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

Flying and Sleeping

Today is the birthday of my father. He would have been 78 today. But he died over two years ago before he could turn 76. I haven't visited his grave for over a year. I must go and visit at the beginning of the new year. I won't have time this year, which is drawing to an end. And with my ass in Melbourne and soon in Adelaide, I can say that this year is out of the question. But I remember you, Daddy. Help me to be strong as you had been.

I left work at 4:40 pm. I rushed to the airport to catch the plane to Melbourne. Arriving at Terminal 2 at the Domestic Airport, I saw miles and miles of queues, making me wonder: do I have enough time to catch the plane? I still had to go through security. Reluctantly I joined a queue. I had to start with this, or else I would be going nowhere. A ground staff was announcing that people in the flights almost boarding should join the priority line. But even this line was long, full of people eager to get on the plane, people returning to their home city after work in Sydney, people going for a visit, people going to work in their destination cities. People like me, combining work and visit, all in the name of Christmas and spreading a bit of the Christmas cheer, and at the same time, getting away from the surrounds of Sydney that have become blasé, bland, unrelentingly familiar, bombarding my dull senses with aggravating images of toeless pigeons in the little food court near work, scavenging around the tables, sometimes leaping on the tables, brazenly spreading their dusty wings landing of tables for crumbs and annoying fat ladies during the lunchtime break. After over half an hour, almost giving up but nonetheless still hopeful, I got where I wanted to be, being attended to at the check-in counter. Flight DJ882 to Melbourne boarding at 18:45, departing at 20:55. It was already 19:00. There’s still the security barriers to go through My boarding pass looked more like a docket from Coles supermarket. The check-in lady circled the gate number (34) and the boarding time. I was assigned Seat 7D, aisle seat, which would make it easier for me to go to the toilet. But I didn't think. For such a short flight, I didn't need to go to the toilet. I could have enjoyed instead the view from a window seat but I couldn't be bothered anymore. It was more important just to get my butt in the plane and look forward to flying and reading a little Chaucer on the side, with the strange but intriguing Middle English. I hope to learn a few Middle English. Sikerly (surely certainly). That's very close to German sicherlich. Oh well at at that time, English sounded very close to German.

The flight was boring. On the other side of the aisle, a man with a curly pony tail was reading a book. On my right, a woman in an orange T-shirt was reading some celebrity magazines. I was reading Chaucer's “The Wife of Bath's Tale” but every now and then, I'd fall asleep. Pretty much when I'm watching TV movies, I'd be sleeping half the time even on exciting movies. The flight was a little bit delayed but still managed to arrive in Melbourne maybe 5 minutes later than targeted time. I said my usual thank-you to the flight attendant by the exit and went to fetch my luggage, wondering about the last time I was in Victoria which seemed like ages ago, like during the Jurassic era when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the Daimaru was a great shopping centre, with its giant clock and an old heritage building under its glass roof. I was wondering if it would be the same. But of course, nothing would be the same, not the places you've been to, not the people you used to know, not what you missed and sort of expected again. In time people change a lot, some for the better, some for the worse. Structures get razed down, built upon, renovated making it look like nothing like the original. Or we try so hard to make it look like it used to but functioning as something else. Like some churches in Adelaide, the City of Churches, where you’d see a little church at every corner, But I have seen a couple of these churches with the unmistakable character of churches but have been converted to a night club or a watering hole for beer- and wine- drinkers. Changes happen like the crap you make in the morning, and there's no stopping. The secret to life I believe likes not in inventing new things, but in how to live and flow with the changes happening around us. We live, we survive, despite of them, not because of them. Life goes on, and there's always a little voice that tells us to move on, to press on, that somehow we'll have to live this life until it's time to say our thank-you to the all the people who have touched our lives who are waiting at the gates just before you leave for the much better place.

