Story and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
There’s a little office on the corner of the train street and somebody’s got some boxes of vegetables for sale. I slow down to take a look, I’m always curious about that little office. It’s the flea market lady. She comes out and starts talking about my house. With no introduction, like she’s been expecting me to come along. It’s got bad luck, very bad luck because it’s at the bottom of a lane and the good spirits won’t go there cause they can’t get through. So she’s going to come round this week and take a look.
She comes on Friday afternoon at 6. She looks around, it’s a nice house, a big house, there are nice things, though they are old and contain distressed spirits, she needs the floor plan. I’m smoking a cigarette trying to remember which box in which part of the house I’ve put it. It’s going to take a long time to find it, I don’t think…but maybe the fat blue folder…I find a copy. She starts drawing lines through it with a pencil and two rulers, takes out a lot of little plastic cards covered in diagrams in red and blue and green. When she’s finished she shows it to me. Even before the explanation it looks troubling. There are good places in the house, but I’ve got baths and sinks in them and all the good fortune is washing away. There are so-so places; I have my bed in one of them and although it’s a place of death (blanch) it’s not bad for healing. And then there are a lot of bad places. The entrance is in a bad place. If I put my feet out of bed in the morning I am immediately in a bad place. Anyway, the whole house is a disaster, and that’s why things are so bad for me.
She shuffles all the photocopied instructions she has. Amongst them is one picture of a plastic PET bottle of water standing on a hillside. My heart sinks. I smoke a cigarette. I decide to bring it on. Okay, what do I need to do to make things better? Of course, it’s the Magic Water. This magic water comes from the slopes of Mt Fuji and is incredible; even when it is standing still it moves. It is full of IONS. Possible even some MAGNETIC FORCES. With this water strategically placed around the house all my troubles will come to an end. Actually the moment that I decide that I’m going to resolve this problem and buy the water, things are going to get better for me. It’s only….let’s see, you have to buy two boxes of it, so…about $170. You dig a hole in each corner of the yard, and bury the bottle with the cap at the top. Unless of course it’s likely that the house will be seized, in which case you would put it in a planter. Immediately the snow will start to melt more quickly. Then, one in the centre of the house, and a few under the bed. Some in a spray bottle, and you can drink the rest. Voila.
It seems to me that this plan is not failsafe if we are talking about a possible need for planters.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
People place bottles of water around their gardens here to ward the … neighbourhood dogs I think … off the property. Beats me.
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I thought it sounded a bit like mumbo-jumbo until I realised that, over at UL I’d made a comment about tools have a soul. I feel that, particularly for tools I’ve inherited from someone who’s passed on. Something of their essence remains, so I find myself asking what the previous owner would do. Last time was told to sit down, sharpen some chisels and a block plane blade, was very calming, almost meditative!
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Big M, did you see Viv’s and my comments on the soulful tool thread?
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Yes, did you see my replies?
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I thought the UL moderator had me on the death list, but my ‘tools have souls’ comment got to the front page of UL!
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Lehan, I like your stories; they are short, but there’s a lot in them…they are like your paintings, you say plenty there too, with very few brush strokes…
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Thankyou Helvi!
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Good snappy story.
We had our own version of ‘magic water’, all from the Monaro district. Sheep that drank the water lived longer, had finer fleeces, always lambed thrice a year and always had twins.. People who drank the water were cured from everything and the lame, blind, crippled, all lined up for weeks to buy the water. A cruel trick!
It had the backing of no less and ex CSIRO scientist who dazzled and embezzled the gullible.
It blew up in an article by the Herald and a disclaimer from the CSIRO that the scientist had never worked for them except as a junior and only for a few month. This cove escaped to Canada hot on the heels of those seeking their return of money invested in bottles of ‘magic water’..
A supporting cohort ( another ex CSIRO scientist) is now making a nice little earner from having patented a trademark of a special type of breed of sheep that magically does not need mulesing, grows superfine fleece and sells at a premium. The trick is to only use the rams with his patented and approved seal. All for a nice amount of money though. There are suckers and scammers everywhere.
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Monkey magic indeed, Gerard. I’m currently being chased through the friend-waves….call up people around me and say to them: perhaps she didn’t understand, she needs you to explain it to her.
It’s fascinating to be in the cross hairs of this takeover. But also very irritating to me. I’m in a difficult patch at the moment and like anyone who is a little vulnerable all those mud-feeding fish have arrived to nibble at my toes.
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Sounds like a sound idea to me, Lehan. Water from Mt Fuji will dissolve all problems including troublesome snow!
Just one tiny thing missing though. A prayer to Hera. Zeus’ wife. Her and perhaps even Hestia, the protector of the hearth, though, in Japan, hearths are not so heart-central to the house, so Hestia might not be too great a help.
You’ve reminded me om my daughter’s first letter from Japan, which I have photocopied and framed. Mrs Ato and I were quite worried about our little girl’s (just turned 21) fortunes in that country. That is until she sent us this letter in which she says (among other pacifying words) she can see awesome Mt Fuji from her window.
She has returned and gone back there ever since. Still there now and she’ll be coming for Xmas in eight more sleeps…. Yummmmmmmy!
Lovely story, Lehan.
Oh, and if you STOP SMOKING, things will definitely get a lot better!
🙂
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There is only one thing that makes me feel like my troubles have gone away, atomou, and it is a cigarette. They don’t go very far, they stand just at the far end of the burning bit.
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But your lungs, Lehan! Your lungs are at the other end of the butts, closely attached to your lips!
Beware of your lips, Lehan!
We are hanged by our lips and our genitals! The most defiant, disobedient and dangerous organs on the corpus humanum!
