You're never too old to learn something stupid

The Golden Slippers

 She was thinking of shoes. They were a problem since she could remember – she had sensitive skin on her feet and the shoes (sandals, flip-flops, boots or even slippers, old or new) were always hurting her. Every new season meant blisters and band-aids on toes and heels.

Now that she had to get her outfit ready for tomorrow she was thinking of footwear.

Her mind wandered back to distant childhood summers into the countryside when she could walk around barefoot.
The dirt road worn itself from yellow argyle clods and grooves into a flat, hard and even surface. A dust so thick and fine covered it, that if touched it felt like the finest powder - flour or cement.  Only hot.
It was wonderful to walk on it. Her feet were covered in that silky powder to their ankles. She ran on it and nothing hurt the sole of her feet. No matter how fast she ran. A golden cloud followed her like an autumnal cape. She was the princess, the fairy of clods, dust and bare feet.

One late afternoon the city girl was sitting on the bench by the gate of Grandma’s house.
A bunch of children came from the fields behind a small herd of cows.
It was so hot that week .The dust on the road became even thicker and more velvety than ever.
The cows walked slowly, ruminating lazily. Their big, beautiful eyes were half closed and idly. One by one they were lifting their tails sideways, leaving behind their droppings. The dung was splattered in the dust with a muffled sound and got instantly coated by the fine powder of the road.
The children were playing a game they named “Who gets the biggest slippers”.
It went like this: they guided their feet from a guessed dust-covered dung to another, leaping on it like frogs on a pond from a water lily leaf to another. They did that until their feet became wrapped in thick “slippers” painted golden by dust. Who had the thickest slippers for the next five steps, won. 
The winner did not have to round up the eventual stray cows until they passed the next 10 houses.

The city girl knew the children; they were play pals. She thought the game was great, so she joined in. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Later, Grandma disagreed, but that was another story.
The dung was mushy and warm. It smelled like mowed grass, only more pungent.
The city girl managed to build herself a pair of boots. She was declared a winner. She felt proud.
She helped her friends round up the cows in the stable and then the whole group went back to play on the road. Everyone was wearing a pair of dung slippers. Now they were paying “Catch me if you can”. Soon, the dust on the sleepers absorbed the moisture; the slippers cracked and then fell off. The children’s feet were covered now in thin but firm dust socks. If you scratched the sock off with a stick, the skin underneath was green and smelly.
That did not matter much to the city girl for that moment. Playing was far too much fun to leave room for any concerns of any kind.

Later that night it mattered though. She blamed the chooks for it. As soon as she entered the pen, they made a terrible noise. When Grandma rushed to the pen with a broom in her hand to chase away any eventual ferret, she found only her grand daughter there. The girl was trying to wash off the green on her feet in the chooks' water bowl.

The Village With Purple Windows

She was out there in the sun. All that heat buzzing like a cloud of bugs. The air trembling with heat at the top of the hill. Insects flying around or crawling quietly on her bare legs. The tree-trunks heavy with ants. The road, thick with dried mud and powdered with fine yellowish dust. The sky blue and clear and bright and very high. Everything scented heavily in a summery way. Nobody around. Red poppies in the green of wheat mixed with blue cornflowers. A light breeze pushing grass blades to a side or another every now and then. The electric lines between the shabby wooden poles vibrating their own tune.

There was a taste of happiness in the sky of her mouth. She took deep breaths of that deliciously tasting silence. Or air. Or happiness.

There were days like that.

First it is early morning. Roosters are singing everywhere. Cock-a-doodle-doo! The birds would follow and she hears them like through a dream. But she is aware it’s not a dream somehow. She was asleep on that hard mattress stuffed with straw. Sometimes at night straws poked through the home-woven sheets at her legs. She had scratches on her body the next day and no memory of what happened or when.

Then the morning grows louder. A herd of cows is passing by the house. You can hear their hoofs trotting on the rock-hard dirt road. It sounds like they walk on asphalt. One moos. She could hear even the splatter of the dung they drop.

All that was the sound of the countryside. Nothing but the sound of the summer holiday.

A deep sleep took her away from it all. It is relaxing to know that she is there. Free and happy. She felt safe now.

No alarm clocks.

No cars.

No high heels on the pavement outside the window.

No school uniform.

No ringing bell heard from the corner of the street. No running before the big gate slammed shut and locked.

No panic.

No fear at the teacher’s inquisitive voice. No dread at the teacher’s raised voice. No fearful anticipation of punishment. No teary eyes for some minor or major injustice.

No aggressive boys that pulled at your plaits.

No sad walk back home.

No brick to pull in front of the door to reach for the lock.

No empty, dark room with a bed and a table and some chairs looking abandoned.

No more cold meals to warm up on an electric heater.

No more stains on the white collar. No more panic of what mom would say. No attempts to wash the stain.

No fear that time had passed and homework was not done yet.

No terrors that in 30 minutes Mom will be home and see the unfinished meal on the table.

No guilt for the unfinished homework any more. No arguments. No tears. No grounding.

It was summer. Summer-summer-summer. Suuuuumeeeer!!

She could hear now a fly droning, trapped between the purple book covering paper in the window and the glass. The paper was pinned on the window frame to keep the sunlight away. A fly or two made their way in there almost every morning. They made enough noise to wake her up.

Now the room was bathed in a purple haze.

The book covering paper was very dark in color at the beginning. Grandma put it in the windows every year to make the bedroom dark, just for her.

Every week the paper became lighter in color letting more and more light through.

The whole village had purple windows. The paper was rough and furry. It had tiny bits of wood in it. They were flat splinters that were shinier than the rest of the furry surface.

At school, it was compulsory for everyone to cover all the books in that paper. Exercise books and manuals alike. Then a label that looked like a huge lacy stamp had to be stuck on the cover. The name of the student, the subject and the form number had to be neatly written on each book.

Every year when the school started, her mother had to buy a big roll of paper and cover her books.

Students who had their books still uncovered in purple-blue paper two weeks after school begun, were sent back home. They were sent with a note for their parents as early as nine o'clock in the morning. They were suspended from school for that day.