I have a little sense of this much better place when I have had a good night's sleep, feeling so rested and relaxes, protected from the world with all its pain, misery, and the box-of-chocolates surprises that either paints a beaming smile on your face, or casts a spell of doom and desperation. But after a good night's sleep, I'd wish sometimes for it to just go on, let me sleep some more, let my senses be dulled a bit more, or maybe for much longer. Sleep becomes some sort of a drug, that makes you escape the harshness and brutality of reality. Sleep becomes a kind of fantasy, which can take to to different beautiful universes in your dreams, or there to finally meet your fears and obsessions and do something creative to them, or experience them in craven fear. After a good night's sleep it makes me wonder, maybe that's what dying is like, a gigantic sleep, giving you absolute rest, happiness, or perhaps nightmarish, ghoulish je-ne-sais-quoi. Heaven or hell. Paradise or Hades. Love or fear.

21 December 2005

Brainless wonder

Today my brain creeped away for a vacation, leaving me on my pat with the rest of my body. “You brainless wonder,” the little Inner Voice said to me. I was grateful that I could still be a wonder, without my brain in my head, with my vacuous thoughts and empty musings. Despite that, I could continue working through the caffeine-controlled day. The first real order of the day was a large cup of flat white coffee and a lotus seed bun, which reassured me that I was still alive, for only a live human would want and enjoy breakfast like that. “I am not a zombie,” I thought to myself. Straight after, I entertained serious personal doubts about it. Large cup of flat white: is there enough caffeine there? To wake me up from the dead, and make me rejoin the rest of humanity waiting at the impatient platforms for the city-bound train for another day of urban slavery. One would certainly hope so. The lotus seed bun was a 30-second decision: there were other choices like hotdog, taro buns and pork buns. I decided it was too early for those anyway. Still my creepy brain wasn’t with me. So somebody else must have made the decision for nobody could really make decisions (significant or commonplace) without a brain could they? Or maybe they could. There are many politicians in the government, given the mandate and privilege of formulating laws and regulations, seriously deciding what’s good for you and me and whole Oz community, making myriad decisions in their daily political life: yet they have no brains. So even without my brain, I could doubtless still decide. I decided to hop on to the Hornsby train. I impatiently wiggled my way through the aisle hunting for an elusive seat. On the left side were two men, one in a dark blue suit. He was by the window nonchalantly reading his paperback, the other an oldish grey-haired man near the aisle reading nothing but possibly thinking: “I hope nobody sits beside me.” But I clearly wanted the seat: this was an execution of privileged decision, even without the hapless brain. There I was with my 20-kilo backpack, maneouvering my thick butt and my backpack into the squeezy middle seat, this grey-haired man indifferently ignoring my obvious struggle. Finally I made it there anyway. Given the same circumstance, I would just slide my considerate bum into the middle seat and let the other person have easy access to aisle seat. I almost invariably do it that way. But this old man felt in his proud heart that it was his inalienable right to choose the seat he wanted, praying that nobody would try to wring past him, hoping that intending seat takers would change their minds and sit somewhere else. Anyway, even without my brain, I did it, tasting sweet success, the first and only for today. It was so cramped there, with me seated between two uncaring men. I fished out my book but my stiff elbows were constricted left and right, locked in this dance where I was the compressed cheese slice in the sandwich. I had nowhere to go, trapped in this merciless detention centre, awkwardly manacled. It was good my hostile brain wasn’t there or it might have dictated me to say something stupid or do something aggressive like pushing my defiant elbows out and claim 5 extra centimetres for myself, for me to enjoy my book-reading better. But having no brain made me more patient and tolerant. Without the brain, I couldn’t even think of malevolent curses to be uttered in the cloak of whisper.

