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Tag: Living

The man who had a pair of pliers in his back pocket

The Book Keeper5 Comments on The man who had a pair of pliers in his back pocket

Two old blokes  crossing the road in front of my shop door. Waiting at the kerb first because the traffic is busy. They wore famer’s clothes. What are these? I don’t know, it was the boots that made me think it. They were discussing something of intense interest to both of them. When there was a clear spot in the traffic, they didn’t take it. One was finishing a point and the other was listening and nodding. So he must have been right. He used his hand to bang out the importance of it. I could tell that his hands had done a lot of work.

Then another break in the traffic and it got quiet. The sun shone down. I wondered idly if they might take it. Well, they tried. They bent forward and made sprinting motions. They were still talking though. In the quiet I heard them. One man said (as they made their move), ‘Well, my argument on the cat side of it is – ‘

Suddenly a car with small dogs at each window passed in front of them. Each window had about a one inch gap at the top. Three dogs were screaming furiously through the gaps, one in the front and two from the back.

The men stopped abruptly and watched the car go past. One of them said, ‘Jesus.’

Then they finished the crossing. One of them had a pair of pliers in his back pocket. I still remember that.

Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch

The laughers who laughed

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Laughers are people who just keep on laughing. They use laughing as speech. And each piece of laugh is an actual sentence with words and eyes that only they can understand. These two started it at the door.

‘I don’t actually need any books.’

‘I want a copy of…..I had one….but I gave it away.’ They came in bursting with their own news.

‘Oh right. Lets look around. This is cute. Where’s your book anyway?’

‘I gave it away away away.’ They laughed low and long.

‘See this?’

‘What is it?’ They laughed low and loud.

‘Ohhhhhhh. Ok. Ok. You getting it?’

‘Yeaaaah. Ha. Look at this: Jonathon Livingston Seagull.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Oh God, he’s Jonathon Livingston Seagull.’

I liked their clothes: sandals and soft cotton things from another era. Everything she did, he admired. Everywhere she went he followed. She looked back to make sure. He looked at her making sure.

‘Do you like these books? Do you prefer to cook from a screen?’

‘I don’t know. Is this low carb? Is this good? Should I get it’

‘There’s this guy that I work with at work. He’s quite interesting.’ He followed her listening and prepared to not like that guy at her work who was not interesting.

But she’d already forgotten that guy. ‘Oh God, look at these cat books.’ He followed her, quite rapt and agreeing on the cat books.

They swayed on past me and I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Then they came back, and he read out my signs of advice over the front door:  read wildly read wisely read widely. He looked at her wildly. With his wild eyes over the blue slightly crooked mask.

They went back to classics and stayed there on their knees, leant over books and talked in whispers about Saul Bellow for ages and ages, and outside, the hot day just had to go on without them in it for most of the afternoon.

Illustrations by Linda Rothchild Ollis and Magda Boreysza

Aunty Felicity

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Aunty Facility is a bit of a legend. The little boys flicker through her name, liking the sounds but aware of the stalky pitfalls of so many sounds. That’s how she became Aunty Facility.

She is always a vision in red. She likes clay and wood, wool and sky, chunky falling jewellery, and sound spas. And chocolate. Also, labyrinths, and making things out of weird stuff. And pilates.

Aunty Fesisity is always a vision in red.

Aunty Ficity is always there at Christmas.

Aunty Ficistity is always there at birthdays.

Aunty Fissy is here right now, it’s a good warm evening, and we’ve put our champagne glasses down on the prickles in the orchard, so we can stand close to each other and sort out the family. We are experts on each one of them. If only they would listen to us.

Aunty Fissy has carved a valley through our lives. This is because she’s individual and a lone ranger, much like her mother was. Answers to her own lungs.

Aunty Fisties likes to dance, her way. And she always says, ‘I don’t know’, in a useful tone that invites me to say what I know, which is not much, but she always admires it anyway.

Once she poured Coca Cola over a roast pork to make the crackling good. I was impressed. Culinary! She lives in Melbourne, land of multiwondrous food and dickheads who can’t drive. She never shuts the toilet door when she’s in there in case something happens in the next room that she might miss.

She cries in front of people; I never knew such power until I saw that. Later, I wanted my children to experience her, as though she were another country or something. Which she is.

She’s always interested in things, much like her own mother was . This makes the life she’s interested in gain value and to keep on gaining value. This means our lives. My life. People who do this never know they do it. Instead they look doubtfully at their own life and wonder about its value, which is of course, beyond value, beyond words.

Aunty Fisins suffers from road rage. Once, we were tearing down St Kilda Road, and she said, ‘don’t you look at me like that you bitch’, to the lady in the next car. I was impressed.

Aunty Fiscal bought a folding bike to get fit. Then she sold it.

I am glad my small grandsons get to experience Felicity as though she is an entire empire or something, because she is. Hope she keeps on expanding and doesn’t go back to Melbourne, land of dickhead drivers. Hope she doesn’t give up on us, family, because for one thing, I drive like a dickhead, and also, we all need her.