Her mother hated covering her books every year. She mumbled and cursed while doing it. She expressed her hopeless desire that the girl would grow up faster and be able to cover her books all by herself.

It was a hard job covering the books. The paper was cheap and brittle. It cracked and ripped in places. Than another sheet had to be used. It was also too thick and hard to crease nicely. It would absorb the glue Mom put at the corners to hold the folds. Once the glue was sucked in, a big wet stain appeared. Then the stain would dry up and harden. Once dry, the glue crumbled and came off.

The dye used to color that paper was also cheap. After covering two-three schoolbooks for the girl, Mother’s fingers were purple.

If the children had to carry books in their hands, the hands and fingers became purple too. There were always few books to carry. No matter how big the school backpack was. There were a lot of books for every subject studied starting with grade 1. At least two for each plus a manual.

There were about 5 subjects to be studied every day.

Sometimes when it rained a bit and she would carry some books under her arm, the uniform would get stained.

The uniform was a checked black and white dress with a black apron in front. For the political meetings and gatherings, the little girls had to wear white aprons instead of black. They were the festive ones, for those special days only.

The white bits of the uniform would turn purple in the rain from the book covering paper. The paper itself would dissolve in the rain and fall down in pieces, staining the books too.

Mother had to wash the uniform for the next day of school and iron it. She was always angry late at night when she came home and saw the dirty uniform. She was tired, but now she had to wash and dry and iron quickly that uniform for the girl.

On the left sleeve was sown a piece of cloth with the name of the school and the matriculation number. Every student in the country had a number. Every school printed those numbers for their students on differently coloured fabric. At a glance, the passes by knew from which school the kid in the street was just by the colour of the fabric the number was printed on. All they had to do was to write down the number on that piece of cloth and report any naughty kid to the Head Master.

The fabric on which the school numbers and names were printed were colour–fast. Even more than the dye used for the book covering paper. Every time the uniform was washed, the number had to be taken off, and after the uniform was pressed it had to be sown back on. If the uniform were washed with the number on, it would stain. The numbers were usually printed on a marron or burgundy or navy blue background. The lettering was yellow or white. The lettering paint was thick and glossy. It cracked and peeled of if washed.

Very few children had two uniforms.

We cannot afford a spare one, the Mother said. They are expensive and you grow fast. It’s a waste of money to buy two every year. Besides, we do not have the money.

The purple-blue book covering paper was very popular with farmers and villagers. It was easy to find, cheap, and it lasted all summer long in the windows. It kept the sun away.

Every sunny day took away some color of the paper. Slowly, from dark purple-blue it became just purple. Without any blue in it at all. After a while, it became a fainted violet. Then the co lour turned into a light lilac. Then it went to a dark pink and finally, if it was left in the window for a year it became pale beige.

She could now hear Grandma’s voice. She was talking to her Aunt and Uncle on the veranda.

That was the best thing in the morning.

Their voices on the veranda meant summer. The voices meant holiday. They meant tenderness and love. They meant freedom.

No uniforms – just shorts.

It felt good to have to wake up to those voices there.

The Uncle and the Aunt were Mother’s younger brother and sister. They came to the village from different cities to bask in the summer feeling the same as the girl.

For them, some part of the summer also meant no more work and no more fears.

No more crowded buses in the morning. No more lack of buses in the afternoon. No more waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning every day. No more long hours at work. No more shopping and standing in line for the daily needs. No more stores and post offices and government departments and markets. No more crowds in the streets, no more compulsory public meetings to attend. No more work brought home for the weekend. No more worries.

The girl loved the Uncle and the Aunt very much. The sound of their voices was reassuring. She loved her Grandmother as well. She loved her Mother a lot too, but she was afraid of her almost as much.

What she loved the most though was the summer.

Summer came with absolute freedom.

In Grandma’s village she could walk around by herself for hours. She was allowed everywhere. The whole village and its surroundings were safe territory. They belonged to her. She could play as much as she liked. She could dress anyway she liked. She could eat fruit all day long. She could boss around all the peasant children. They all looked up to her, no matter what. Even the older ones. She was from the city.

The girl loved the purple windows of the village. Behind every one of them there was a cool, dark room with herbs drying on the top of the wardrobes. With shelves where unripened quinces and apples were placed on folded newspapers to ripen up. They perfumed the rooms with their scent. The rooms also smelled like fresh hay and straw, a scent coming from the peasant mattresses.

All that blended with the perfumed oil incense flickering under the icons. Around the icons, a bunch of dry basil dipped in holly water in church was placed.

Some houses had no floorboards. The floor was made of clay. The clay was fine, so well compressed and so even, it became shiny as polished concrete after people walked on it for a while. The clay floor was cool and smooth. It was nice to walk on it barefoot in the hot summer days.

In some houses they put mats made of reeds in the winter. The mats were warm and soft and protected the clay floor from becoming wet and muddy in winter when people brought in some snow on their boots.

Other houses had wooden planks on the floor. The wooden floors were covered with home made rugs. The rugs were long, narrow and colorful. The women of the house wove them during the long, snowy winter evenings. Old shirts and old skirts were ripped into long, narrow ribbons. The ribbons then were woven into rugs. All the rugs were striped. You could see in them what the entire family wore for two generations. Their old clothes made the walk on the floorboards quiet, so that the kids and grand kids could sleep in the morning.

Then there were the attics with their own smell of wool and smoked sausage and ham. Big areas of the attic were covered by white sheets. On the white sheets there was grain, put out to dry well before being taken to the mill and turned into flour. It was hot in the attics, but no matter how hot the summer, the wheat grains were cool. She loved rolling on them. But that was a secret. Nobody had to know. Children were not allowed to play with food –not even in the form of grain. The villagers believed that food was a gift from God. Children were not supposed to play with food. It was disrespectful to God.