Without my brain I got out of the city train at the jetties. I rested for a meditative minute and looked at the jetties, the people whisking by, veering their way to work, tourists walking about, cheerful cameras in hand, snapping up sweet pictures, with the frothy traffic of ferries in the harbour background. There was unmistakably less litter in the water at Jetty 6 than yesterday. Did the floating waste just fleet away or did they just sink down into the bottom after being saturated with heavy water? A long, pondering minute was enough, to capture the blue sight of the water and the ambience of civilised structures. Here there could never be a threat of terrorism; here there could only be faces in cheerful spirits, with the buskers brazenly singing, sword swallowers flaunting their wide-throat skills, the body-painted Aboriginal playing the haunting didgeridoo, the wandering vagrants ingesting their caffeine shots. Much unlike the Town Hall Station with its claustrophobic box caverns and stairways, with the cruel absence of rubbish bins for security measure: better to have eyesore litter strewn about than surreptitious bombs being concealed. It was distressing at first, and inconvenient, when they started the No Rubbish Bins policy. Then I understood: I had my brain with me at the time and the impression stayed on as a kind of long-awaited enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.

Without my brain I hacked my way through the maze of two meetings, thinking wild profanities but mouthing off sensible remarks, plausible solutions, intelligible answers to questions laced with panic and apprehension. I came out of those meetings still missing my brain, wondering where it had gone, asking myself how long before it would return and reoccupy the electric chamber in my empty skull. Lunch was bland Chinese from the Gateway: I wished it was yumcha with a legion of choices of happy little surprises in starchy, shiny wrappings of varying shapes, patterns and colours; you never know what really was in them, this blissful ignorance a disguised blessing for the enjoyment of consuming unrecognisable morsels which excite the senses from anticipation . I almost went to McDonalds but the formidably long queue discouraged me straight away.

The working day ended with my brain sliding slyly back, clumsily adjusting its space, the head fully throbbing, begging for Panadol, the mind quizzically asking: “Where did all the hours and minutes go?” While my brain slipped away, time methodically hacked away the minutes, its labours dissipating unnoticed. I caught the first available train and changed at Central for the west-bound country train. There I slumped wearily on the olive seat, my backpack honoured with its own. My ponderous eyes half-shut, receiving strobed impressions of the train rolling towards the hazy sunset. The proverbial beat goes on.

15 December 2005

Ruthless Meetings

It didn’t transpire as I had hoped it would. I wanted a day without meetings at work so that I could devote my precious day to at least get on the halfway mark of doing that script. But meetings happened, not that they were totally unexpected. Meetings have a soporific effect on my personality. Merely ten minutes after I have sat down in the clinical, clutterless meeting room of beige walls and glass, ubiquitous IP phones, and Zorro-black PC hooked up to the network. No plants, no sign of life, except for the interspersing inhales and exhales from the equally bored stiff attendees. «What time is it? Is it nearly lunch? What are we talking about?» All eyes looked weary and mine weepy despite the forced grins and smiles and sporadic snickerings: weariness piercing the soul with voodoo pins, emasculating the senses, viciously blurring the vision. «Do you hear what I’m saying?» Somehow for a brief moment, some prized seconds encapsulating some words that went unheeded, a question posed, begged a reply. My brain hastily scanned back the words or impressions of words and applied fuzzy logic, urging me to blurt out «Yes, of course.» My eyes hurriedly put on a semblance of alertness, my calloused fingers drumming pensively on the table. «Where are the drinks? And the snackies?» My mind was slipping into a distant reverie, flying dreamily to the hazy horizon. Ghastly seconds. Grim moments that could veritably spell death on the road while managing to drive, for such lack of attention would prove fatal, without a doubt.

But it was only a meeting: one of countless and endless meetings, like a TV series where all the characters have become blandly predictable and the plot irretrievably lost, never to resurge, but rather remain in the dark abyss allocated to the minions of Beelzebub. The minutes have a way of treading on. They are mindless and have absolutely no consideration to matter, animal, much less to humans, who have become time’s slaves, with nary a chance of liberation. The minutes tread on arrogantly, assuming control, commandeering resources, with each minute passing being foisted as a gift or favour handed out to those in attendance, with foreheads furrowed with the streaks of ennui and perchance disgust buttered with disdain, sugared with the niggling desire to be elsewhere in the wicked, motley universe, replete with uncertainties and opportunities clamouring to be missed.

