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

Dora Tells Good Stories - A Working Class Lioness

 

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 one of the working girls running into the shop, terrified and unable to explain why. Dora hid the young woman among the dry cleaning at the back of the store, then stood at her counter and prepared to face whoever it was pursuing the frightened lass.

A working class lioness.

Dora seemed unaware of the courage she displayed in this moment. This was just what Kings Cross women did for each other. They didn’t need to be told about feminism, they were teaching the subject.

It turned out the aunt of the sex worker was taking a stroll along Darlinghurst Road, and the aunt didn’t know about this career choice, and the aunt would have told the mother. A gangster or a disgruntled customer could be dealt with, but disappointing mum was too much.

Dora laughed at her role in this faux drama, 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

The Tea Lady

She was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady.

Although that’s not strictly true. Her aunt had been the tea lady, but when the niece took over no one seemed to notice, they looked at her tea trolley, not her. 

She was an institution, or part of the furniture.

Management saw her as furniture and spoke openly in front of her, relying on a long tradition  of class confidentiality. She never breathed a word of what she heard, she was the tea lady, she knew her station.

However . . . if she overheard that someone was to be fired she couldn’t help herself, she always felt so bad for them, she would serve them first in the morning, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits. This became office folklore, the hottest tea, the new tin of biscuits, your last meal before being summoned to management, before execution.

He looked at her, not just her trolley. He asked after her aunt, he repaired her wobbly wheel, he thanked her every day.

When his ship sailed for the war he didn’t see her at the quay, waving and crying. 

He returned with medals and a wife, one knee that wouldn’t bend and a ringing in his ears that would never end. Over the next couple of years his medals tarnished, his English rose  withered, then died, partly due to the heat, partly due to the disappointment of marrying a dashing war hero then being married to a city office clerk.

She was the tea lady, the stoic tea lady. She waited one year and one day after the death of his wife before she tried to gain his attention. She brought him the hottest tea, a new tin of biscuits.

Thinking he was to be fired, he struck management on the nose, stormed out shouting something about not fighting for this, and she never saw him again.

She was the tea lady. She remained the tea lady until management saw her as an unnecessary expense, with coffee shops all around the staff could buy their own beverages. As part of a “family company” PR campaign the tea lady received a generous annuity. Her niece, who pushed a trolley on a new jet airliner, took her on trips to places she’d only heard about on the wireless, and heard about during the war.

One day, as she wheeled her luggage through a busy airport, she thought she saw him in the crowd, then realised the man she saw was the age he had been when she last saw him. Back when she was the tea lady. She’d always been the tea lady. She saw him repairing the wobbly wheel on her luggage trolley, then she was crying, and waving, but they were on the ship together, waving back at the crowd of strangers on the quay, and there was no war, and she was the tea lady and she’d always been the tea lady and she wished she could tell her niece not to cry for her. 

Parkstreet

Ko-fi