; certainly not previously ventured by herself.  Very likely never knew she had it in her. There was no looking back. Again, as commonly of late, the reaching out had proceeded early in the piece, without any direction or encouragement. Only some little tongue-kissing to that juncture. Onward. A veteran of the cloister simply could not have risen to such heights. (A rare one, perhaps, though they did exist.) Meaningful oohs & ahhs. No understanding the course could only lead to undoing of herself in the process. The little whispered teasers were frankly answered in the affirmative. Lapar? Hungry? Kecil, little, which was no good to anybody; besar, big was what was needed. Long time kosong; empty, zero. Kosong was vacancy too, no good in anyone’s language; emptiness, vacancy needed filling. (The last separation had stretched to an entire month, during which time there had been long vigils at a young great-nephew’s palliative care bed. Possibly not irrelevant.) Dalam; far down, or far into. Shortly, was implied; which was not to prove the case that particular evening. It proved impossible to take the next, regulation step; and on the lady’s side not the slightest inclination. Perfectly happy to dwell right there where she found herself. One for the annals. Full circle without pause. There had been a thought to develop the play with a need to get to the charging phone in the front corner of the room, hold the screen at waist level and turn a little aside. Short intermission stoking the flame. Another time. Absurd at that age; pure fantasy genre. Trumpet’s brutishness would never have won him any such thing, never mind the gold-leaf & chandeliers.

 

 

 

  

Bathing Failing

 

Outbound on Bukit Timah Road – Tin Hill, once upon a time, not so very long ago – the forest bathing was woefully failing. From the window of the Queen Street bus nothing whatever in it. Even where there were 10-15m sections, opening the windows would have produced precisely the same. Tall trees and thick cover of remnant jungle, holding within the stands Brazilian rubber and Malabar pepper, perhaps. Indian & Bangla crews were needed to contain the fecundity. Bathing of the eyes worked a teeny bit maybe, like the old Malays liked to do, refreshing themselves with the passing lovelies. (Cuci mata.) In the heart of the widest sections, those holding the tallest canopies, there must have been some hint of fragrance, softened treading underfoot, hidden birds across the branches – something like the last flicker of your device before the screen went completely dead.

Farewell

 

On the last corner the morning of departure, one of the older Tamils in a fine batik shirt leaning against a car in front of a vacant space. Waiting out custom from drivers turning on the right ahead. Saturday morning breakfasters & shoppers usually promised something better. Greybeard, tired eyes. Still, with his hello could be added the flourish that was the standard of the other regular on the corner before, who happened to be absent here. Have a good day for you. Kinda made you wanna cry, though it was only a shake of the head going onward to Muthu, taking care, in order it wasn’t read in the wrong way by the shopkeeper on the corner and the others opposite.

Stray

 

There had been no rain the last couple hours, the lad at Nilla confirmed, only this morning. In the afternoon the canal had been shallow and dirty as usual, yet at dusk a good level of water had risen, drawing a number of people to the railing. The girl on Wong Ah Fook was absent. The night before she had sprung out of her doorway after a passing, shy but interested young fellow. (Confession: shamefully, pitifully, Bahasa numbering has continued to confuse even a decade later in the Malay world. The multiples were still elusive—tens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands & millions in the case of Indo Rupiah. It was wilful laziness. An aide-memoire was provided by this girl.) The lad had come past and no doubt given her a quick once-over. Casual & brief as it had been, walking on by as he did, the lass immediately caught the interest. Hard to get around her like that. Smilingly, she called out after him, Lima ribu!… Ah! Yes! Indeed. Lima was five; ribu the multiplier x tens. (RM50 — about sixteen Sing dollars.)  Emergency love (passé the great Garcia M.) was affordable in ML.) Half a minute later crossing the bridge, sure enough the sweet had come up to the shutters further along, where the lad had stopped. Looked no-go on this occasion; anything less than fifty was not on. (For a White of course, the figure would have doubled, if not x 3.) Later in the evening the trannies further up by the first lane emerged. It would not be out of the question that for those add-ons the price may have been even a wee higher again. Odd how long it had taken the water to come down from upcountry. During brekkie the downpour had lasted under 20mins. For the second day the shutters were down on the Tamil provisions store around from the hotel, where the morning newspaper was bought. That was unusual. Did it mean the little cat there would go hungry? It appeared not. The couple earlier passes morning & afternoon had found it by the stairs by the back lane. Instead, tonight, there it was atop a more comfortable bed. Cardboard had value for many here—for emergency shields from the rain, to soften seating and more so again for the rough sleepers on hard surfaces. With the Tamils absent, some neighbour there had thought of the cat, providing both bedding & food too likely. Struggle town there in JB, stoic endurance, often good cheer. Like the red wheelbarrow, much depended on that little, thin, stray grey on Jl. Siu Nam. Rarely did any passerby fail to give it some kind of acknowledgement, if not sweetness. The core of the heartening, the source of the beneficence here was all with the stray, rather than the other way round.

