Wormwood

Swimming unconsciously

in a dark sea

of turgid swelling waters

the electric brain sparking

little short-lived embers

shouting mindlessly

across the thick murkiness

hands held up as in sour surrender

turning sweet

then bitter

wormwood casting its spell

of slow painful murder

beatings rap on the chest

gasping for precious breath

in the soporific cage

pounding without mercy

upon rankling sensibilities

the clock of procrastination

rapidly swirling arsyversy

with the whiplash

of angry moments

spewing silent drops of blood

and excrement mixed

with gall and myrrh

the waters tremble

as unwelcome light filters through

oblivious to the murmurs of evil

9 December 2005

Despair

Despair look me in the eye

throwing spades and daggers

and samurais

My eye bleeds but I gaze back

with the formidable stare

of Samson at Gaza
eyes plucked out

never to see

Impudence is disguised cowardice

The angry clock beats its sequence

its very life depending on it

Sequence, sequence

what

then what

after what

comes next

The torrid sun will come my way in the morning

trouncing every soul with oppressive heat

and blinding brightness

offering a promise of a burnt city

razing it down with the picnic flies

Life is a carousel

it never stops turning

8 November 2005

Life Scripts and Brutal Dejection

Seven days already into the new year. For seven days, or just a bit less, I haven't written anything down, except for odd bits and pieces at work, but that's another life: the life of a developer, or to be precise, an analyst-programmer. I don't know why that had to be two words stringed together by a dash or a slash, like there could no single word for it. I once said I was a developer and I was asked, "So you're in real estate?"

So I said almost apologetically, "Okay, I'm a programmer." I'd be tempted to say at times that I'm an analyst, but was afraid to be thought of as a shrink. No, there's no one suitable word for it. I like how they referred to that in German: Softwareentwickler. It sounded more important, a tad harshly guttural, but important nonetheless.

To work in IT nowadays, you are not just in IT; you have to be called, designated, defined, by what you actually do. Network Manager. Business Intelligence Analyst. DBA. PL/SQL Developer. Data Warehouse Analyst-Programmer. What a mouthful!

I wanted to live a simple life without fanfare but unwitting complications always attended to it. Nothing seemed to be according to script. Maybe we're really all fudging our scripts as we meander or streak through the badly-lit avenues, the vexing mazes, the cryptic puzzles and sudokus of life. As we make decisions, as we steer to a certain course, et voila, our script is written. Can we change the script perhaps? Yes, we can write our own scripts, puny, obtuse, grand, noble. Just don't ask me how, as each of us will have to find our own pathetic or sublime ways to accomplish that. It all depends.

Maybe you want to write your script as a crime fiction. You are the protagonist of course... in agony of course... with conflicts fleeting and racing left, right and centre, turning your head into confused spinning wheel. Which one to deal with first? Who is the killer here? Do I have the clues to trounce this major conflict and annihilate, terminate, exterminate this thing, event, person, whatever.

Maybe you want to write your script as a Mills and Boon romance. I can't help you there much but you know the score. It's about the girl in a quest for Mister Right otherwise known as Prince Charming or Darling Dickhead, the one to look after her and love her forever. Or it's about the boy in a similar quest for the girl of his dreams (too hopelessly romantic) or his thrills (too brutally honest). I refuse to dwell on male psychology here on account of various stages of deviousness, incoherence, crudity in the male psyche, but in the end after years of maturing, the male wants a quiet relationship. But then again that may be just my obtuse fantasy.

Maybe you want to write your new script as an Indiana Jones adventure, with the thrills on kills, spills over hills, Jills with skills, and deals with dills, and scheming minds to meet and outmaneouvre. Going to exotic places, tasting extreme experiences, keeping you feeling the adrenalin rushing through your entire body, constantly facing moments of mad excitement, living on the XXX edge, life without the boring bits. Coolness. Never on the same spot twice. Each day fraught with danger but always with the assurance of predestined, guaranteed victory.

8:20 PM. Wenty Station. Deserted. No sign of life could be seen from Platform 4. Except for a young girl in white singlet, black shorts, chunking her ball on the closed garage door of the Thai Spot Restaurant near the corner of Station Street. Waiting for the train to Blacktown in this deserted strip of wasteland, except for the sorry signs of civilisation with the train platforms, the graffitied wall of MoneyTax - Tax Agents - with the cartoony illustration of two girls. One with brown hair, green shirt, arms akimbo, sour face, looking askew to her side like Paris Hilton but without the inane grin. The other with fluoro blonde hair, blue shirt, toothy smile, both friendly arms waving.

8:26 PM. A dilatory family phone call from Adelaide: What time is Jan's flight on the 21st?