When the days were cold the stoves in the houses were stuffed with wood. The smoke climbed up to the sky through the chimneys. The chimneys came through the ceiling of the rooms into the attic and then they pierced the roofs and showed themselves above through the tin roof or the straw roof or the tiled roof. Inside the attic they looked like a square column made of bricks. Somewhere in the middle they had a small tin door. The chimney sweeper cleaned the chimney through it. The inside of the chimney was large and coated with thick soot. It smelled like fire and charcoal and ashes inside the chimney. There were hooks and bars inside the chimney too. That was the place where the bacon and sausages were smoked. In the cold season they were smoked every day by the fire warming the house in the stoves down bellow. Then in the spring they were hanging on the rafters in the attic to dry even more in the fresh air draft. When summer came, they were put back in the chimneys through the same tin door. There, it was cool and dark and dry no matter how hot the summer was.

The attics are the second storeys of any house. Nobody has any sheds. Everybody has a cellar, an attic and a barn. Vegetables and wine are stored in the cellar. Hay and the cows and sheep or horses are in the barn.

All the interesting old things are stored in the attics: furniture, toys from the grown up children, old clothes, old photos, Christmas decorations and costumes and masks, old school books, bits and ends, crockery, old tools, jars for preserves like gem and pickles.

It is a child’s paradise, playground, hiding place and secret world.

Then there were the walnut trees with their bitter scented leaves. Grandma’s walnut trees are big and old. It is nice to climb them. Their branches are as comfortable as armchairs.

Grandma bakes the bread in an adobe style oven built in the garden. Right at the back by the pond. It is smothered with fine clay and painted with white lime on the outside.

She makes a big fire in the oven and then she racks aside the burning wood, uncovering the hot brick floor. On the flat wooden shovel with a very long handle, she puts first the walnut leaves in a thick pile and then a big, slightly flattened ball of dough.

Carefully she slides the dough and its bed of leaves onto the very hot bricks. She repeats it one after another until she fills the oven with balls of dough.

When the bread is backed a while later, the walnut leaves, burned, blackened and brittle, will peel off easily, leaving their shapes stamped onto the bottom crust. The crust is scented and has the best taste in the world.

Summer comes also with the summer rain. The rains in the countryside are scary and wonderful. They come with big winds, dark skies, thunders, lightning and big drops - enormous drops of water. Watching a summer rain from Grandma’s veranda is like watching a movie. The gutters turn into waterfalls. The ditch in the street turns into a small river. The bubbles on the “river” surface are as big as ping-pong balls. The new river looks like the boiling water in a pot. Suddenly, geese and ducks are swimming and dipping on it without hiding their joy. Tomorrow that river will change into few pools of very shallow, muddy water. It will last only a day or two, but there will be tadpoles in them nevertheless. The heavy drops of rain fill up the grass under the mulberry tree with indigo colored fruit otherwise beyond the reach of short little girls.

The village with purple windows smells like wet dust, wet hay and charcoal, burned strawberries and freshly backed bread.

Next day after the rain the family goes to the forest to pick up mushrooms.

The forest is, like any other forest, enchanted.

It looks and feels like a castle with the roof made of leaves and the floor carpeted with moss. You cannot see the sky. Up there is just bright green everywhere. A multitude of colonnades supports the green roof – the tree trunks. They are huge and have very tall, extremely straight dark trunks.

The forest has an echo, like any other enchanted castle. You can whisper in it and even the whisper has en echo.

The mushrooms to be picked are called porcini mushrooms and the other ones are called “little ears”. The porcini have thick stalks, huge caps and underneath the caps the flesh is yellowish-green or yellowish-brown and spongy. When the girl presses there, her finger leaves a reddish fingerprint. It looks like the mushroom is bleeding. The girl regrets making the mushroom bleed. The spongy part has millions of little holes in it.

Leaves are attached sometimes to the tops of the mushrooms so well, the girl cannot see whole bunches of them hiding at the base of a tree. She passes them by. But the Aunt or Uncle calls her back. She hops happily, skipping and singing and picks them up.

Wild strawberries grow in the forest. They shine like drops of blood from under the leaves. Their aroma is wonderful. Their taste is better than any candy.

Every now and then an owl flies away, scared by the echo. A fox barks like a puppy somewhere in a distance. A badger or a porcupine disappears behind a shrub in a hurry. If nobody talks for a while, a deer might stop and look around for a full minute wit her very beautiful eyes.

Peasants from the neighboring villages pick up mushrooms too after the rain. They greet everyone politely.

Those peasants only live just 2 kilometers away but they look a bit different. They wear differently fashioned clothes. Men wear tall straw hats with very wide brims and a black ribbon around the base. Their white shirts have large sleeves with tiny cuffs held together at the wrist and around the neck by milk-white tiny glass buttons. Women’s dresses are all dark, printed with tinny-tiny white floral patterns. Their aprons are made from the same material like their skirts. The aprons’ patterns and the skirts’ blend together. Their head kerchiefs are brightly coloured with big floral patterns – mainly roses. Red roses on green. Red roses on yellow. Red roses on blue.

The old women wear only black head kerchiefs. The married women wear their head kerchiefs tied under their chin. The young unmarried ones wear their head kerchiefs tied under their heavy plaits at the back of their neck, so their beautiful white necks are exposed to the world to see. They also wear brightly coloured beads around their necks.

Both men and women wear sleeveless black vests made of thin felt on top of their clothes even in summer.

They pick up different mushrooms. In Grandma’s village nobody eats those. The neighbouring villages’ peasants tell everyone from Grandma’s village not to eat the porcini because they are poisonous. The people from Grandma’s village tell them the red hats and the orange “little ears” they pick are poisonous. The exchange is very polite, but every group is quite certain that the others are wrong.

The evenings in the countryside are even better than the days. Old women come to Grandma’s house to visit. Some of them haven’t seen her since last summer. Grandma does live in the village only from the onset of spring till early autumn. She spends the winter in a distant city with her youngest daughter. The old women bring with them some of their own grandchildren. That is nice of them, the girl thinks. Now she can play some city games with other city children. The village children join in, learning the games. It’s nice to play in a large group.