The arrogant minutes decided the end of the meeting, us being led back to the grill-less jail of the office desk, bravely but safely placing our butts on seats that have been reshaped by the contours of our blessed behind. Click, click, clack. Click, click, clack. The hungry keyboard whispered gleefully to the beats of rsi-prone, stiffened fingers, resonating with a cacophonous rhythm, stabbing the ears gently, while the others around pursued cryptic conversations, all sounds converging and mingling into a gargantuan white noise that the deadened ears get accustomed to. The white noise lingered, becoming a deafening silence, reverberating in the soul, reminding it that everything is the Matrix, with its plots and grids dissembling reality. But it’s all so real! The pen I hold now, the notebook I write on with its orange no-frills cover, this seat on the Richmond train, so solid it hurts down here, producing discomfort. The casual stares of people looking in wonderment: «What is that guy writing on the train about?» Most couldn’t care less: some sleepily reading Mills and Boon, or Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, or the freebie MX evening newspaper distributed by foreign students or possibly tourists wanting a bit of money to finance their stay. The other week I heard two young MX-distributing French men, of course conversing in perfect français. I wish I could speak French like that. French has been sadly forgotten like a bad dream. Can I ever truly use it again, retrieve des mots qui j’ai dejà oublié? On ne sait pas. I don’t know. I have to put in a lot of effort with that and my efforts at the moment target scribbling words and phrases, transcribing my fleeting thoughts and sensations. This has become my veritable occupation because my mind and heart are in accord with this activity, to chase the noble aim that is writing.

Fast sliding pictures of trees and fields and houses rolled by from the carriage window. Hectic seconds ticked away, fancy colours in the backdrop changed, worn-out people stood up preparing to get off the destined train station, with its white marine structural theme, where the train lines forked like a snake’s tongue into two different destinations. Two fat ladies struggled with their pace, alighting from the train. I walked quietly to the lift, leaving lazily the throng to climb up the stairs. In front of the lift, the fat ladies were there too, with their cumbersome weight seeking solace in the comfort of the lift, which bided its time in descending from the top floor. Eventually, the reluctant lift door opened up revealing a small space, empty as my brain on waking up in the morning. On the top, it opened up a tad more enthusiastically. I stepped out destined for the forecourt. An old man with short grey hair and black sweater, unusual for the warm weather, toddled cautiously with a take-away cappuccino in his left hand. Two middle-eastern guards in blue vests chatted idly in the forecourt, a CB radio blaring with a female voice being ignored perfunctorily in the excitement of conversation. At bus stand 16, the rubbish bin stood shamefully overflowing with litter, the discards of the day, the unaccommodated trash strewn on the mangy floor. Momentarily, bus 740 came. An African man went up ahead of me, having trouble with his destination, asking for something about his destination. The bus driver summarily ignored his query with a gruff, assertive «One dollar eighty. Three dollars sixty if you want to pay in full. What’ll be?» The African’s question was left ignored, unanswered as the sun proceeded setting, also unheedful of the African’s question, and all the other questions stored in my exhausted head. Morgen ist noch ein Tag.

14 December 2005

Brain Dead

I'm feeling really knackered. I had some sleep for many two or three hours since coming home. I woke up about midnight wide awake yet surprisingly not hungry. Did the two pork buns and the chicken nuggets fill me so much that dinner was skipped? Still, there is the exhaustion from the day's labour which sometimes does not amount to much. Have you had that feeling of having done a lot in the day but in the end there didn't seem much accomplished, like the day has been a complete waste, making you wonder: «Why bother? Yeah, why bother working?» Many times I have wondered, just the Ecclesiastes who rambled about «Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity», about there being nothing new under the sun, all seeming to be tedious and pedestrian. Many times I have asked myself: what is the point of it all? And in the end, the manager says: «We haven't really been doing much. » Yes, after working your butt out for weeks on end, stressing yourself to death, sending your brain to throbbings and pain and stanchless buzzings. There is no end, no respite. Even now as I write these mundane words creeping up my sorry consciousness, the sense of helplessness mingled with unbridled anxiety and strain tax my drooping spirit. Dejected, listless murmurings flow. They flow but without passion. Passion is a luxury in the last few weeks. Yet I seek it. Even in these words. They are elusive as inspiration for poetasters reading comic books. I'm not even sure that makes sense but that will do for now.

