Biblioteka - Skopje (April26)

Chap downstairs directed up at the Municipal Library beside the Architecture U, in Skopje. At the counter on the first floor a younger woman took the passport; took 5-6 minutes for the necessaries, before the card was issued. Down again, chap again sliding his perspex. The card was handed over, details entered in a ledger with the yellow, blue topped BIC we had used in school. Numbered tag, plastic-sealed 37, a thin keyring attached. With that the chap came around into the hall, now much taller than in the chair. Two gaps in his upper incisors either side failed to tarnish his confidence. Some attempted jocularity fell flat, only the last venture about the availability of rakija raising a smile. The escort showed the door of a room diagonally opposite (there were three or four others), behind which small laminate tables were arranged in rows like in the crowded schoolrooms of the ’60s. A good sprinkling of quiet young students scattered, couple seniors and females predominating. No. 37 sat pretty well slap-bang marooned in that flotilla, rickety and less than auspicious. Tall leafy trees outside the window, the quiet and calm that reigned only disturbed by the noisy door in & out. Monthly MKD100 / AU$1:20 couldn’t be argued. The assigned desk was for the duration, but we would soon see about that, stiff soldiery posture out there, or no.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfathomable (published by Citron Rev)

Sitting by the radio during the war must have been something similar, premier dan here in his pressers a kind of churchill delivering the somber news while attempting to give some hope. Many months now routinely recording the daily totals of infections, tests conducted, ICUs & ventilators. Deaths have been rare here at least, a number of months ago the last, though the age cohort was getting younger. Hiroshima Day passed without a single mention of any kind; years now it had been falling away. Finally this morning the Progressive carried a feature. A couple of days ago a young magpie up above the medical centre opposite the station was flinging itself against the dark glass of the windows on the upper storey. Paused at the gates with the trains, it was watched repeatedly launching from the top of the balcony rail again and again into the reflected trees and sky. Not a bad metaphor right now. A few mornings ago a sudden fevered phantasmagloria resulted in a spurt which reached onto the middle of the chest and the rolled up tee. How long it had been for anything remotely comparable; fitting in the season of record-breaking gold in Tokyo. Vashti up in Sing used to laughingly remark on the filling of the cup on withdrawals; memorably, the gal had once swiped her finger over the bellybutton and licked clean. It was 2kms to the river; down to the point a little over the 5k limit. The cop shop that sat a few hundred metres before was passed every day on the circuit. That last stretch around the point and behind the football ground that completed the arc needed to be taken for the sunlit container ships and tankers. Since our little ceremony at the fishing village a stop there was needed, the bike stood against the concrete mound and a seat taken on the weathered old bench. There were only ever a few pelicans now in the afternoons, more gulls and occasional ducks. For some reason the swans rarely ventured there, keeping further up the creek and out along the mangroves toward the beach. Over fifty years ago the group of huts had been stumbled upon after a walk down Maddocks Road from Chika Matija and Teta Vukica’s rented place. Childless and aged, those two oldies hadn’t known how to host a young boy, leaving him to wander off over the rail-line and down to the water. A few years before we had been taken in our boarder Domenic’s jeep over to the beach for an outing; prior to that there had never been any hint of our proximity to the waterfront. Split from his wife and son, Dom had felt pity for us deprived orphans always corralled at home. The walk along the pier that day had produced secret tremor because of Bab’s shocking tears not long before at news of the death of her father. The poor woman had had no one better with whom to share her grief than her young son. Relentless waves lapping under our feet below the pier stretched out into wide, immeasurable distance, the volume of water holding the dome above difficult to comprehend. The visit to Williamstown with Domenic gave some sense of the larger world; gave bearings too for Grandfather Rade’s fate. At that age sitting at the kitchen table with the Par Avion red & blue checked envelope mother held in hand, Grandad’s throwing himself off the pier over the other side of the world was not conveyed. That information would come many years later, and not from Bab herself. The winter greatcoat, the bloated body fished out, the tears of the other daughter over there, in front of whose house that pier sat. Earlier the old man, having recently become incontinent and treated roughly by his daughter-in-law, had sought a place to stay with the third sister up on the hill, where the upper storey windows had been his initial intention, they surmised afterward. The fishing village was protected from the waves by a spit of land and another couple of barriers that had been erected, large tractor tyres laid in a row and a couple of concrete bulwarks. Enough protection was there to keep the worst of those fathomless depths and the battering tide at bay. We had spread Al’s ashes from the little dock a few weeks before, where the ripples went over all the way to the wide horizon and further back in memory. 