8:28 PM. A train zipped through the platform without stopping. On the left side of the wall, in giant graffiti letters which always take a while to decipher: Female Force. There were names on top: Louise, Bubs, Alex, Spice, Afera, Alicia. The graffiti art wasn't bad. I've seen worse, but I've also seen better, more obscurely spastic.

I almost forgot what I wanted to say in this forsaken place, devoid of life except for weekdays. I could hear the violent, incessant chirping of mynahs nesting high-rise in the 40-foot tree at the side of the house behind MoneyTax. Their noise broke the curse-like monotony of the place, as did the occasional cars gliding by the station. The twilight rain clouds were hanging ominously on the sky, too close to my face, threatening to spray mischief.

I could feel a deep, visceral loneliness. Weary. Depressed even. Perhaps not the ilk that drives one to Sebstmord but to madness. I have one consoling thought: the mad people of the world, the ones cached away as pariahs in mental asylums and loony farms are possibly the happiest in the world. They don't have anything in the world to worry about. They are pre-occupied in their own created bliss-blessed Elysian Fields.

8:42 PM. Right on time the train has come, punctual as Adelaide Metro. I left the forsaken place and its depression black hole, sucking my chakras with the desparation that leads man to even more punctual madness. The kind that makes old, lonely men to want eagerly to depart this life and prematurely join the ancestors. I understand in my own pathetic way the loneliness of the elderlies, especially those living alone, deserted, neglected, forgotten by friends and relatives. I'd rather be like the 72-year-old Christmas Tree man I spoke to, hula-hooping near the traffic lights of Melbourne, dreaming of building a church in North Korea.

I think that in my old age I will terribly miss my kids. I miss them now profoundly with my own foreboded pathos. Everybody seems so apart but I want them to be connected by some kind of invisible yet palpable umbilical cord that could never get severed, but rather would become thicker and stronger with the silent passing of time. Would I be like man who desired the end of his life because the umbilical cord had lost its palpability? It had been hacked away mercilessly, chopped and minced viciously into minute indiscernible morsels, thrown as trash, compacted by garbage trucks, dumped into some smelly, smouldering Smoky Mountain with all the household discards, rotting fish guts, ravenous, squirming, insatiable maggots, rusted cans and flattened non-biodegrable plastic bottles. Perhaps a future site of a housing development in twenty years time, when all the rubbish will be forgotten, along with entombed memories, lying under 3-storey houses and an artificial lake masking its putrid history.

There is something criminally violent about being alone: rated R, replete with unadulterated brutality; dimming, dumbing, and stunning all sense and fragile sensibility.

7 January 2006

Off to a New Year's Day Service

The oppressive heat of the night, dry and incendiary, was replaced in the morning by a light, welcome drizzle, softening and moisturising the earth, sending a cool breeze to the warm skin, giving comfort to the bodies aching and screaming for some respite from the heat of the last few days. Friday was bad, with the city reaching a record of 46 degrees C, the hottest since 1939.

The midnight countdown was one of those funny moments when we all turned all all the lights in the house, ignited some sparklers and pulled firecrackers. Everybody greeted everybody Happy New Year and asked: "What's your New Year's resolution?" This is some kind of chimera, a mythical monster one attempts to grasp but many a time fail to even start or break as soon as it is started. Some get a shock thay they haven't made a New Year's resolution yet. "Okay, my resolution is to think about my resolution" came as a reaction. Somebody resolved something in these words: "I swear not to swear anymore!" and he breaks it in the next five minutes.

Resolutions should be borne out of conviction, not by fancy, for fancy is whimsical and has no character of permanence. Convictions at least have some roots. You still have to dig around the roots, fertilise the ground, water it, but the plant would have a better chance of growing than the dandelion seed blown by the wind, with no one really knowing where it would land.

I caught the 9:43am bus to Glenelg, got off at Jetty Road, and boarded the tram to the Adelaide at 10:00am. The faces of people were dour, some sour, like the New Year had been a non-event, or it was an event and was good while the celebrations lasted, a few hours into the night of revelry, wine-bibbing, and oohs and aahs at the fireworks, and making noise. But greeting the New Year to me is to look it straight in the eye and to befriend it and to speak to it in no uncertain terms: I will be with you for 365 days; I will have to put up with you all the things and events ans mishaps and good fortune that will be in my way this year.

This year for me is a year of wondering about peace in the world, a concern that everybody should have in their heads and hearts. We hope for peace in the world and cannot even give a little piece of peace to others. Mother Teresa once said: "Peace begins with a smile." We need countless, huge smiles to start the peace process. The world's religions have a specific responsibility to make it a jihad of smile, a crusade of smile, a zen of smile, and to spread peace in the simplest way that a human face can give to other human faces. Forget about the environment and global warming for a minute, we have to take care of the environment of interhuman, international relationships. Forget about saving the whales and the endangered species, for humankind is the most endangered of all species. The smile is universal. No matter what race, religion, colour of skin, language, political persuasion, the smile always stands for goodwill and peace, transmitting a message of happiness.