After a review of the local gossip the old women start telling stories. The village children go home to sleep. They have heard those stories many times before. During the long winter evenings when half the village women gather in a house or another to spin the wool together, everybody tells stories and fairy tales. The village children also have to take the cows to the herd the morning at the crack of down.

The city children gather around the old women, leaning against the laps of their own grandmothers. The very young ones fall asleep pretty soon. The older ones listen intently to the stories with their mouths open in wonder. An ancient oil lamp with smoked glass casts scary dancing shadows on the faces.

There’s no electricity quite everywhere in the house.

It’s only the Sixties in the Village with Purple Windows…

My defunct blog & Herta Muller

http://www.flickr.com/photos/costi-londra/337218214/

When I started this blog I was in a mood of talking to myself in a loud voice. The mood had passed away with the onset of my health issues and then my blog died.

I had so many things in my mind when I started this blog here - all those stories that needed to be glyphed in order to be re-evaluated, reassessed and and properly weighted by a later re-reading.
Memories and facts loom in our heads for years in a more or less fuzzy form. Every now and then they need reviewing - that comes in the form of trivial stories exchanged with other people at various gatherings or, they take a graphic (almost palpable) form in writing.
Through body language and dialog in the case of conversation, or through re-reading after a prescribed amount of time, our memories and facts get validation, taking shape and coming into existence from their more vague incipience in our minds.

I am reading now Herta Muller's books - I've spent quite some money on them because if before she became the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2009, nobody bothered really talking about her much or reading her outside of Germany - whilst now, all of a sudden they thought of making a good buck out of her recent fame and translated/edited/published her in a hurry at a very high price.

Herta Muller put me to shame - because she writes about Nesblandia and ironically she has identical memories about certain corners of that transcendental space like myself.
The similitude between our life made me remember my blog.
The coincidences go so far between Herta Muller and I, that here and there it seems like we were living each-other life at certain points in time.
I have spent some years in Nesblandian villages too as a child and felt those fears just the same. I've eaten the same foods and judged the same people. My father was some sort of a Nazi as well. I lived under a regime of terror all my best years, also. In fact, we lived our childhoods so close to each other and exactly at the same time (being born the same year) that she could be me and I could be her - minus the Nobel.
We might write and speak in different languages right now, but that is irrelevant.
Herta Muller needed to get out of her system those facts and those memories and she wrote a blog in a book because she needed to reassess and re-evaluate, and properly weight her facts and memories submitting them to further public reading.

My ambitions do not go public yet - but I need to pretend to speak through knitted letters that then flow into words - to an audience, just because speech, in its oral or graphic form has been created for the sole purpose of communication.
I might speak in a void, the same way I think, but that is irrelevant as well, as long as I am using the proper tools of communication.
Only this way I can re-evaluate, reassess and and properly weight by a later re-reading, my own/Herta's life.

----- Original Message -----
From: Z
To: X
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 5:24 PM
Subject: RE: X has sent you an e card

Hi X

How are you? I hope this email finds you and the family well!!
I am little unsure what you are congratulating me for - I am currently looking after Y's job for the next few months and having a lot of fun trying to get my head around how things work - it definitely has been challenging but it is a very interesting job so its not all bad!!!

Tell me what is happening in your world!
(Thank you for the card - it was a lovely gesture.)

Cheers,

Z



Hi Z Dear,

I did not answer immediately to your polite question because in My World, things are more than a bit rough around the edges and when they get like that, I do not feel much attraction for e-mail writing. When I do, I have outbursts of anger or fury or frustration and out of some shred of respect left in me when it comes to the others out there, I refrain from writing, in order to shelter some delicate/sensitive creatures from too much trauma exposure...;)
Briefly (could you believe it? I personally can’t, ‘cause I know it’s just a figure of speech) :

Since I've left that place of milk and honey where we worked together, called DEFG for short, apart from not getting paid from anywhere a cent for about 5-6 weeks and using all my savings to survive, my son was diagnosed about two weeks into my unemployment with type 1 diabetes ( juvenile diabetes with late onset, just 2 weeks before his 30th birthday). Although he weighs only 63 kg at 1,72 m tall, and never been in his life anything but a skinny boy, never hooked on sugars or such, that hit us with the speed of a turbo jet. In intensive care, he was administered about 25 insulin injections in 24 hours to prevent an imminent irreversible diabetic coma = death. The silly boy thought just few days before that he had a sun stroke, lucky he saw a doctor the last minute. No wonder the doctor once got his results panicked so much that he went in person to my son's home to pick him up and take him to the hospital in his personal car.
Unfortunately the silly boy was not home, so by the time he checked his messages on his mobile, after the flat battery was recharged, he hardly had time to reach the hospital - driving himself there. Lucky he did not lose control of the will with all that blurry vision he had due to advanced hypoglycemia of 25 when the normal would be 5.5.

But that's another insane story, with which I had to deal at a time of great distress and believe me, I had very little strength for that, if any. My strengths were eroded to the bone by then by my psyche shadowed by the way I was kicked in the back by DEFG for which I broke my bones (in my shoulders).
Meanwhile my left shoulder started to play on me bursitis symptoms because I abused it for almost 1 year, forcing it to do the job of 2 shoulders and the damn thing was not used to that type of abuse since I am not left handed, but rather right handed. For which reason I had to have now injections with steroids in both shoulders - a bit of a pain in the ass (or rather in the shoulders).

I even had a job interview, but unfortunately I had to tell them that I had bursitis - that is just fair or maybe the law - you have to tell those things, just in case.
Of course, I did not get that job. Who wants a disabled person of my age on their payroll? I am somebody else's mess, why should they want to take me in, if those that I “belonged to” and turned me into a mess discarded me?
The Unemployment Office refused to pay me unemployment because DEFG could not be bothered to issue a separation certificate for me on the spot, they took their time hoping that I had some secret lover to provide for me, judging perhaps by themselves. So, until that desirable separation certificate happened, I had to live on my savings. Although I went in person at DEFG HR to ask for it in February and even met V in the street while coming from there (not long before she left you all...) I was not issued one, not only on the spot, as I stupidly believed possible, but not even weeks after my visit there.