 

 

                                                                                                                                  Melbourne

NB. Published by Citron Review, March 2022

https://citronreview.com/2022/03/21/unfathomable/

Coming Through Slaughter

 

How many of these Africans are refugees here? Like in Melbourne, few look it. Sub-Continental labourers likewise. The first newsreports from many years ago, which often featured Eritreans, ought have prepared; yet against geography, their presence seemed more odd than in Australia. Is it the great strength of the survivor after the ordeal? Dauntlessness, unable to be intimidated, come what may? Sub-Continental foreign workers in Singapore carried themselves similarly.

Monastiraki, Athens

Mod. Malaise (April26)

  

Old Chinaman at the Lavender stop in a not-so-new green tee with mainly large Chinese characters. Too many, far too many you would have thought for a translation of the English at his waist:

PROHIBIT ANXIETY

Perhaps the modern illness needed quite a bit of the old form to put properly.

Difficult task fully and immediately conceded by the man. And more strong agreement again at the suggestion that such a feat could possibly be pulled off precisely here in this Republic. A Fine City, as other ambulant billboard tees routinely mocked.

Definitely. Definitely.

The bus was too quick for further.

The Albino (July25)

 

Late afternoon on Jalan Sultan the Chinese albino had it about right—a world of horror and nothing else, unable to be endured. Eyes clenched tight, shielding arm raised high and the other feeling his way along the shopfronts. It was torture right enough, the man likely knowing only the half of it. The rain had come down almost without cease the last 48 hours, puffer jacket needed against the aircon in the library and Helen’s big payung, which even so was unable to protect the cuffs of the trousers. There was hardly a squeak of light, yet the poor man was dreadfully assailed. One hundred the number of casualties in the renewed bombing in Gaza according to initial reports, climbing in increments into the 2- 3- & 400s. Zainuddin forwarded a member of the Irish Parliament it must have been, crying out against the inhumanity. For those who did not know such devastations from their own sources, their own race memory, the newreports & photos could be stomached for many, many months more. Years in fact.

Publication news: Attention! - Airplane Reading

 

Hallo all

Another short of mine has just been published in the States, delivering again some aerophobia, with couple other matters intermixed.

Free on the site here—

https://airplanereading.org/story/5131/attention

All best

Pavle

Slovenian Slalom (Melania) - published by Action, Spectacle Winter 2026

 