At 10:15am the tram stopped at Morphettville due to some mechanical failure: the tram would not start. Radio communication could be heard from the driver's seat. The tram doors opened. The driver and the conductor stepped out of the tram as I continued to scribble away. Sounds of technical advice could be heard from the other end of the radio transmission. The trams doors were then shut and the tram backed up a few inches. The driver came back holding some tool and declaring: "Champion, mate, absolute champion!" And the tram started at 10:20am and sped in the directions of the city.

There were not many passengers in this tram. I sat on the third row of the first car. Three got in at Plympton Park, next stop 2 people: one elderly woman sat on the the area reserved for the "aged or physically impaired persons" which was closest the door. She was wearing flowery Chinese-style shirt in a dark brown background. The other one was a Chinese man in a checkered shirt and silver sports pants. Next stop, a woman with short curled hair dyed blonde sat in front of me. Next stop, a moustachioed man boarded the tram in his khaki military-style shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a baseball cap of matching colour. The conductor came around asking who wanted tickets. He was wearing a blue shirt, dark-blue pants and the ticket box dangling on his hips. Meanwhile a fly continued to bother me, targetting my eyes of all places. Soon we neared the city. Outside on the sidewalks near the South Terrace, a man in his fifties in white sports singlet and black shorts was running, probably as he had always done everyday, New Year's Day being no exception. The cheeky fly was riding the tip of my pen for about 5 seconds even as I scribbled. At 10:35am I wasn't far from my destination.

Behind the altar of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral near Victoria Square, a tall Christmas tree peppered with tiny lights stood proudly blocking partly the stained glass panels. On the left side of the altar was the statue of St. Therese de Lisieux. On the right was that of St. Francis Xavier in his white dalmatic and red stole over his black frock. In his hand he was holding and looking at a crucifix. The stained glass panels depicted the mysteries of the Rosary: the left panel for the Joyful Mysteries, the middle for the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the right panel for the Glorious Mysteries. The second and third rows of stone pillars had green Christmas wreaths snaking around them. The rest of the pillars were graced by green and red ribbons flowing to the floor. The ribbons were topped by short wreaths with little golden bells.

The commentator said something about "peace in our troubled world". The green sheet guide for the day's service declared this day to be the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Just under the heading was a grim boxed reminder: "Please ensure that mobile phones are switched off. Thank you." The entrance hymn was from a music of the 15th century. The last verse had the words:

O and A and A and O

cum cantibus in choro

let the merry organ go

Benedicamus Domino

Benedicamus Domino.

The main celebrant was a bishop who said the day was the "greatest feast each year". In his introduction to the homily, he said that the length of the homily was in inverse proportion to the temperature, the hotter the temperature, the shorter the homily. He mentioned about Mary being the greatest disciple of Jesus, as "she followed Jesus more closely than anybody else in the Bible." The Gospel reading for the day was from Luke 2:16-21. Verse 19 declares: And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. The bishop said: "We live in an age that is dominated by image and sound." That made it hard to reflect spiritual truths in our hearts. He said that to be a disciple in the Church, we must contemplate the truth, that Jesus was born not just to bring grace but also to bring truth. He mentioned that for over 35 years now in Australia, this day has been celebrated as World Day of Prayer for Peace. The letter of Pope Benedict XVI said that: "Truth is peace." The Bishop then continued to say that you and I must be rededicated in being truthful to God and to one another, doing justice between peoples and be engaged in the Lord's work. The Bishop said that the fundamental truth Jesus revealed was that "God is our Father" and that as a consequence of that truth, we are all his children, we are touched by God's light, every person is a child of God, that whatever differences we may have with other people, they are our brothers and sisters, even when their differences are expressed in anger.

1 January 2006

Curious along King William

From Victoria Square at 5:20pm I waited to cross Franklin St to work my way up King William. A man of about 25 was dancing at the traffic lights with earphones dangling from his head while waiting for the green light for pedestrians. In the hot summer Adelaide afternoon, he was wearing a brown leather jacket, black denim pants, and a red wide-brimmed hat with the words "The Big Issue" in front. As the green light came on, he walked across with his MP3 player and his music and his grey Caribee rucksack and a black swag. At stop V2 on King William St he sat under the bus shelter and dumped his swag on the floor, swaying back and forth, back and forth to the distraction of the man beside him. In a minute Bus 182 came bound for Blair Athol. The dancing cowboy boarded this bus, away from my curious surreptitious gaze.