What with the constant bombardment of minuses on the flagging sensibilities. Minuses being the negativities, the minus signs imposing on your weeping conscious and your suicidal subconscious, virulently trouncing your crestfallen ego. I visited the A. Library and seeked out counsel and found it in an aged and graceful Celia, who listened, for I wanted to talk and be listened to and hear some words of understanding, maybe compassion. I did get what I wanted; I wish I can say the same thing for the other things I wanted. A listening ear is something we need. Trouble comes to any relationship (whether between husband and wife, parent and child, etc.) when one party stops to listen and pay attention. There are signs everywhere and sometimes we miss the signs which ofttimes can be glaring, staring you in the face, even with dagger eyes. Yet still we miss, or maybe we ignore them, hoping and trusting that the passing of time will somehow efface them, bringing positive or neutral outcomes.

I don’t know how long it takes me to write a thousand words, but that is my goal. I may be talking senselessly, slummocking, groping for words devoid of grace or flair, but this is my edict to myself – to write, accepting the fact that I cannot learn to write except by actual writing, putting words into paper or to an electronic medium. I have made many promises to myself and I really am the only one to break them. Discipline and commitment are wanting. How do I make this overstressed mind stick adamantly to some rigid discipline and unwavering commitment? That starts now and time will be my only judge and prosecutor.

The morning will bring a promise of more labour needing to be done, despite the languor. Ich habe keine Lust mehr darauf. But the idiot show must go on, not to please myself or the manager but to bring home the bacon, even if the bacon itself seems to be not enough. Well, it is never enough. Money talks: it always says goodbye. The future is dark and gloomy. I am trying to pierce through the veil of the perceived future, and all I see is murk. But there are intimations of flickering light and they are enough for now. At least there is some flickering hope in the midst of the inky, wintry visage I now front. Without the flicker, there is no sense to prolong life. I really shouldn’t be saying that but that is what I honestly feel. It’s a wrong thing to say, a wrong thought to harbour. Flickering light, burn brighter and explode into dazzling light and fireworks. Let me celebrate life before I celebrate death, my final healing, my respite from all my anger, disappointment, and desperation.

It is about three hours before daylight breaks. My fingers are not numb but my eyelids are starting to droop heavily. A certain thirst beckons me to fetch something to quench it. But that can wait. These words cannot wait. Like the news items that will grace today’s papers, the words cannot wait for they must fill the blank pages, for the words will breathe life into the blank pages, even if they sometimes talk about death, killings, wars, muggings, racist violence. They breathe life into the dead emptiness of blank pages, like they breathe life now into this page penned in unease and boredom.

Thoughts about supplementing my income. That will be necessary I believe. I have to put some effort into doing that. But doing what? That is a question, tedious it may be. What else really can I do? I have probably been contemplating this question for over two years now and nothing concrete has ever come out of it. Assistant cook perhaps: chopping onions and carrots, slicing vegetables, meat, etc. Doable, feasible albeit not magnificent. Labour is in the kitchen, away from inquisitive eyes. «What’s he doing here, moonlighting? Not enough money to go around, eh?» Well, that’s true. But I don’t need the humiliation from busybodies’ wisecracking observations. Ma vie, elle est a moi and if that’s what I have to do to put a decent roof over my head and feed my ravenous face, then so be it. God himself will bless that. I don’t really need gratuitous comments.

Some flicker, give me some flicker, oh yeah, let it dazzle and burn.

Sweete Themmes runne softly till I end my Song.

14 December 2005