Lucky I had some little savings that I was building up slowly with my daughter, trying to dream a trip to our personal corner of Nesblandia in the future, since we had no chance to go there in years; otherwise now I would not have had a computer to write you this message from...because if I could not pay my bills, I must have had the need to sell it to pay the movers. Considering also that under a bridge would be no power plug to operate such fine machinery.

Therefore after a month and a half when I finally got that separation certificate attached to my recreational leave entitlements, the Unemployment Office refused to pay me again, because now I had 1200 dollars in the bank from what was supposed to be my holiday money...I was rich! Wow! So until that lasted - no charity for me. Who did I think I were - some drug addict, to deserve help?

In my knowledge, always doubted by the blessed people at DEFG, I knew for a fact that a person who sustains a work related injury of any kind, physical or emotional, cannot be put in the street like that, because of the law that precludes such things. I'm a law abiding person and I like to investigate legalities on my own, just in case I might be tempted at times to be in the breach, due to ignorance - a thing that I would warmly recommend to anybody, just in case.
Personally, I hate ignorance.
Ignorance is the mother of stupidity and I hate stupidity too. So I try to work on that all the time - a fact that attracts foes - because ignorance is for some, as they say - bliss.

In my informed state, I knew that in a banana country like my corner of Nesblandia upon which we look down onto, such things like throwing people in the street just because they were on a contract of some description or another, were avoided in case of injury, and here even more so.
At least module number 6 of my course in Community Cultural Development told me so when I took that module about insurance covers. Which I brilliantly passed at the time - a big while ago. Not to mention the module that was part of the recent Certificate 4 in Government that I so honorably acquired at the generous expense of DEFG past November - so fresh still in my little devious mind.

But hey - who trusts my knowledge of certain things since I am not as credible as a high school drop-out would be...because I am old-ish, do not drink regularly except at Christmas and do not exhale the right pheromones any more...?

I have this obsessive idea - the wrong one, of course - that people with education have more knowledge than those without education. A defect of mine generated by my 24 years of studying all those courses and getting all those degrees. In my silly/sick mind, that, counts for something.
I know it's wrong and selfish and frowned upon in this country, but what can I do, that's who I am.
I am - the Other as Simone de Beauvoir said = a crazy gal coming here with the wrong ideas, like this one about education. European arrogance - I believe must be called by some.
Very despised here by most.

To make a long story short, In April things started to precipitate:

* My daughter graduated from Uni and looked good in a toga and cap;
* Few days later the Unemployment Office started to pay me those glorious almost 500 a fortnight;
* My son's glycemia went back to normal with the help of adjusted insulin, instead of jumping up and down all the time;
* I finally found a pair of flared jeans that were no hipsters ( could you believe it!?) for just $14 at Harbortown. That, even I was able to afford;
* Somebody from DEFG called me on the phone and insisted to return to work because I was their responsibility and not the Unemployment’s Office's (Nooo…, really....!!?);
* It rained, finally.

It was all fine, except the idea that I should come back to DEFG.

I might not generate pheromones any more, but I can sense what other people generate, so named vibes. Some of those at DEFG stank too much for my sensitive-big-potato nose.

1. Although I knew that now you would be my boss - what a precious thing that could have been in the end! - I also knew that this would put you in an awkward position, me being such a bad person that you would have to discipline/sanction/punish me in order to make the rest of the mob happy...or at least 2-3 of them: roughly those directly beneath and above you on the Management ladder; namely the bunch that thought I getting injured through hard work meant such a personal inconvenience to their cushy comforts;
2. I'm over J D that I used to like and consider a younger friend of mine; same goes for Y who promised me as I was leaving the building for the last time that I'll never work in Government again because I sent that long good-bye letter to all...(ha ha ha, see now how ignorance can be bliss?)
3. There are 2-3 faces there that make me want to turn my head around the other way instead of wanting to say hello;
4. I need a place where I could gain a different type of experience and from the very beginning keep entirely to myself, not talk to anyone and not befriend anybody

So I told that guy that No thanks, not DEFG where my injury report became mysteriously lost for more than 3 months, NO WAY.
As a result, starting Monday, I'll be at HIJK 3 days/week and across the street for 2 days/week, at number 50. If I can make it with modified duties and all. We'll se how my health goes. They did not have apparently a full job for me in one place, of course. There's not enough miserably paid positions around - how unfortunate...
If anyone tries this time to play me around even one bit, I will go straight to the person in charge with industrial relations/work ethics/people capital or whatever - no more friendships, extra hours, smiles and jokes.
I'll be a Tash, as simple as that.
And maybe one day, I'll stumble across you in City - who knows.

Cheers, all the best,

X

Another extract from my e-mail archive - Ha ha haaaa!

Image: http://rlv.zcache.com/truth_is_incontrovertible_winston_churchill_quote_shirt-p235335594704208556ybhp_400.jpg

Sent: Sunday, 23 January 2005

Small correction though. The say goes "life imitates art", not truth.
Truth is relative and does not imitate anything because it's simply factual, mathematic or spiritual or whatever. Truth can be distorted, covered up; disguised, ignored etc, but does not "imitate".

(Wow, brother! I was still believing in Truth then! and that was only 4 years ago...)

No monkey business ( extract from my e-mail archives)

Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/cel19/149883668/

Sent to a virtual friend: Sunday, 30 January 2005 19:21:59 PM

During my many years of studying cultural theories and human representation in art, I came across some regarding (not once but repeatedly) human behaviour and anthropological research about human perception/evolution/representation of the individual.
Therefore it's been stated by leading specialists in the field that the female breast developed to its actual shape, size, placement on the body and Meaning-to-Man,(;)) as a replacement of the female buttocks once exposed to the male. From the time, you know, when people along their evolution used to still walk occasionally on their four paws like their ancestors, the big apes. Once upon a time, "the girls" used to show their posterior to the "boys" as an act of fancy and sex was performed very much in the same position Osama bin Laden still does it with his goats...That was a while before Moses’ time though, but still not too much before.