A man here browsing gave me the impression that he was looking for something specific

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He was with a friend. She kept bumping his shoulder gently so he had to keep moving along. He frowned and read titles closely and bit his lip, put them back and went on to the next one. He gave each book a long fair go. He tipped his head back and narrowed his eyes to get at the reviews on the back and the dates of publication.

‘You find it?’ She asked. He shook his head. She put headphones in.

In Classics, the man rested on one knee. One elbow resting on the knee. One hand resting on the shelf right next to Steinbeck and Stevenson.

His friend took her headphones out and said they needed to go to Woolies later. He nodded. She put her headphones back in. Began to nod gently to another rhythm. He bent closer to the shelf, angling toward another vision. His feet were uncomfortable, splayed out for balance, and he soon moved back and knelt on both knees instead. He was now backed up against the leg of his friend. She had her eyes closed, and was moving, in tiny imperceptible movements, from side to side.

She reached down with her left hand took hold of his ear. She continued listening. He continued looking. Joined.

Yes, but I’m the one who discovered it in the first place

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It was not me who said this. It was a sharp argument that went past my door. And I still don’t know what was discovered, but I hope it was something of value like, right now, a space unoccupied by concern.

This is what people seem to be telling me, with their arms around a carefully chosen paperback, that this is precisely what they want. A space. A place.

It’s possible. I know it is because some customers have one regardless of the world around them. One man laughed and laughed because he’d found a limp soft copy of The Glass Menagerie. He said, ‘I’m a winner today.’ A break may be a small square of sunlight that only lasts a few minutes. But it’s massive. The Glass Menagerie is massive; you can climb into it for as long as you want.

The discovery argument passed the door so loudly that I couldn’t miss it. Two men. One speaking slowly and the other not listening. Wearing blue and orange, the tradesperson’s colours. Going to the bakery. When they returned the argument had softened into pasties with sauce in brown paper bags that were warm with grease and grunts of satisfaction.

I hope it was a good discovery. An unoccupied space maybe, that lasts for hours and goes on past the back fence of the morning’s disappointment and belongs only to the person who found it. I found one in the shop. There was only a screwed up docket lying in it and a bookmark from a previous reader that had fallen from a book.

Painting by Chris Liberti

Home alone, or where everything is

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There’s a pair of gumboots on the floor. There’s a fruit bowl with the ends of three bananas just seeing over the edge. And a stack of paperbacks placed by me yesterday right there with care. Carpentaria is on the top with the bookmark in page 22, place by me this morning right there with bliss with coffee and toast.

There’s washing not folded.

There washing folded not put away. Not mine.

There’s a lego model lying about in tiny crystal pieces. This model, an ice-cream van, even has tiny lego coins and tiny green lego iceblocks made of clear green plastic that looks like glass. There’s a boy with a skateboard and a dog, all part of the ice cream van, left there on the cupboard not quite put together.

There’s a set of MASH, The Recovery Collection, every season, pulled out and begun. Cups and plates on the sink, tin cans and jars, a chopping board, unread letters, a lemon.

Some fabric cooling in a coffee dye that’s mine another project not another one says my mother but it is: another one. My mother in law, Mary, left a bag of stuff that she never finished. I took a bit of wool out of it. I’m going to do something with it.

There’s a puzzle left on the floor, not finished because one letter is missing. So it’s always going to be unfinished. Still, the grandsons pull it out and fiddle. Encouraging any letter to soothe the blank space, but nothing will agree. So it’s left there again. Undone. What’s not there outranks what’s there. We won’t part with what we don’t have.

There’s a box of wood shavings that smell like wine and a computer chord abandoned next to the fireplace. There are three toilet rolls and a cork with a pin in it, treasure for a later game. A doll’s house my grandfather made me, now filled with mostly matchbox cars and stones.

There’s a series of windows looking out at cold hopeful August.

There’s a stack of photos everyone’s been looking through because the person who took them is lost to us now, and because what’s not here outranks what’s here.

People going past, people going past

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I mean, going past the door of the shop because it’s the antique fair weekend, and people are everywhere, scattered like bits of energy all disagreeing in different directions and in different shapes.

A young couple rode past on bikes, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Not so funny now, is it?’ She said this. He said:

‘Yeah. Little bit.’

‘Nobody should be holding my horse’s head.’ She said this. He said:

‘Like, from a helicopter!’ Then they were gone. And I went back to shelving.

A man is moving gently along the shelves, lost in enormous choices. He doesn’t know he’s here. I am playing Don McLean’s Vincent and the man suddenly sings along; one line, ‘reflect in Vincent’s eyes of China blue…’ and he doesn’t know he’s done this.

‘Do you want to go in?’ People at the door. They don’t come in.

‘Where can we cross over?’ People near the door. They don’t cross the road. It’s too busy. They move on.