It's good that we can have simple things like music that can make us happy, make us forget the harshness of life, the vagaries of relationships, the uncertainties of life. It's good that we all have the freedom to express our emotions, even in public, as long as we don't hurt anybody. I appreciated this swagman and his MP3 player and his party attitude even if he's the only one dancing to the tunes. With this attitude, every place can be a happy place, every weather is good weather regardless of the heat, or the wet, or the cold, every trip can be pleasant.

At 5:25pm I crossed Waymouth. On the left was the Bean Bar which boasted "Great Coffee Guaranteed". Hey that's great, I'd have some of that, I thought. But their closing time was 4:30pm. Now that's cruel but I moved on and tried to forget the depressing feeling of being deprived something I felt I deserved at that moment. Near the Ambassadors Marble Bar, a stubby-bearded man sporting a white T-shirt and grey pants and a white plastic shopping bag was fiddling with the vending machine, feeling the slots for coins left over by a previous customer. Not finding any, he turned back towards my direction and planted himself on the steps of No. 87, the offices of Nicholls Gervasi Lawyers, right in front of stop Currie/Grenfell Bus Stop.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher, 1817-1862). We all have our moments of desperation, moments of sadness, moments when we wished we were somewhere else, moments we would rather forget, moments we wanted to flee from. Even the rich have their lives of desperation, for happiness has nothing to do with possessions but with percepion.

I entered the Fitness First Building at 5:35pm and sat myself on an armchair on the right. There were two ladies at the counter desk, both looking healthy and fit. They were both wearing black singlets. One had a small tattoo on her back below the right shoulder, her hair tied into a pony tail. The other had blonde shoulder-length hair, wondering what I might be doing there, but didn't bother me as I continued writing. From this armchair I could see the signs by the door: Give yourself the gift of fitness this Christmas. I could see a 5-foot tall Christmas tree by the turnstiled entrance to the gym proper and the people in their shorts and shirts on the treadmills walking or running to the beat of music and the flashes of moving images from the video screens. I got up and went to the brochure corner on the right side of the counter desk. I picked up a brochure and went out of the place.

I lost about 25 kilos the last time I put some attention towards my health. Three years ago, I frequented a gym at Blacktown Workers. I combined gym work with the Paleo diet of lean meat and vegetables and fruits, no cereals, no fat, no sugar. Combined with exercise, this was great and I was never fitter in my life. But then old habits take over. They have a sneaky way of regaining influence.

I crossed Currie and walked across the other side of King William and entered Book Stars, a book discount shop. There were lines of books, art supplies, cards, stationery. I flipped through the pages of some books that might interest me. In the end, I decided I didn't really want anything and got out.

I caught a BeeLine 99B to Victoria Square Tram Stop. There I waited. An old couple were looking at the map of the City on a board. They looked like they might be lost. I thought that they might be reading the map the wrong way, so I came to the rescue and pointed out that "North is that way," pointing to the North, "if you want to go that way. " They looked at me askance and continue to talked to each other. "It's that way, that way, if you want to go there", I said, feeling proud like somebody who knew the city. Later I found out that they were just wondering about the extension to the tramway which would go all the way up to the casino at North Terrace. They were tracing on the map the route the extension would take. I found out later on that they actually live in Adelaide. I on the other hand was just visiting. I should feel embarrassed with that little incident but there was some callous character that was in me that rejected that embarrassment and made me just move on to the next page.

The Glenelg Tram finally came. I stood there in my blue long-sleeved shirt and black vest. I got my wallet out and took out a Metro ticket. A woman in her sixties in a pink dress, standing by her beige-shirted husband, asked me, "Do you sell tram tickets?" I gave her and her husband a silly look, and blurted out, "Do I look like a ticket vendor in this get-up?", and started laughing. Then they both laughed. I then said, "No, there's somebody who goes around there inside the tram to sell you tickets." The husband then said, "Now you have an interesting story to tell." And we all laughed again. They said they were visiting from Brisbane. I said I was visiting from Sydney.


29 December 2005

Trees, Christmas, and Satan

Lunchtime Madness

At 1:35 pm on the steps of the Post Office entrance at King William Street in Adelaide, two young teenage boys sat drinking their stubby Coke bottles with earphones in their ears, with their bikes blocking the way, and with obscenities issuing from their lips. Nearby at the balcony of the Ambassadors Hotel, a fat lady wearing a green shirt sat with her friend eating lunch, while the crowd passed by below them. In front of No. 97, the BankSA head office, two African men stood chatting: one wearing green military fatigue shirt and pants, a blue baseball cap, and sandals; the other wearing an oversized white-cum-blue-cum-orange baseball tee shirt and black and blue loose pants and dirty rubber shoes. I was looking for evidence of Christmas activity but this end of King William Street not far from Victoria Square was not showing much.