Therefore I always commiserated with The Male for its obsession about the cleavage and tight pants - it's in his nature, no monkey business! I should be a “learned” woman; therefore I do have to try to understand the mechanism of certain things.
I'm rather tolerant towards the poor men, ‘cause I know that their obsessions are not their fault.
It's an evolutionary matter... hence The Playboy, The People Magazine and the rest of the lot...

Have my blessing! Cheers!

The plumber's impressions of Europe

image: http://www.smilingyak.com/large_t_shirt_pix/hobbies_professions_t_shirts/plumbers_pipe_t_shirt.jpg

Poetry by unknown Nesblandian:

The plumber's impressions of Europe

So, what's wrong with that tap,
I ask.
Nothing ma'am, just bloody bludgers,
didn't fix it properly,
and, by the way,
what's that accent of yours?
I tell him.
I've been there, he says.
So how was it? I ask.
I wouldn't know ma'am,
just flew in, was meant to stay a week,
felt sick on the plane, they took me straight
to a hospital there, can't remember a thing,
next day they put me on a plane,
sent me back to Vienna.
So how was Vienna?
Don't know, he says - he was sick.
But I've been to London, big town, nice pubs,
met another Aussie, from Melbourne of all places,
but he was quite all right, I suppose,
good bloke, liked a pub-crawl.
I've also seen Prague, beautiful town,
then worked a bit on a farm in Israel,
got me some money
and flew to the States.
Your tap should be right now, he says,
gathers his tools, calls his dog,
and goes to his next job

from

Friendly Street Poetry Reader

A question of image

I know Dracula, believe me,
where I come from he is at home.
He turns up every night at 12 sharp
to oblige the tourists.
His long fangs do not shine in the moon rays
as bright as they used to,
you know, recession, no money
for fancy dental care products.
He spends a lot of time polishing the sign
above the entrance -
'Transilvania' it says,
but tourists still think it's misspelt,
they prefer the version with double s and y.
They wander all over the place aahing and oohing,
some take photographs, others shiver obligingly.
When they all leave, Dracula's birds make nests
out of Coke cans and fast-food wrappings.
'It's difficult to stay in business these days,'
says Dracula while refreshing his make-up.
'they've all read Bram Stoker's
book,
they've all seen the movie -
I MUST match the image.'

from

Fluorescent Voices: Friendly Street Poetry Reader

21


Dr Ioana Petrescu, Lecturer in Professional Writing, School of Communication, Information and New Media, Uni SA, teaches courses in professional writing (editing, publishing, document design etc), creative writing(poetry, short story) and communication. Her areas of expertise are: writing (all aspects), editing and publishing, literary theory and criticism, and the sociology of writing (theory and practice of the relation author-literary agent/PR-editor-publisher-bookseller-reader).
Ioana Petrescu is a Romanian-born poet, poetry editor, translator and academic whose work has been published in a variety of literary magazines nationally and internationally. She started writing poems in English when she emigrated to Australia in 1996, and since then she has had two poetry collections published - I Say… (Wakefield Press 1999) and Fumigated(Ginninderra Press 2001).

Michael, The One & Only

I lost the habit of writing here, although my mobility if not back to normal, has improved a lot since my last entry in February. I can type much better now and for much longer, even at work I did a lot of data entry lately.
I have been living with this bursitis for almost 15 months now – far longer than the doctors have estimated. I mean the pain – the mobility of my arm might not come back 100% for 24 months. That is another story.
I don’t know if this is due to my not being in my twenties any more, to poor treatment or lack of response from my body to this type of treatment (Physio). Maybe my physiotherapist does not do all she can to fix me, I don’t know. But it’s annoying and frustrating to feel healthy otherwise and still feel disabled when it comes to my right arm.
The procedure that could have shortened my irritating/painful condition involves an injection with that bad stuff that killed Michael Jackson apparently (if it’s true, because most things that they say about him prove to be false the very next day).
Who on earth wants that bad stuff to slow down my heart to the point where it might be needed to be restarted with an electric shock if not everything goes well?

So Michael Jackson died.
I am sad. Very sad.
Nobody should die at 50.
Not Michael who wasn’t ever a “nobody”.
A big part of my life died with him and will be buried from now on, because he was with me at every party when I was younger, he was singing in the car at my wedding all the way from the City Council to the reception at the restaurant, he came with us in holidays, he pacified my baby when he was restless and teething, he was my children’s first dearly beloved singer ever, he was my very old mum’s favorite, and he was a good, kind, strange and genial, childish man who did his thing the best way it could be possibly done by a human being.
I don’t care about the gossip concerned with “unnamed” kids that he "had touched” because it was quite clear how all those terribly unfit parents were after his money.

Einstein never had a normal relationship with a woman in his entire life and nobody accused him o pedophilia because of that.
Does anyone who is familiar with Einstein’s famous portrait/photo realize how the man looked to his contemporaries with that hairstyle? Does anyone care about that? I know I don't.
Since we so readily admit and accept in awe the existence of genius in science, architecture, sport, politics, visual art, classical music, literature, etc., I do not see why Michael Jackson cannot stand proud & equal to all his different predecessors into perfection.

At Kapikule - Turkey some years ago

http://www.turecko2001.webz.cz/film1/1.08A-Kapikule-Turecke%20hranice.JPG

I was in a train traveling from Istanbul-Turkey to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Eva, a Polish girl I met in Istanbul was traveling with me. Her English was quite good, we chattered a lot and laught and enjoyed each other’s company.
This was years ago.
Eva was a blond tall and skinny young woman about my age who just married recently a Syrian guy and was returning to Poland after a trip to Syria where she had paid a visit to her in-laws. Her husband was a marine officer with a contract on a Turkish liner and had just left Istanbul with his ship. She saw him out to sea and decided to return to Poland by train and not by plane, because it was much cheaper and gave her the chance to stop for some short visits of Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest and Prague on her way back home. She had friends in most of the cities; it was her third trip on that route.