Sounds like the healing waters of the pool of Bethesda (trans. “The House of Mercy.”) An angel used to go over there every now and then (isn’t that so typical of angels? You never know when they’ll turn up!) and stir those waters around a bit and, bingo! The sick would be healed… but no mater how much he stirred them waters, they couldn’t heal broken bones. That could only be done by the super magician, Jesus. He came along one day and healed this poor sod who had a broken leg for… 38(?) years.
And then all our piglets drank pink drinks and began flying!
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Yes I know. I feel sorry for my lungs. They are going to fight back soon if they are not already. I decided some years ago that if I had live with anxiety in order to be the person I wanted to be I would administer my own medication of choice. So cigarettes it is. Antidepressants at that high a level take away some of your brain functions. I didn’t like it.
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Never tempted to go from mild cigarettes to strong ones. So it’s seriously difficult to over-medicate. Sure you can put more than one cigarette in your mouth, but it’s difficult to hold three and type.
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It’s not just the tobacco. I reckon there’s something in that focused intake of breath. It has some effect on your eyes and your brain. Especially in the moment that you’re trying to think (of an escape route) it’s helpful.
The first moment I realize an escape is required is when I realize that the casual mention of the house plans on the street was not a casual mention at all. I was supposed to have them at hand. This is not a mistake of japanese, I heard it clearly. It is another kind of mistake. I’m really amazed by how a person I know only slightly can expect me to so quickly fall on my own sword. And when I notice it in this instance I see it in a number of other occurences the last few weeks. And really there is some essence of feng shui in this. What is it that has people taking me for being so malleable? Is there something that I am doing at the moment that appears naive? What is the sign of naivety that they are picking up? I’m really curious about this.
I’m thinking that there is a moment of refusal early in the piece that I am missing or mis-responding to. And when I think about situations where people refuse me, it is the case that it either happens suddenly and quite abruptly or there is a period of ambiguity that leads never to a no, but to silence.
Assent happens in a similar way; either a sudden and strong yes, or a small picking up of threads in the period of ambiguity building up eventually to some kind of contract.
Belief, faith, are ambiguous places. Sometimes people don’t want to lose it, don’t want to have it. So I guess that negotiations that involve belief or faith are murky. I think I need to clarify what I’m doing at the moment, and be very clear to the people around me. I am not trying to be a faith healer and join those other faith healers. I am trying to run a school, and I am trying to paint pictures.
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So perhaps this was not a test of my house, so much as of me.
I don’t think I need magic water thank you faith healers. I buy my magic at the convenience store, it’s called The Cigarette.
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I think it’s odd that they would say I should put the pet bottles in planters in case the house is seized. If the house has a feng shui problem, and burying the water would solve that problem, the house will not be seized. But if it is seized, why would I take the water somewhere else? The problem is supposed to be with the house, not with me. So they are making some error. Actually they are SAYING the problem is in the house, but they are also saying that the problem is with me. What an interesting thing.
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I have thought of a solution. I am going to show it to a chinese real estate agent. If they want to sell the house, I will know there is no feng shui problem. If you have a question about feng shui, it is best to take it to a chinese person I think.
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If the feng shui lady can’t solve the problem of the house being seized, then it is time to take it to someone who might. A step. Thankyou, cigarette.
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Hello Lehan! No point asking how you doing. The story is an interesting and confident in many ways essay of place and time. The people in it are somehow props that doing the human thing of their individual spheres reflect the angst of the classic stand-by, caught up in the moment, transferred to the specialness of your house and all that it means becoming cut-outs, silhouettes against the backdrop of the culture and your own intentions, coming momentarily ‘vital’, temporarily moving in patterns of concentration on the task of assessing the house for its clarity, safety ostensibly, ‘momentarily’ and ‘temporarily’ relative to the end result of your experience learning, learning… but wherever it is, the charlatans and the go-getters flock around the vulnerable. Look at the tobacco companies. I know of this. I have been recently smoking tabac, briefly, and have hazarded in recent and these moments I will resume my former self as a non-smoker. Stress. Anxiety. Mental health. Can’t win in any of those departments smoking. Myself. With the decrease of oxygen to the brain comes some relief and it is in my perception an illusion.
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True, shoe, you can’t win by smoking. But it’s nice, isn’t it?
I like that flea market lady when she’s not trying to sell me water.
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Smoking is so nice Lehan to us when we see the glow of the coal and the length of the ciggy, the smell for us of the burning and occasionally it crackles and spits as if in conversation, the silence of the aftermath when we expel the smoke and rest in contemplation of the ideas that come to us when the addiction is tipped sideways like an upturned runaway cart and sated.
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The flea market lady-for whatever reason-reminds me of a self-professed seer who I met once in my workplace and she was a customer. I was managing a queue of people and the other customers dropped discretely back as if on an anticipated signal to give way to meaning that the woman was addressing me on a personal matter. With such discretion. Like a signal down the line. That in itself so interested me.
Anyhoo, she had spontaneously grasped my two hands and told me, fervent, I was the most spiritual person she had seen and if I “could understand her” I was “Christ-like”…looking into my eyes searching she told me unsolicited as I listened what she saw of my original family’s welfare and spoke to me of what I could expect of my “children”. What she said about the children was not happy, but I allowed the experience, was tolerant.
It remains a fascination to me that a procession of local people stood aside as if allowing the tableau its full performance whatever its meaning. They resumed their workaday demeanour and we contracted our usual trade when the woman finished her delivery and she and I said our farewell. This happened in a Woolworths store in Auckland, NZ.
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This painting grows on me more and more. It is so interesting. In all my wildest dreams…I could never have imagined sharing this experience of seeing our work in this venue.
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‘Shoe, many thanks for your kind comments. Don’t forget your Special Bumper Christmas Issue contribution !
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