Further up at Rundle Mall, there were many signs of activity. The row of young trees lining Rundle Mall were no more than 20 feet tall. These trees couldn't be more that ten years old. But there was a large lunch time crowd: shoppers hunting for bargains, young ones in strollers being pushed by mothers eyeing the discount posters with plastic bags hanging on the strollers, elderly patrons sitting on the benches to rest their shopping-weary feet, some munching their take-away lunches. Under a marquee, a sporty figure of a large kangaroo on a racing bike was balanced on top of a racing car. Two female models in orange miniskirts distributed pamphlets. On their dresses were emblazoned in large letters stretching up at an angle: FEEL THE RUSH. They were flogging Jacob's Creek sponsored "Tour Down Under", a world cycling event happening on the South Australian roads from 17 to 22 January. This would be like Australia's version of Tour de France. Not far away, a South American man in white pants and white shirt with stringed neck played his wooden flute to some recorded background music while he danced. I knew that tune but for the life of me couldn't put a name to it. Close by, in front of the flower shop, an elderly woman with a red shirt and beige pants sat on the bench feeding the hungry pigeons with pommes frites as a young man on the same bench looked on, with his black Madventure tee shirt, black 3/4 pants, and a white baseball cap twisted around. The Sanity shop was plastered with SALE posters all over. Rundle Mall looked more like Sydney's Pitt Street Mall at lunch time.

I turned back after deciding to find the ANZ bank somewhere else. The South American man was now playing the tune of Guantanamera. One of the Jacob's creek models opened the boot of their car revealing boxes and some more legs. A boy was sleeping on his stroller while his mother pushes her way up on the other direction. A depressed-looking man in a black shirt was offering me a copy of the Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people. In front of Radio Rentals were life-size green bronze statues of pigs: one with the forelegs atop a rubbish bin, another on its four legs, and another with his bum seated on the floor, snout up on the air. A little boy was riding one of the pigs.

I crossed King William Street to Hindley Street, the western counterpart of Rundle Mall. There I went to Subway and ordered a foot-long parmesan oregano with Roasted Chicken and all the salad in Chipotle and Honey Mustard sauces. I asked for Horseradish sauce but they didn't have them anymore. Maybe it wasn't so popular they have dumped it. Just like what they did for my favourite sauce: American Mustard. I seated myself alfresco (im Freien, as they'd say in Deutsch). There was a bike there parked upside down. The owner took it away a few minutes after I started munching my lunch on a table marked "For Subway patrons only." On the other table before me, three young men chatted while lunching. A girl stopped by and kissed one of the men. She was going to Sydney for two weeks. She said she was leaving on the 11th of December, then corrected herself: 11th of January. A couple of minutes later, the girl left, saying goodbye to her friends. Meanwhile a man fronted a square rubbish bin. He was wearing a yellow cap and a sweater. He fished out a mineral water bottle from the bottom of the bin, squeezed out the remaining water, put it on the ground and crushed the plastic bottle, and put it in a shopping trolley and pushed away. A few minutes later, the three young men left, with a plastic bottle left on their table. A man in white singlet and black shorts whizzed past and grabbed the bottle, emptied it clean, and crushed it, and sped off with his bag.

Finishing lunch, I turned my way back to the corner of Hindley Street and King William. There a young lady approached the passers-by with a folder in her hand, an ID hanging on her neck. She belonged to the Wilderness Society, the largest environmental organisation in Australia and the most successful. They were looking for members to support their cause. She was on break from her university. She talked about the Tarkine region in north-west Tasmania. Some of the trees were 400 to 600 year old eucalypts. They wanted the area to be protected and not turned to plantation, which would involve logging and burning up the area. She showed some pictures of some of the huge trees that have been cut down. "Would you like to be a member?" she asked.

I replied, "I don't want to be a member. But I'm interested in what you people do. I'm interested in many things."

"What things are you interested in?" she asked inquisitively.

"I'm interested in what people believed in strongly, in what they're passionate about. Are you passionate about this?" I asked.

She answered, "Yes."

I asked again, "Would you kill for it?"

"No, I wouldn't necessarily kill for it," she declared.

I walked away after the usual parting gestures. I was writing down notes while crossing to the other side to Pirie Street, avoiding bumping into people.

Not about birds and bees

Later in the afternoon, I went to the tram stop at Victoria Square. A bearded man was talking to an African woman and her little girl. He had long curly white hair, a white beard; he would make an excellent Santa Claus personality without the paunch. He wore a dirty blue checkered long-sleeved shirt and faded dungarees. He smelled of sweat and tobacco. I caught him saying something about Iraq and how the third world war would be started from there. I said that it was predicted in the Bible that the war would come from the north of Israel, which would make that true. He went on to talk about the future, as portrayed by Star Trek and Deep Space Nine. That's our future, he said. He said he was born in Adelaide, that he was Catholic but not practising anymore. He said he believed in the Liberal party, that the current Labor government of South Australia are a bunch of shitheads. "They should take the idols out of the church," he said.