For me, that was the first in those parts. I was returning home after 3 months of wandering around ancient Mesopotamia. Traveling by bus, car and train apart from being cheaper offered the chance to see more and stop wherever I pleased on my route to Eastern Europe. My husband was working in Iraq at the time, on a two-year contract. He was a medic providing assistance for the builders of a big Nesblandian construction company with about 2,000 employees.
My head was light with the recent travel marvels and adventures. An old childhood dream of mine was fulfilled – I walked through the gates of Babylon (after seeing the originals in Berlin I saw the copies at their place of origin); I wandered around the ancient site of the city of Ur, wet my feet in the dirty waters of Tigris & Euphratus; saw the unearthed walls and gates of the great city of Nineveh with its Assyrian winged bulls, I enjoyed Baghdad, the ancient city of the Caliphs where the legendary 1001 Arabian Nights “happened”, admired the incredible lacustrine life of the people of Shatt al-Arab with their reads made mosque and a school on floating reeds islands and much more.

At Kapikule at the Turkish-Bulgarian border, the train got stuck for a couple of hours. It was a custom Eva said, for the Turks to hold the train at this point for a very long time because under the excuse they were looking for drug traffickers, they could ransack everyone’s luggage and ask for bribes.
She was anxious. Her husband warned her about it and told her to have some money handy. Her restlessness contaminated me too.
I had nothing in my luggage that could normally draw attention. The few souvenirs I had bought in Turkey were the types one never declares, the legit ones, simple stuff, nothing to pay custom for. My transit visa would expire only at midnight that day, therefore I was in the clear. It was about 6 or 7 in the evening, by the time my visa expired, we would be long gone and passed even Bulgarian customs.
Still, the holding of the train for an unjustifiably long time made me tired, bored, impatient, nervous. In the distance, there were heated arguments going on in some other carriages on the parallel rail. There were some sobs and wailing in different languages on the station/checkpoint grounds. There were a lot of barked orders in Turkish.

All of a sudden the very quiet and withdrawn young man sitting opposite to Eva took his rucksack and left, without saying a word. Eva and I decided that he had something to hide, obviously. Why take off like that? If this was his destination, he should have left at least 2 hours ago.
The group of middle aged Serbian women sharing the compartment with us, shook their heads in disapproval, looked at each other and then examined Eva and me with concern.
Using a mixture of despaired Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian words mixed with some German we managed to ask them why they seemed so concerned. We were explained in the same lingo that the Turks at the border kicked off the train a bunch of young women every time, mainly citizens of East-European countries, accusing them of having forbidden goods in their baggage. The ladies expressed concern that the two of us were traveling without a man to protect us, and were mad at the same time at the quiet Turkish passenger for leaving the compartment. His presence would have made a difference.
They told us how the border patrols kept the unfortunate women’s passports over night. The official line was that they were retained at Kapikule for interviews, until terrified enough, the women could be forcefully coerced into sex acts with the border guards in order to be allowed to continue their travel towards Europe.
The perspective was frightening to Eva and me if true.
Eva had 50 American dollars reserved for the guy that was going to check the passports and advised me to get a sum ready as well. Unfortunately all the only cash I had on me was in Leva, the Bulgarian currency – after all we were traveling to Bulgaria. The Serbian women shook their heads in disapproval. Leva were no good. Western currency only or Turkish Liras. The Turks hated the Bulgarians and did not want their money.

Instead of some good sense fear and concern, a revolt and fury started to build up inside me. I was used to bribery and corruption, I saw it all before but this was beyond it.
It seemed customary to bribe a policeman when he caught you on the road speeding – because you were at fault there and the bribe was always smaller than the fine.
It made sense (a ridiculous one but nevertheless) to bribe a hotel receptionist who insisted he had no room available at 3 in the morning, because it was a small price to pay in order to get a room and rest instead of sitting in the lobby on some uncomfortable chair.
It appeared almost normal to take a short cut bribing a nurse instead of waiting for hours for your turn to come and see a doctor if you were sick.
It almost made sense to bribe the border guards who wanted to confiscate a posh pair of designer shoes or some jewelery from you, in order to keep your shopping to yourself instead of purchasing it twice.
But who the hell did this Turks think they were? There were civil, criminal and international laws being breached here by officials of a country that wanted to be part of the Europe. I was not ready to bribe anyone with my body and soul so that I could just simply pass a border when I did nothing wrong. I wasn’t going to bribe anyone that way even if my life was in danger. No pitiful life is worth that much.
Well, I decided, they would not get a penny from me, the bastards.
I made quickly a plan and I stuck to it.

On the parallel line the train that we found when we arrived at Kapikule was finally allowed to go. God knows how many hours the passengers of that train had spent waiting; but after it left, I noticed a group of 4 women being hoarded reluctantly into the railway station/control point by two armed soldiers. The poor things were dragging a lot of luggage along. One was sobbing loudly.
So, it was true.

The muffled voices and arguments became closer and closer. We realized the guards had entered the opposite end of our carriage. It was well after11 p.m. now and we were stuck there for more than 5 hours, waiting in tension and anxiety.

A soldier slid open our door and barked the words “passport control”. He meant to have ready our travel documents for the team following him. That was the signal to have the money ready as well, the Serbians warned us.
Eva was pale and shaking. I don’t know how I looked myself, but I remember sweating a lot, despite the open window and the cool spring night.
The Serbian women collected amongst themselves some money in a paper bag. Eva put her 50 dollars in an envelope and set it nicely and visibly on her lap.
I did nothing.

Few minutes later, another soldier armed to the teeth appeared. He must have been about 18 years of age. Under his nose was a bit of dark fluff, like the boys who did not start shaving yet have.
I was sitting by the door, the closest to him. He put his rifle to my chest and said “50 dollars”. “Whaat…?!” I said, seeing red in front of my eyes. “No!”
“50 dollars!” he repeated raising his voice a bit, looking quickly up and down the aisle and inspecting urgently the compartment while pushing deep into my ribs with the weapon. “In your dreams” I said in a blind fury “you’ll have to shoot me first!” and pushing aside the gun I jumped at the open window in a long leap before he had time to process what was happening.
An officer was walking on the tarmac and I shouted at him in English from the top of my lungs ”Sir, one of your soldiers is trying to rob me and he is threatening me with his rifle! Help! I want to talk to the commandant and call my Embassy to complain!” The officer stopped, perplexed. I do not think that he spoke English, but the words commandant and embassy had some effect. “’Moment Madam” he said and turned around towards the entry of the carriage.
I turned too, looked towards the door and the soldier was gone. Vanished. Eva and the old women were frozen in their seats not knowing what to think. My hands were shaking in revolt. I felt like grabbing some uniformed neck and squeezing hard. I was all aggression. No danger seemed to be looming around. No risk.