‘Look there. I used to have that.’ A man is bending toward a display in the window. But the lady he is with keeps walking. She is dressed in soft grey and soft blue and soft white; she is watching the ground carefully as she walks and does not look up at the books in the window that he wants to show her.

Little scooters shoot past with a child attached to the handles of each one. They are hilarious and agile and enjoying the tiny wheeled muscles under their feet. One screams, ‘Where’s Dillan?’

A lady is drifting right in front of me, looking from her phone to the back of a book and back to her phone. She has a red and blue mask. The masks make everyone’s faces smooth and blank, only the eyes left to say things.

Lads on scooters outside again, stopping and starting. Allowing pedestrians, launching off again, unconcerned with masks, uninterested in government, looking only for each other.

Girls walking shoulder to shoulder lean against the window to check phones.

George pours over the art books in the front room, his mask crooked and getting in the way of Rembrandt’s best.

A man with a bottle of milk in each hand lurches past, socks and thongs scraping the top off the footpath.

An argument whips the air outside; ‘Well you shouldena been driving through there, mate.’ Briefly, there’s a young man with red hair and excited eyes. Then he’s gone.

And one man in front of me, still there; moving along the titles and not really here, gone a thousand hectares inward and not likely to return.

Small girl in bike helmet

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A little girl wearing a bike helmet is at the door. She’s still outside looking in; her helmet is knocking against the glass; she can’t get her eyes close enough to actually see anything. She jams the helmet against the glass, and this is when I look up and see here. Her eyes pierce the inside of my shop. Beams streaming in as though from a torch. As though from a lighthouse that won’t compromise. Her eyes rest on me. She makes no compromise; she won’t smile.

In she comes. Wearing pink and grey. The bike helmet still on, the straps swinging softly around her stern chin. She looks at me and does not smile. There are no adults with here. Is it Pippi Longstocking? I sit back and regard her with respect.  

She goes in amongst the books. I go back to Amor Towles.

When I look up she is crouched over Horrible Histories. Then she moves to historical. Then she moves to a shelf and looks at a copy of Inkheart. Then she’s out of my sight; must in sci fi.

Suddenly she’s passing me again. Silent and stern and the straps of her helmet swinging softly, respecting her chin.

She took ages closing the door. She stood in the gap, doing up the straps of the pink bike helmet and looking at me. She stood there for ages doing this. Then she was gone.

When I had my mammogram which was really uncomfortable, and the lady doing the huge machine said, ‘You’ll be right, dear.’

The Book Keeper16 Comments on When I had my mammogram which was really uncomfortable, and the lady doing the huge machine said, ‘You’ll be right, dear.’

I can’t fit into the machine. No matter how I yoga myself into position, there’s no way I can get my entire confidences under that sandwich press. But she poked and pushed me till I did. And while she ironed me flat, I asked her sideways, ‘What was there before this?’

And she said, ‘Nothing that really worked.’

She had to take four images of me. The machine rotates for position number two (which is worse than number one). I was glum and refused to cooperate. She told me to turn my shoulder, grip the handle, and keep still. I did it incompetently.

Then I asked her why I can’t I just have an ultrasound.

She said, ‘Well, it’s like this. An ultrasound takes a picture of one single street. Mammography takes a picture of the entire suburb. An ultrasound can only see what’s at the end of it’s torch.  But this, this lights up ten whole blocks. All at once. We’re looking for trouble brewing quietly.

I was impressed. I cooperated for the last two pictures. We thanked each other, but it should have just been me, thanking her.

So, thank you.

Illustration by Juca Maximo

pulled the knife out, and he was still bleeding

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Sometimes the street outside the shop is quiet. There is no movement, no noise, and nobody passes the shop. Sometimes I go outside and look up and down the road. Then I go back in and get on with things.

Today, it was chaos out there. People crowded past in groups with maps, bags, and phones. The traffic on the road equalled this, stopping, starting, parking, arguing, sounding horns, calling from car windows. And today, the groups on the footpath were so packed together that I heard them and saw them. Every now and again I looked straight into a face that was looking straight back at me.

Somebody yelled, ‘Got to call in here on our way back.’ I didn’t see them. They moved too fast. I hoped they’d come back.

I saw the next couple because they paused at the door. He peered in with screwed up eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Dunno. Medical place I think.’ He looked right at me and abruptly pulled away.

I’m not a medial place.

The next burst of information came a little later.

‘…pulled the knife out and he was still bleeding…’

‘Silly.’

The first speaker turned and looked right at me looking right at him. I thought, ‘Shit!’

Then,

‘You want something to eat, mother? All right, but I’m not fussy about going back to that cafe though.’

‘That wasn’t here, Ed. That was another town.’

He (who wasn’t fussy) humped his shoulders and looked in at me. I looked out at him, sympathetic. I know about getting the right doughnut.

Painting by Charles Hardaker