"Catholics don't worship idols; the statues are just like the pictures of your family," I said but didn't really want to discuss apologetics. He said he had seen Satan, that he was in human form. He then mentioned something about fellatio which I didn't catch at first but he spelled the word out.

I didn't quite make out what he was actually saying but my fuzzy logic made me think to myself, "What? Did Satan offer you fellatio and you declined?".

"Satan appeared in human form," he repeated. Then he mentioned about vampires. "There are vampires around," he declared.

"How do you know there are vampires?"I asked.

"I wouldn't know," he replied. "I could be a vampire. You could be a vampire. There's no way that you could prove to me that you're not a vampire." I wasn't sure if that made sense and somehow that made me a bit uneasy.

We boarded the Glenelg Tram. Later on the bearded man chatted some more with the African kid. The kid's in year 1. They came from Sudan and have been in Australia for nine months.

The tram stopped for a few minutes at stop 16, Plymton Park. People were getting impatient. A tall man seated in front of me opened the window to get some fresh air. "Waz goin' awn?", a impatient man in a tank top asked the conductor who explained something about waiting for the other tram coming from the other direction. I didn't think that Adelaidians spoke with a drawl but this one did. The tank top man jumped out of the tram for fresh air, followed by the man who had seen Satan who quickly took out and puffed a cigarette while waiting for the tram to roll on forward to Glenelg.

28 December 2005

A Christmas Tree with Spirit

GPO Melbourne. EIIR meaning Queen Elizabeth 2nd. As you come in a crimson welcoming sign greets you with: "Enter here to shop happily ever after. GPO Melbourne." On the left side is a marble frame on which was engraved: "To the glorious Dead. Commonwealth of Australia. Postmaster General's Department. Officers from Victoria who gave their lives in te Great War 1914-1919." Then followed a heroic list of names from Abraham JP to Wilson WK. The list of names would stir some proud, patriotic blood in you, especially if you have the same surname as one of these wartime heroes, Anzacs, diggers. Beside this marble frame memorial was a less honourable wooden frame enclosed in glass. It was an advertisement from IM - French and Italian Design - Lingerie - Sleepwear. Simply the best... undressed. www.imboutique.com.au. There was a picture of a woman in lingerie in provocative pose. On the other wall at the right side was another frame declaring: Postal Hall, established 1918, Hon. William Webster, Postmaster General. Another important name which gets glanced once over and forgotten quickly. Right to its left, another provocative IM advertisement, similar to the one across, was displayed on the same wall. Inside there were lines of shops, boutiques of clothes, shoes, designer labels enclosed in glass like fish tanks There were about three levels of shopping experience in this building, what used to be a gigantic post office. It's pretty much like what they have done to the GPO in Sydney which is not a post office anymore, although it has retained the name GPO (General Post Office). I must admit however that I have not visited it since they have renovated it and transformed it into some commercial enterprise.

Outside GPO Melbourne and Myer, a crowd has queued up to see the Christmas windows. There were statues of tall, lanky elves with brown vests, red shirts, triangular Spock-Vulcan ears. As we passed by outside the cordon that locked in the viewers from the general passing crowd, we could discern the elaborate displays of mechanised, moving dolls, music playing, but I couldn't be bothered paying much attention at this time.

At half past ten in the morning, at the corner of Bourke and Russell Streets, the Asian guy gussied up as an 8-foot tall Christmas tree, with a multi-coloured tinsel skirt and Jamaican cap, complete with the long matted hair, was already spinning his hula hoop for the crowd of by-standers, passers-by, Christmas shoppers, and tourists. He had a note on the ground where the two doll figures stood motionless. It said:

"Greetings to my friends. I am 72 years old and was injured during the Korean War 55 years ago. A bullet went through my leg. You can see if you like. We fought against North Korea under support of U.N. forces. My dream is to establish a church and draw the people of North Korea to God's fold. I've been saving and collecting contributions all around the world for this purpose. Your generosity will glorify God as it helps the furtherance of His work in union with Jesus. Thank you and God bless you. Elder Paik."

