Tag: Power

Outside, a young boy threads his way across the road and through the traffic. He is guiding a small dog on a lead and he is not watching the traffic. But the traffic watches him and slows down, the drivers look at him kindly. He takes such a long time, encouraging the dog around and through the terrifying dust, the awful engines. He doesn’t pull on the lead even once. And I think that I have never seen such a magnificent show of gentleness.

The last week before Christmas: people are anxiously considering gifts and hoping that I gift wrap. A man brought the Women’s Weekly Farm House Cookbook to the counter. He said: my wife has been looking for this for ages. I don’t know if it will improve the cooking though.

A lady told me that she has a horror of bushfires.

Robert is anxious for a copy of The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manley P. Hall. He comes in to discuss psychotherapy and theories of dreaming.

Three young tradesmen pass the window, one was lighting a cigarette. He said: this is a magic little book shop isn’t it. His workmates ignore him.

I said to a child visiting with her grandmother: do you like to read? And she said: no.

One morning two women are buying science books and they are frantic because they must get to the airport. They loom over the counter and over Robert and criticise baggage limits. They have chosen books on philosophy and they sweep Robert out of the door with them on gusts of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

I can continue to read The Historian in short bursts. I should like to ask someone about the Slovenian Alps. It seems logical to me that Dracula is still alive. I had asked Robert about it and he said: we are all brainwashed by the government.

Then a lady said to me she had better go and get her husband to come and have a look. He was over minding the dog. Soon she came back without him. She said he can wait, she decided to come back herself and have a good look at the Agatha Christies. She said he was moaning at her to get him a couple of good detectives but she wasn’t going to bother with him right now.

I am asked for A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist and The Philokalia Volume 4. Then I was asked for Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Post-Positivist Traditions by Pushkala Prased.

A retired customer said to David that the unstructured life is very very satisfying and that 50 is when we begin our creativity. David said to her that when we read Haiku we use both sides of the brain, that when we read the final line both sides of the brain are engaged and this accounts for the power and profundity of Haiku. They regard each other, very pleased.

A customer came in with a motorcycle helmet and wearing a T-shirt that said: Holdens were created to keep dickheads out of Fords. He asked for Wilbur Smith and Danielle Steele. He talked for some time about Bryce Courtenay.

Then it is quiet again.

June came back to talk about Spike Milligan; she couldn’t phone me because their pensions did not allow them the expense of mobile phones. She told me that John was tricky to live with, (she said it cheerfully)… been with him a long time. But you know, maybe he might change.She’d always thought it, you know. June is brave. She holds on to the counter as she talks, holds on to her hopes.

Outside a motorcyclist is rebuked for parking in the bus zone. Inside, a small boy is leaning over the biographies, leaning against the window and he says: everybody gets mad at Christmas, like my teacher. His mother is looking through the vintage books and first editions. She says: never mind. Here, don’t lean on Nelson Mandela, you might read that one day. But he replies that he probably won’t.

He says: can we get gelati now?

“Come see the true

Flowers

Of this pained world.”

Basho Matsuo: On Love and Barley