Robot wending its way through the tables, by the blue-striped FT on the bench. Couple patrons obliged bringing their cups & plates. Nadia had long been boycotting Starbs, Amazon & the others, she had revealed a few days before. For a minute it seemed paper was unavoidable; in fact if you asked specially, glass was provided. (There may have been a net thing about germs after machine-washing.) Mr T. T. tutup again and Sarah’s tea counter only opened at noon. OneKM’s outlet was running their golden oldies and prairie ballads on high rotation; far better the neat and shiny eager beaver grandsons & -daughters of coolies at PLQ. $6.80 small. (Sing had the highest McDs per capita on the planet, and Starbs could not be far behind.) Entirely other world. G. Serai was a 6-7min walk, during Ramadan all mosque-mouse quiet. The older FT in blue was the only other white in attendance... No. A young IT in track pants was working from home. (Alone in the condo was even more crushing than these generic chains.) Couple gleaming stainless belt-buckles sported by the mid-30s prematurely aged Chinese biz guys. Oh! And another older FT too, neat casual chosen by his wife. Closing 9. Every last one of the tables was shortly to be filled and many late arrivals would be forced to turn on their heels disappointed. The Robot delivered to the lady at the bar, where there was beer on tap & cocktails, presumably. Blog hammer continuing apace, 19½ dozen LLM scrapes yesterday, there was little doubt. Not productive of SG to take a stronger stance against Israel, according to the usefully Muslim Assistant FM on CNA, modest, quiet chap who occasionally patronised Sarah with his wife. The little robot faintly reminiscent of Casper the Ghost had its battery fully charged overnight. Kept up indefatigably. After slipping from notice for a few minutes, there it was again like a proper apparition. There came a couple hesitant, neutral glances in its direction from one or two patrons, with the resulting blankness. This was not exactly a friendly ghost. On first noticing the model a number of weeks previously at Bras Basah, the lack of crafting came as something of a surprise. Cartoon marketing was ubiquitous in the Republic, both commercial & government forms. We had entered the Cartoon age of course. Many of the figures in the urban spaces were used for photographic props. On it went over the floor, breathing down the neck more or less. The sense of a pickpocket, or in the current climate, assassin. It was only the CCTV that restrained. Little accidental knocks in passing once or twice was the most that could be ventured. The strength of Ned Ludd’s righteous arm needed to be kept in check. The China boys were the exception; all the other patrons sitting solitary. Not getting much lovin’ any of them, by the looks. (Plummeting birth rates continued, no one could explain it in the safe & clean island haven.) If the heavy lashes moseying up was trying her luck with an old Foreign Talent, she was definitely overplaying her cards, like greenhorn Zelensky. Poor sweet. The persiflage was always wafer thin here and nervously carried before the eyes of the whites particularly. Hegarty with the tattoos beneath his suits siding with China, N. Korea and someone else at the UN on the real aggressor over there. 30-40 casualties overnight at the Ukraine military training ground; ninety injured—and Mr T. the only pollie whose heart was bleeding at the loss of life. (Biden would fight to the last Ukrainian.) In the afternoon hitting BBC highlights of the speech to both Houses, was it? A long lead time was needed before the man finally emerged. Cameras panning the crowd. Vance & Mel. Panning. Finally, finally, the blue suit slowly making its way to the podium, like an old punch drunk prize-fighter. Shakes, hugs, pats, air kisses. In the opening acknowledgments the First Lady was given her dues. Clap-clap-clap. Clap-clap-clapping some more. The post-box slot had never been noticed previously. That was some helluva trap; Don’s own duck bill couldn’t compare. As the lady gathered the accolades, her eye-liner gleamed like mercury. Really great shape. Dieting and anxiety had worked a treat. Were there another global leader like her husband she would have received compliments; if the wife wasn’t around, cocktails offered in his room. Left / Right like a metronome. Nothing like it. Seen nothing like it. Spectacular. The short six weeks had surpassed all previous records in the history of the Republic. Mega MAGA. Minor heckling. Placards. Some guy ejected. (In the Serbian parliament the day before smoke bombs had been discharged by the Opposition.) Resident 18-19 years now, was she? (While in labour at the hospital he had had it off with the intended babysitter? Or was that another guy on Epstein’s list?) Folks fast-tracked for Green Cards. Great people; good, decent. The right colour. (Which was the senior again, son-in-law, or the father?) The lady must cast back regularly to the early years doin’ the rounds, putting out in the big city, ironing her dresses. The big moment; her lucky break. Musta handled it just right.

 

                                                                                                   Singapore 2011-25

 

 

 

NB. Melania’s statue in her hometown has gone missing; some anarchists suspected and the intel services on the case. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7egyrk40o 

NB.2. Now the bio pic, financed to the tune of $40m—$75m with marketing—by Mr. Bezos, who has gone missing from Epstein’s list. Still climbing the ranks at the time, perhaps. Audience numbers thus far less than spectacular at early screenings in the States. It would be different in Ljubljana, where sellouts will be guaranteed, though the anarchist Yugostalgics might cause further bother over there.

NB. 3. The Economist now reports of the $40m odd Mr Bezos provided for the Melania pic, the First Lady pocketed a cool $28m fee. 

 

 https://www.action-spectacle.com/winter-2026-part-ii/radonic

NB. 3 Couple weeks after the new issue was posted in March it was taken down. Now word from editor awaited.