This guy's a pastor, I thought to myself amazed. He just kept spinning his white hula hoop. "Are you a pastor?" I asked. He sort of nodded, I think that meant yes but I was still not sure. Then he started preaching. He called me Brother. "Brother…look up Matthew chapter 22 verse 37." This verse declares: You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. He called me again. "Brother… Brother," he hailed as I write down notes. "Brother, John 11 verse 25." This verse declares: I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. I asked him how he had been doing this in that place. He said, "Two weeks ago." I asked him what time he started today. He said he started at 10 o’clock and would do it for ten hours straight. Ten hours straight, everyday, I thought about how fit he had become spinning the hula hoop. He said he had been going around Australia. He mentioned about his dream of building a church in North Korea, that he had already saved some money. I asked him where he lives. "Now?," he said, "Near Victoria Park station." I said I live in Sydney. He said he lives in Sydney in Strathfield, and that he’s going back to Sydney. "See you in Sydney," I said, waving a parting gesture with my right hand, and walking off across the road.

I thought about maybe doing something like this, dressing up as someone or something and raising up money for a good cause, even for proclaiming the Kingdom of God. I am deeply impressed with people who are not ashamed of doing something that they believed in, even if it meant doing something demeaning. I guess at some point they’d realize that it is not demeaning at all, and that the nobility or crassness of doing what they’re doing is, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder. At some point, it would only become noble, and the more they are motivated to continue with the mission they have set for themselves. It is good to have a dream; without our dreams, our lives become drab and meaningless. Dreams bring meaning and relevance to our lives which become stale, bland, and lacking purpose, despite all the activities we surround ourselves in. We’d think we’re doing so many things that we are fulfilling our destinies and our purposes, but there really is just one purpose that we need to find ourselves. Until our energies are put into the service of that purpose, we would be wandering in the desert, and that might take more than 40 years the Hebrews spent in the desert: it could be your entire lifetime.

Across the road, we went to McDonalds. I ordered a Double Cheeseburger meal with coffee instead of the usual drinks. I asked if I could get a refill. "Yes, but that’s only for seniors," answered the young sales staff, a boy of Indian appearance in his blue uniform. "I am a senior; but I don’t have the card with me," I blurted out. I am not sure why I said that. I did have a Seniors Club card before, which I cancelled later on. In a sense, what I said was true. But I am far from being a real senior. That will be a few years down still. I got my refill of coffee, but then I wondered: Coffee is really supposed to be bad for you, and yet they encourage older people to have more of that poison. Perhaps the younger people want the older people to leave this world sooner. Strangely I got reminded of the movie Soylent Green where in the future food would be so scarce, nature would be depleted, that people only ate a high-protein biscuit called Soylent Green, but nobody knew what it’s made of. They had a service for dying old men where they got to see movie clips of the past when nature was beautiful with its mountains and lakes and trees. They called this Going Home. The old man would die so peacefully but his burial was strange: He didn’t end up in the ground, or in flames as in a crematorium; rather he went with some conveyor belt and was processed as raw material – for Soylent Green. Has he fulfilled his purpose, which had become the purpose of everybody else… in time. That’s where the protein is from.

I wondered but didn’t really mind while I was enjoying my free cup of coffee, in the same paper cup and same now smudged plastic top that I had earlier. More cups of coffee are my tickets to Going Home perhaps. But I’m not going home yet, not till I do something meaningful like being a Christmas tree with spirit, giving flesh to a dream, fulfilling a real purpose.

24 December 2005

Gone for a little walk

At Little Collins Street, a sign in front of Cityblend Café declared on a blackboard: "The greatest knowledge is that even a fool can sometimes be right." That is so true. There are many of them in politics, and sometimes they can truly be right. I like that quote. I must find out where that came from originally. I got this inexpensive notebook from IGA X-press at Queen St., in front of the Melbourne Safe Deposit Box building, with the admirable architectural style from maybe 100 years ago. Without this notebook, I would be lost, and for $1.25, I’d say it was a good investment for it can contain notes and details which the limited brain can easily forget.

We proceeded to Little Collins St and came out to Elizabeth St. At the corner, was a Vitamin ME shop which boasted a sale with a proliferation of "Sale" banners all over inside the shop. Here I got a favourite saw palmetto herbal supplement. "Seventeen dollars!", I exclaimed, "Now that’s a good price." I handed my card to pay. On the same street, we stopped by Payless Shoes. A sign on top of the shoes on sale declared: "Reduced now, $29. We’ll surprise you." I wondered what the surprise was, when they have already divulged the price. Did they mean quality? It’s all the same unsurprising quality everywhere in this shop. A black and white notice also declared: "Look for reduced tickets to save even more." Two young women came. One wore a dark-pink blouse, a pink strapped shirt with the whole middle portion of her body sticking out shouting and blaring, probably wanting nothing much to be left to the imagination. "I just had Brazilian wax," she announced brassily in her head. The other one was fat, wearing a deep-brown tight-fitting tube: she was trying on some yellow, daggy slippers.