 

 

                                                                                                                 Johor Bahru, ML

The Words Faire Magazine upcoming

The upcoming edition of  The Words Faire Magazine will include a short-short of mine, titled “Woebegone,” another Sing piece from the Malay Muslim quarter there.

The editor suggests some pre-publicity.

https://1drv.ms/i/c/99345b15b837c0f9/IQBqaLrgLZBMQKY6BrVznhToAZnbUXy5nyUFvPqrN4i6-K0?e=aec5XA

Onward

PR

Rush On Rushmore 4th July

Late news: seems last week on the White House lawn one of the UFC fighters knew how to boost his standing. During the course he had shouted that Obama’s Michele was a man... Canny showman.

On the big day about to dawn over there preparations are in place for a large gathering beneath Mount Rushmore, where the President & his supporters are pushing for an addition to the series. Forecast is for 107F / 41C. Perhaps despite the A/C and the fans, the unthinkable could possibly occur without a shot being fired. (Not wishing ill on anybody.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

G-Friend (Shared)

  

 

 

The Tamil street wastrels on the corner back there had sourced themselves a fine, slim manikin from one of the stores over toward the river, the foul, stagnant channel. Presumably it had been discarded; these were not rowdy, wild kinda guys. Once propped steady against the wall at their nook the blouse of the babe was brought down to modestly cover her chest. A little trophy seized; the lads’ tenderness and feeling had not been stripped from them by the dirty, ragged street. Mornings the guys took up positions on that wide corner like the cowboys of old on a stake-out, 5-6 of them ready for action. Far too many here for purpose, but that was no never mind. Others took up positions further down toward the river. Their operation worked a large car-parking area, where the regularity suggested reliable returns were involved. Mornings greetings were always offered in the passes, warm and bright greetings that rather embarrassed a chap who could not quite return in kind, who had turned into that elegant, enviable gentleman / Boss living the life. (The new white panama with the black ribbon was a glory.)  Have a good day for you, one little guy has thrice now offered over the single week. A younger on the other side toward Muthu showed his gleaming pearlers on every occasion. (Hiding the gaping dentistry now includes even the street people.) No sign of unruliness among these men, nor any sign through the day of the juice – their thirsts were slaked at night. Usually one or two of them were stretched out on their cardboard at a recessed entryway against one of the shuttered shops. Often there was not even that cushioning and awkward postures could be maintained for 2-3 hours. Landlords in that quarter were awaiting their chance with the Mainland Chinese investment a stone’s throw away toward the water, the Sing towers directly opposite. In the evenings the lads gathered the blue notes from the drivers they had helped with the parking and shared what toddy could be afforded from the traders on Ah Fook, over the bridge. The large police HQ sat just the other side of their block by the river, the officers there never called upon at the other end. The lads do no one any harm.                                                                          

 

 

                                                                                                                            Johor Bahru, ML