Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: stranger

the bowled soul

Today I had to face some things inevitable but leaving pain. They are not my fault nor anyone’s and there’s nothing I can do about them. But it’s ok. You know how you grapple til you get to grips.

While I was grappling I walked the streets. As I walked I passed a very well-dressed woman talking with an equally well-dressed man. They were speaking in English. As I passed, she said: “and sometimes I feel like I could just lie down? and cry? You know?”

The clipped question marks at the ends of her sentences showed me a desperate soul. How courageous to tell it all to this man who had on a leather jacket and who when she said these words put both of his hands behind his back. I wove round some parked bicycles and came up beside her. “Excuse me. Did I just overhear you say, sometimes you want to lie down – and cry?”

Her eyes were blue and spiky with mascara. To her infinite credit their pupils did not shrink at this accosting by a stranger. “Yes,” she said.

I put my hand on her arm. I have no shame. “I feel that way too… sometimes. May I just say – as a stranger – please – just do it.

“Find someone who can hold you, and really hear you -” (we both inadvertently glanced at the well-dressed man, hovering nearby with a studiously disengaged expression on his face) “- or maybe a counsellor, and just do it. Don’t try to be brave.”

She was wonderful. I just loved her. Her face crumpled into compassion – for me. Women are incredible. “Oh,” she said, “that is so kind of you.” She put her hand on my arm too, as though we were dancing. “Oh thank you.”

As I walked on I felt the tears on my own heart lift and leave. How can this world be bad, that has such beautiful persons on it?

May 15, 2013
structural violets

Group of academics at the breakfast table, they are five women and one man. “So it involves all of my areas of interest,” says one, “gendered language, and… I’ll be doing some structural violence…” She rolls her hand to indicate these topics are known and need not be enumerated. “Oh, interesting,” says her nearest neighbour. The group is companionable and everybody is talking at once. But as soon as the man’s voice is heard (“I did my thesis on that. ~My first thesis,”) everybody shuts up and when I look up they are five women listening in silence, clasping their cups to their bosoms in two cases, gazing at him as audience. In the tiny elevator I encounter one of the women and tell her what I saw. We ride up through the building in peels of laughter. She is clutching a muffin in a napkin, minutely nibbled. “Oh,” she gasps, “thank you, that’s really interesting! Oh, I’m going to reflect that back to the group.”

March 31, 2013
street friendships

I just fell into one of those instant street-friendships that sometimes lead somewhere and very often don’t. It is so lonely & exacting trying to make a life in a completely new city, I seem to have been doing it over and over the last ten years as I wonder: where is it that the tribe of people ~ who are poets, and deeply sensitive & reflective, and are peace-loving activists, and like to laugh and dance a lot, and care about the world and all who sail in her ~ find their home?

So this was not a moment too soon. I’d come out of the Underground and was tramping through the snow which has mounted so rapidly all day today. A woman beside me suddenly spoke. “What? Is this Christmas?” She indicated the white sky, the buried trees, the white-piling pavements. “Yes,” I said, “and I was just noticing, I have never seen these kind of tiny snowballs before – they’re not really flakes – they are like drops of water.” “Stimmt,” she said, musingly, gazing at the tiny white balls crunching underfoot. She is a yoga teacher and teaches art therapy. We reached the snowy markets and parted. There were all kinds of activities this weekend, she said, to celebrate Spring – such as it is – and would I like to have coffee in this gallery cafe her mate runs and go for a wander. Well, as it happens yes, I very much rather would. Thank you, snowboat universe.

March 19, 2013
everything soft, and white, and powdery

Tramping through the fresh snow, everything soft and white and powdery. Like daylight the snow lies unequivocally on everything. Six bursting, screeching, whumphing shapes pass overhead like white explosions and resolve themselves, by a process of frantic backpedalling, into swans. As they land on the water they one by one become graceful and fleet. I smile at the tall man opposite, who stops. “I know you! I know your face.” “Well, I don’t think so, I’m Australian, I’ve only been here a few months.” “But I know your face! Pretty face, you’ve got. Can I take it?” He holds up a camera with a large, open lens. “What for?” I say. “Nicht zum verkaufen,” he assures me (not for selling), “just because I’d like to.” He shows me the picture, my kilos of red scarf and ridiculous beanie. Around us the world is white and a golden dog plunges through the fresh snowdrifts, spluttering. The swans have forgotten their panic and sail like perfection under the very old, arched green stone bridge.

March 10, 2013
I’m not sure you’re taking this entirely seriously

Went to the outdoor store to try on their $1000 goose-down & coyote fur jackets. “Made in Canada,” the sales guy explained as I was falling about laughing at the price: “Canadian wages.” “Ah,” I said. “Everyone wants Fair Trade but no one wants to pay any more for it.” He leveled his trigger finger at me: You Are Exactly Right.

Who has the money for this kind of malarky? They had a hat, with furry earpieces, a snip at 300 Euros. That’s, oh, around 375 Australian pesos. They had parkas in a seductive scarlet which have big hoods rimmed in fur. Magic. You put the hood up and you can’t see two feet in front of your face. The salesman folded the fur back for me: “Now can you see out?” “The street, yes. Stars, no.” He let his head fall to one side. “I’m not sure you’re taking this entirely seriously.”

Finally I bought a more ordinary hat, very warm, so warm it made me want to strip off a couple of layers. Leaving the shop I saw the original salesman, who had been called away to another section, leaning on a display cabinet of vicious-looking knives. He looked so bored. I tapped on the window from the snowy footpath to make him look up. In pantomime I showed him the successful and awesome furry-hat purchase, drew it out of my satchel and put it on to demonstrate how it makes me look like a Russian farmer maiden. His face split in an enormous grin. Thumbs up, he said. Thumbs up, I said. Thumbs up, said his colleague over his shoulder. Warm in the brain. It only now occurs to me the word ‘demon’ is embedded (devilishly) in the word ‘demonstrate.’ So all those door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen in the 50s were maybe like the anecdote, I mean the antidote, to God’s helpers who spread out on the ground and say, You take the poor suburbs, I’ll take the rich.

January 20, 2013
like a cake

Went down to the print shop to ask him to make me a copy of one of the two novels I’m hoping to finalize this winter. Like a PhD student at the far end of his thesis I lean on the counter and say cosily, “I wrote all of that. Can you believe…?”

The man laughs, a friendly laugh. I am thinking of the cartoon where the doctor examining an X-Ray tells his disappointed patient, “I’m sorry, Mr Bundle. I’m afraid you really don’t have a novel in you.” I say to the print guy, “I can see now why not everyone writes books. They are hard work.”

He spends a long time stacking and restacking the pages with his expert hands, the paper silky and obedient. Turning the pile of pages to stand landscape, then portrait, then landscape again he deftly slaps all the spiky leaves into one great block. Then he stows the whole thing in an exactly A4-sized carton which springs open from flat stowage. Glancing at me he reaches behind him and takes another carton, which he fits over the top. “Like a cake!” I say and carry it home in two hands through the freezing wind.

January 17, 2013