A 5-foot tall saleslady in black uniform came with some kind of ingenious grapple pole to fetch down some shoeboxes on the top shelf signed "Size 6, Euro 37, USA 5 ½"; we all have different numbers for the same thing. She reminded me of that girl in the movie "Looking for Alibrandi". Could she be Italian? She stood there, her hair tied up with a simple light blue rubber band. She seemed to have contemplated there for a couple of minutes, gathered some courage, before stretching the grapple pole, which had a heel plate and a rectangular tongue that caught the shoebox lid: a clever contraption which I believed worked most of the time, except you needed to apply some concentration and a bit of balancing skills to make it work. It didn’t quite work this time, two sad shoeboxes falling down in a disappointed heap. She muttered something incomprehensible, looked at me, and went back to the counter. She came back a second time, used the pole again, and whiffed the air of success.

Outside the shop, a young Chinese girl in a pink tube with black stripes, and a black miniskirt, sat on a chair in front of Caffé Map, proud of showing her crossed legs. Her chair was placed cheeky close to the entrance of the café, away from the alfresco seats, right in the way of passing pedestrians but that didn’t seem to bother her one bit.

At Bourke Street, a long line of families queued up to see the Christmas window display at Myers. The queue started from the building next door, the Melbourne GPO. An attendant ushered the people to progress in the queue. In front of the GPO, a balding man wearing a light-green T-shirt and blue ¾ pants, stood with microphone in one hand, preaching before the queue, while a man filled his sports bottle with water from a nearby fountain. In front of Myer came heavenly sounds of Spanish flamenco guitar which reminded me straight away of the Gypsy Kings. I came closer and saw four men in the group, three Latino-looking men were playing the guitar, the fourth one, standing, was Chinese man playing the bongo drums. A woman close by was flogging CDs produced by the group: Moliendo Café, Juan Martinez. I asked which one Juan was and the woman pointed to a man with a brown hat with red lining, gold shirt, and a beard under his chin. We passed by a sad-puppy-dog-look man sitting on the busy sidewalk near the Accessorize shop with a sign in front of him on the floor which said: "My name’s Kris, I just had my appendix removed…" And so on, I didn’t read the rest of the message. He looked like he was clutching that part of his tummy where the appendix probably would have been. At the corner of Bourke and Russell Streets, there were big yellow stars gracing the wires above the intersection close to the traffic lights. On a corner, a tall imposing figure stood, probably eight feet tall. This Asian man was dressed up as Christmas tree, on some kind of hidden pedestal. He had something like a Jamaican knitted cap with either long hair or a Rastafarian wig, probably the latter. He was constantly smiling and spinning clockwise a white hula hoop. He was wearing tinsels of different colours for a skirt, which flowed right down to the floor, also covering his pedestal. In front of him were placed two dolls, sightless witnesses to the coins that end up in the plates they guarded. On a lane on the left side of Russell Street, a depressed man in green fluoro vest organises the thousands of discarded flattened boxes, quiet reminders of the noisy, aggressive Christmas trade from the shops around.

The grinning salesgirl at Cotton Up back at Bourke Street wore a short black skirt and a Christmas-red shirt on which were emblazoned the words "I had this look first". Okay, baby, so you’re the fashion leader, I said to myself . Around her model-poised neck was a red lanyard with a white plastic access card. She beamed with a pretty, happy, toothy smile and enthusiastically suggested that I go see the back of the shop where they had better items on sale. I asked what time they’d close. "Six o’clock. And we’re also open tomorrow till 6." Red posters hanged around the shop, boasting "50% off original prices." In the background, some Euro-retro techno music played, which started to make my silly head go on a giddy spin and turn somewhere else. At 6:15 pm a black tram stopped in front of the shops, its whole body covered in full by one massive advertisement. The destination sign on the rear declared "Southbank Depot." A cheerful lot of people seemed to be wearing red today. I decided then that I would wear a conforming red shirt the next day, to join the friendly spirit of Christmas in the place. A group of Indian-looking men gathered gregariously in front of the Red Silks Restaurant and Bar and the phone booth nearby. A mute sign of a street pole displayed confidently: "This area is monitored by Safe City Cameras."

Ah Christmas, with the depressed, flattened boxes in Melbourne alleys, discounts and half-price tags, Santa-crimson shirts and overstretched shopping hours, and ubiquitous Christmas trees (traditional, still, motionless trees, or non-conventional dynamic trees playing the hula hoop), cheery, curious shop windows with singing elves and ho-ho-hoing Santa Clauses, long patient queues, the loud blare of fire-and-brimstone microphones, Asian tourists belting out songs in Hollywood Karaoke at Bourke, yellow stars under the nonchalant traffic lights. Somewhere out there is the true spirit of Christmas. You just have to look real hard for it.

23 December 2005