The team controlling the passports must have heard my shout. They probably skipped few compartments and arrived at ours immediately. I was still standing with my back at the window when an officer and two soldiers appeared. They asked for the passports. I handed mine first. The officer looked at it and said in French “Madam, your transit visa had expired.” I showed him my watch. It was almost midnight but not quite. He was unfazed. My watch was 15 minutes behind he said. “You will have to pay a fine. We have to detain you. Please step out of the train.” “No, I said, I will not pay a fine. This train had arrived to this station hours ago. My visa was still valid then. It’s not my fault that the customs held this train here for 6 hours. If you hold it for two days I would still not to be blamed. It’s not my fault. I need to be given access to a phone so I could call my country’s Embassy and tell them what is going on here. One of your soldiers tried to rob me. I want to speak with your superior in command”.
The officer ordered one of the soldiers in Turkish and ordered me to follow the man out of the train. “And take your luggage with you. We have still to check it”. “No”, I said. “I won’t take my luggage with me. The ladies here will keep an eye on my luggage until I’ll come back. This train will not leave without me, so there’s no point on carrying a heavy suitcase with me. You can check it in my presence when I’m coming back, the same way you do with everybody else”. And I walked.

I was escorted into an office. A well-groomed man in a very well pressed uniform was sitting at a desk and a soldier was guarding the door.
I did not make a secret of anything, including the fact that I was outraged. I told him – while he was checking my passport - the whole story: when we arrived; how the quiet Turkish passenger left our compartment; what the middle aged Serbian ladies told Eva and me; how Eva’s husband warned her about the bribery practice; how I spotted the group of women from the other train being escorted into the station after their train left; how the kid-soldier threatened me with his bayonet and asked for 50 American dollars. I ended with the demand of having urgent permission to report all that to my country’s embassy.

The officer asked me for the embassy phone number. He will dial it himself and then put me through, if I insisted, but I will still have to pay the fine. It was after midnight now and my transit visa had expired the day before.
I handed him the phone number.
I guess the whole charade was just a trick to check if I really had that phone number. Once proven that I did, although he pulled the phone on his desk closer to him, he did not dial. Instead, he smiled his friendliest smile perhaps and started to explain how those ladies from the other train were detained because they had no money to pay customs for some Cappadocian carpets they bought in Istanbul; and how they will be released as soon as they will come up with the money. They were allowed to make phone calls to friends and relatives and they will be allowed to leave with the next train the next day.
I did not hide my incredulity while listening to him. I think I grinned in contempt all the way through his rambling. When he finished inventing his story I reminded him about that phone call – I was still waiting. As in regards of those ladies and their carpets, I told him how surprised I was by the procedure. Most custom officers in other countries simply confiscate the goods, which are usually kept a number of days in storage, until the person comes up with the dues. If they do. But I never heard to detain a whole bunch of women for a couple of carpets, Cappadocian or not.
Then I looked at my wristwatch and reminding him how late it was, I made a gesture towards the phone.

He looked again at my passport pensively, turned the pages, patted his well trimmed mustache and said softly “Yes it’s late Madam. I’ll tell you what. Because you are such a sweet little lady and you must be tired by all this waiting, I am willing to let you go without paying that fine. After all, you had a long day. I will personally investigate that extortion attempt and the soldier will be exemplary punished if that was not a prank, as I believe it was. Kids, you know. Sorry about that. Considering the late hour, my personal opinion is that you might not find anyone at your embassy right now – I do not see a point in calling them at midnight. We also cannot keep that train waiting any longer. There was a problem with the engine, but I suppose by now it has been fixed. The entire delay was in the passengers’ best interest and for the sake of your well being and safety.
Here it is your passport, I will turn a blind eye on the visa problem because I like you. Our conversation was very, very agreeable. I am sorry about that soldier incident – I’ll look into it straight away. Enjoy your journey…” – and he walked me to the door. The soldier escorted me back to the carriage.

Back in the compartment I found my companions worried sick. It was a great sigh of relief when I rejoined them. One of the Serbians hugged me and kissed me with tears in her eyes. Like I was her own daughter, she said.
No money was taken from them. Their luggage as well as mine was not checked. Although no passengers were boarding the train and no guards were any longer on board, and although it was almost 1 in the morning, 20 minutes after my return we were still stationary. That made my adrenalin rush turn into a panic. What if something else happens now? I could not wait to see that damn train in motion.

Finally, shortly before 2 a. m. in the morning we heard the locomotive signaling for departure, when Eva, excited beyond belief pointed out through the window. The three ladies from the other train were boarding ours. Two soldiers were carrying their suitcases.
The Serbians were stunned. In their regular shopping escapades to Istanbul they said – they never saw anyone escorted by soldiers from a train to come back, not even once, let alone having their luggage carried by border guards.

We’ll never know who those women were. Were they Bulgarians, Serbians, Hungarians, Romanians, Checks or Polish? Who knows? But even if this was not the case, in order to make my silly battle worth a better cause than my own little self, I preferred to believe that entire night, until we arrived in Sofia, that they were released thanks to my mentioning them to that mustached commandant or whatever he was.
It might have been a simple coincidence.
Perhaps their friends or relatives came from somewhere in the neighborhood and brought some money so they could pay the custom for their Cappadocian treasures. Or maybe they agreed to leave the carpets behind and escape with their dignity untarnished that very night.
I preferred to believe that it was OK to take on the windmills, even if in a very risky manner.