Rain Drops
Keep Fallin’
On
My
Head
Followed by,
What the World —
Needs Now
Mid-afternoon Orchard Kinokuniya.
For the notation the store pen was deployed.
There had been rain in the morning and showers later, one distinct grenade of refreshing humus rising from the ground somewhere along the way. It may have been through the Haig carpark beneath a tree up on one of the islands, when the path at the end was taken in order to avoid another pass of the funeral party of Hadramis at Block 11. Daunting that gathering; almost as bad as if they had been Palestinians.
In the case of the spattering of drops in the store the flesh of the brain seemed more exposed.
Before being able to make an exit, in the queue by the cashier, the original, unremastered What’s New, Pussy Cat? started up after a pause.
Wow…..Wow-Wow…..Wow, wow.
There was a hidden speaker near-by.
Stretching credulity one perfectly well understands. Entirely understandable. Nevertheless, such was the musical offering in close sequence that afternoon over the lazy heads of perhaps 8-10 dozen book-lovers absorbing without any noticeable twitch or shudder.
In the standard rendition of the first the vocalist was unknown. Second was the Burt Bacharach and last the inimitable Tom, with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and frilly panties raining down from all sides.
Nada. Not a flicker. Absorbed like candy, sweetmeats or sweet perfume.
And that was not the end of it either. More followed.
There was delay in the queue with a lapsed Members’ Card at the counter, lady purchasing a stack of unidentifiable colourful titles, children’s series possibly.
The Way We Die Now. And immediately adjacent in some kinda implicit pairing, When Breath Becomes Air. Face out top shelf of the Highlights stand that made a large island in the passage.
Bodilo oci, the Serbs say; pricking the eyeballs.
No doubt there was some good reason between the covers in the case of the books.
2.
This afternoon some lingering beneath a speaker in the ceiling of the stationery department at Kino. It had taken a while locating with the volume turned down and the voice riding the hubbub. At first the sound seemed to be coming from a hidden recess in the ceiling; some light emitted from beyond the little ledge above the notebook stand there too. Later a second speaker in the same aisle was found turned off. Thought had been after the KV lunch and print at Peace Centre, a quick reconnoiter for a volume of old Tu Fu—sometimes confusingly rendered as Du Fu, the poor girl at the info desk needed to be informed. There was nothing of David Hinton’s translations; that had been established couple weeks before. Only his Analects and I Ching, both previously purchased. Some hope that the largest bookstore of English holdings, at least in SE Asia, might turn up the Tang star. TuF had been rendered by a couple of previous notables—fair chance you might have thought in Sin’pore, steady sales ticking over. Kinokuniya had been downsized few years before, usual victims involved. If you were after motivational, entrepreneurial, investment gurus, biz management & strategy, conservative histories, mysteries, colouring-in books, comics, celebrity, cook books, photography, design, more photography & design, you had come to the right place, all cards accepted at the register. The great helmsman LKY’s shelves alone could not have been sent up in smoke with less than three molotovs, not a chance, forget it. Man was hardly dead, only symbolically & figuratively. (The feud between the PM and his younger sister & bro over accusations of political exploitation in the use of the father of the nation’s passing had been hosed down of late, all hush-hush in-family.) They had stocked Tu Fu once upon a time; sold out now, lass conveyed. She could not be quizzed on the history—it was not possible to punish innocents for the sins of the elders. No. Too bad. Good selection of gel pens in stationery, including 0.8s at $3.10, comparable to ArtFriend and Popular. On the shelves there among all the inferior biros and all the soft pastel colour varieties, in the midst of parents with their children, out of thin air, one was suddenly hallowed by Pavarotti early signatures. First, like a TV flowering of a orchid hidden in the jungle, O Sole Mio’s rhythmic swelling. It was followed immediately after by Ritorno a Soriento. Shiver one on top of the other. Brrrh! Brrrh! Here was a chance to show the locals one’s cultivated taste, almost word for word with the big man and phrasing perfect. The little jail-bait schoolgirl’s mum might have had entirely the wrong idea. Strange in the Asian (more or less) locale, receiving those melodies, those exhalations from the great bellows. The fact the maestro had been dead all these years now perhaps added feeling, gone the way of Caruso, Lanza, Bjorling; &etc. That short stretch of water from the bays of Boka over to Bari, down to Brindisi, Sicily and up on the other side, Napoli. They could have Sorrento, skip that joint. Thirty-five years ago there had been no malls in Napoli; in the old town near the water there would be none now. Minimum of ornamental trees and shrubs. The mafia there would be a sight better than the entrenched tropical kind that could not be ousted from the political stage for the next hundred years. There was almost as much street prostitution in Napoli as Geylang; no fool would pay for indoor theatre. Fascinating. Fourteen or sixteen hours away for little over a grand. With the usual shuttering for the morning during Ramadan, it had been Starbs for the early cafe & scribble. As the customers piled into the OneKM outlet nearing lunchtime, the volume had gone up on the pitter-patter remastered golden oldies & prairie ballads. That flustering and churning in the guts had something to do with the effect a few hours later of big Lucy standing tall.
Kinokuniya, Singapore
