Origami Boats

 

He started making origami boats. He needed something to distract him, something to do with his hands.

Large squares of coloured paper, really for children, but suitable for his large, clumsy fingers, turned into cheerful boats at his kitchen table. Why not boats? They seemed the simplest shape to begin with.

He took one in when he visited his mother, with the usual butterscotch and chocolate. She was delighted by it, delighted that he’d made it, delighted that he’d brought it to her.

So he took one with him whenever he visited, until the windowsill and the top of the fridge were covered by boats, until the ceiling fan blew boats around the room in summer, until the staff found a vast glass bowl to be filled with brightly coloured origami boats, a potpourri of the love of a son.

One day she was holding one of the boats when he came in. She wasn’t really sure who he was by then. She just knew that he brought the boats.

“I’ll have to go soon. On a boat. Will I have to go alone?”

“You will”, he said honestly, “but I’ll be here to see you away safely, so don’t worry”.

“And everyone will be there to meet you when you arrive, so you’ll only be alone for a moment”, he lied.

He had no idea what would happen once she sailed away, he just knew that part of seeing her off was telling her this comforting lie.

She pointed to the bowl full of boats. “What will happen to those?”, she asked.

“I’ll look after them.”

“That’s good. I’ve been worried about them.”

She closed her eyes.

He resisted the urge to call the nurse, watched the origami boat fall from her fingers.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

The Young Debussy

 

The young Deubussy,

Kicking a ball

Against a wall

While singing random notes

From a whole tone scale

To himself,

Unaware

Of his own

Genius.

Parkstreet 

Ko-fi

Drinking Gum Tree Words

 

Our restaurant closed early, I can’t recall why. We didn’t care why. We were like school kids given a half day, cleaning up and getting out of there as rapidly as possible. 

Somehow it was agreed we were going for supper, the Greek joint up the road. No one said anything, we all just started walking that way. And it was agreed that the boss was paying, despite no one asking her.

We stopped to buy wine on the way. Phil talked me out of my usual wine policy, cheap and lots of it, together we bought something with a price tag and an unlikely label. That label promised a hint of eucalyptus in the wine, we simply had to try it.

When eucalyptus trees are infested by insects they produce an oil that deters the bugs and heals the wounds they inflict. Some of this oil escapes into the air, when other eucalyptus trees sense it they begin producing the same oil to protect themselves. 

Eucalyptus trees talk to each other.

Their means of communication, oil, is one of the reasons these trees are so susceptible to fire, but all language is dangerous.

Phil and I, both waiters, both armed with Waiters Friend corkscrews, I deferred to Phil’s skills and asked him to open our bottle. Boys playing gentlemen, he asked me to pour. 

I poured. 

We sniffed. 

We tasted. 

We looked at each other. 

The label had not lied to us. There it was, a hint of eucalyptus, some of that oil had settled on the grapes at the right moment, the grapes had been handled expertly, that oil ended up talking to us, joining our table where the boss was flirting with the new kitchenhand and the usually tense chef was laughing along with everyone and the staff of the restaurant we’d occupied like cheerful bees were joining in the joy, adding their own jokes and japes. Everyone was spreading the good oil.

I fell silent. I’d read a lot about wine, drunk plenty, but I’d never felt a deeper understanding of it before. The incredible series of connections, thousands of years of improving grape stock, hundreds of years of improving wine making, vines carried carefully to a new world, that new world making the wine its own, that wine telling me of an ancient line of trees who spent their lives silently speaking to each other, speaking of insects and who knew what else? Do gum trees feel love? Do gum trees write poetry? Do they sing?

Phil turned to me, “you alright mate?”. 

I smiled, told him, “I’m fine, I’m listening, I’m drinking gum tree words”. 

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Dora Tells Good Stories - A Very Nice Suit

 

Dora joined me for coffee this morning.

Back in the 1960s, half a century ago, Dora had the shop next door on this small lane, laundry and dry cleaning.

She told me of a young man coming to pick up a dry cleaned suit, but without his ticket.

It was a nice suit.

Turned out the fellow had lent his Sunday best to a mate, so a wedding could be attended. The mate had done the right thing, kept the suit in one piece, dropped it in for dry cleaning first thing Monday morning on his way to work, but he’d never picked it up again.

It was a very nice suit. 

Dora wanted to hand over the coat hanger with pressed jacket and trousers on it to the young man at the counter, but she had to be reassured it was his, why couldn’t he just ask his friend for the ticket?

That suit was so nice that it had led to the mate meeting a sweet bridesmaid. The sweet bridesmaid had neglected to inform him she was married to a local gangster. The apartment where the ticket was sitting in a fruit bowl on the kitchen bench was a crime scene, the resident had been stabbed to death by an unknown intruder. 

The young man only owned one suit, he had to attend a funeral that weekend, just the same Dora felt uncomfortable with him walking away with the compromised ensemble. She asked him to think about it overnight, to come back the next day if he still wanted it back. 

A year later Dora donated a very nice suit to a church jumble sale.

She said, “clothes make the man”, finished her coffee, wandered off down Llankelly Place, peering into her old shop on her way, but not before apologising for boring me with her old stories.

Dora is a great artist.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi

Us And The Water

 

They say a watched pot never boils. That's an old Earth saying, from around 3000 years ago I reckon. Unless you've been to this backwards planet at the edge of the galaxy you'll have no idea what a pot is, or why it would boil, or why anyone would watch it.

I say it's a backwards planet, but we've learned to like it this way. Unintentionally, or perhaps intentionally, we've made it this way. Over a couple of hundred years most of our equipment has failed due to our poor maintenance. We've never seemed to get around to replacing it. Such things have never seemed important to us. So we boil water in pots.

Pots are metal vessels. We place these vessels over fires that we deliberately light and control. We do this to cook our food or to make hot beverages. I know it sounds weird. Why not just press a button on the AutoChef? Like I said, we like it this way.

You see, the water here is different to other water. It's alive. It communicates with us, in various ways.

It never liked the AutoChef. We could sense a feeling of indignation whenever the water was pumped into the machinery. The water doesn't seem to mind being boiled. It seems to enjoy feeling useful, being involved with us. And we like being involved with the water. We live together here, us humans and the water.

We collect the water from streams, boil it in pots, make tea, then communicate with the tea as we drink it. Because the water is always up for a chat, one way or another. 

The water is part of us, or we are part of the water, or something like that. We think it's some kind of telepathy, but we don't think about it too much. It doesn't seem to matter. 

The same Earth people who said that thing about watching pots boil used to write poetry about water, or use water as a way to describe other things. We figure water has always shared some sort of telepathy with humans. It's just stronger here, or we're more aware of it. 

Our entire lives are like poems. Poems unwritten, unspoken, instead lived. Us and the water. Beautiful and, well, poetic.

It's true though. If you sit and watch a pot of water over the fire, it never boils. The water gets to talking, wants to know what we're doing, dinner for the family or tea, or some warm water for bathing? Until we walk away and look elsewhere the water remains too distracted to boil, too interested in what we're going to do together next. We laugh about it, us and the water, but I guess it's the closest we've come to conflict since we ceased using detergents. 

I wonder if the Earth water all those years ago was trying to get through to its human friends and would take longer to boil when someone slowed down long enough to give it some attention?

Is the water here different, more telepathic? Or are we different, more able to hear? 

We like our backwards planet here at the edge of the galaxy, and our water, and our fire, and our pots. We flow together, an endless stream. Never the same water, never the same human, us and the water.

Parkstreet

Ko-fi