Peach Buns
Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
Long long ago, we had trouble with our Tobacco Machines. They got a little ambitious, a little entrepreneurial. Started to think they could play with reality; mix in other nice things with our tobacco – make it sweeter, more fragrant, mature, sexy. Started to think that if they could just get us interested younger, we’d be theirs for life. They forgot that the reason we liked smoking was to give us a warm relaxed feeling. Cancer doesn’t do that, nor do the reproaches from those around us. It wasn’t until the financial burden of medical treatment outgrew the tax windfall that governments chose to listen to what Cancer had been telling us for some time. Cigarettes might just be good for taking the edge off life, but perhaps not so good for edging life out the window and onto a ledge. There were people who needed some relief, but the Tobacco Machines made cancer where none was needed.
But we have new Smoke Machines. They seem the same innocent product peddlers that our Tobacco Machines did in their youth. Now they’re peddling the picture, rather than the product. Because they’re Middle Men – Middle Mad Men. They sell the image (cool young men and women, in love, stop for a cigarette, he with the match, she with the lips). But the product? We don’t produce product any more, it’s expensive, it’s tiring, it’s third-world. The problems of the Tobacco Machines and the Asbestos Machines and the Nuclear Machines have made us a little averse to liability, too.
The new Smoke Machines make us augmented reality. Reality augmented with product. Down the sides of our newspapers, augmented news. Down the sides of our entertainment videos, augmented entertainment. Down the sides of our real estate sites, augmented real estate. It’s all property; unlimited property.
Down the sides of my reality now, online or off, is a stream of virtuality. Not-real people, dancing in hologram, invade my real life, and real links to my real stream of online browsing invade my newspapers. I do not any longer know if I read news because it is there or because it is being put there for me, cunning infomercials. But the newspaper world online leaks into the real world, it doesn’t stay where it belongs. Is my reality being augmented? Or is my data – my new DNA – being corrupted.
People don’t know, when they fall into mental illness, that that is the new world they inhabit. They think it’s the world they’ve always occupied. When the page on the computer starts to talk to them – only them – and the world in the computer starts to mirror the world inside their heads, it seems real enough. Perhaps it is? The image producers and online real estate peddlers – our new Smoke Machines – are peddling something that approximates mental illness.
I had a dream: a vision. I saw myself dancing, performing in Coachella, on stage. Was that me? I thought it was me, they were my tattoos, it was my body.Or was it someone else? Or a delusion, a hologram, a fake.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Lehan’s colourful painting looks as pretty as an old-fashioned lolly wrapper 🙂
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A dream, I’d say.
I like the little spaceman.
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VL, I can see you have been to barbers, all neatly trimmed 🙂
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…oops, Caisbrooke.
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…another óops…Carisbrooke
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That picture has been up for a while Helvi, together with my explanation of where it was taken.
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Since when have your initials come up in purple?
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Good point, Helvi. I hadn’t noticed that. I though all nipples were dark pink!
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I am the spaceman, VL. It is a portrait of me visiting Chinatown in Kobe.
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The text in memory, the science fiction yarn The Silver Eggheads (1961) offered virtual reality eg the sound and/or smell of whatever was on the page emanated therefrom if a book was opened. I don’t think I imagine that. The reader was controlled. The silver eggs on pedestals were the consultants, my impression is governance. 1970 since I read it.
‘Come and See the Real Thing’ is a seductive title, Lehan. Wonderful read with a sugary bun for afternoon tea, virtually. 🙂
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I looked up The Silver Eggheads, shoe, it sounds great.
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And then I read his Wikipedia entry (Fritz Lieber). It’s sad, but anything sensational on Wikipedia sounds completely fake. Oh, I thought. Maybe he’s made-up. But you remember him, shoe, so he must be real.
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I had just left Townsville Teachers Training College, post- University of Qld and was living on a beach in North Queensland, Lehan, ripe for a good read. The neighbour was a wonderful reader and an out of work one-time crocodile shooter with time to burn to read. Among others, he lent me The Silver Eggheads, Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein), a number of Arthur C. Clark volumes, Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge, and a text called The Morning of the Magicians that I took away some stuff out of, kept it in the cavern my mind was at the time.
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I scouted off to read a bit about Leiber wondering what you were referring to about sadness, Lehan. I was wondering what you were referring to vis-a-vis Leiber (author of The Silver Eggheads). I can’t guess what you were meaning regards wondering if he was real. It seemed very real to me (the novel leastwise) particularly because I was living in Bjelke Petersen’s Queensland. We were persecuted. Art became my interest from the viewpoint of contributing to the fight for freedom of creative expression. The Silver Eggheads fitted the milieu I think. I hope I find a copy and can read it again, inspired by reading your essays.
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Of course, it would be of no surprise at all if we should see the faces of famous people in our peach buns. When I drink my milk I think of the people who put the 16 percent cheese dirty-water in there, when I eat my meat I try not to think at all.
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We have been here and not here. Spent a lifetime talking to Telstra and Optus trying to get a phone that Telstus and an internet that nets. We might be getting there. At eight o’clock a man will knock on our door and sort out both. We can’t wait, and I have been up since 4.30 in keen anticipation of getting connected. I also opened my latest account on the ‘free’ mobile which only worked intermittently, unlike the $ 195.–bill which arrived at lightening speed and very crystal clear. in my in-box.
Summary for 0412 etc
Mobile to Fixed Calls 34 calls $222.56
Mobile to Mobile Calls 33 calls $80.87
Mobile Data $0.50
SMS 50 calls $12.50
Mobile Plan Fees $29.00
Service Charges $345.43
Mobile Call Credits -$150.00
Total for this service $195.43
Mobile to Zoo and teddy-bears.
So, there you have the magic of a free phone and a ticket to Bedlam.
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Gez, you seem to subscribe to the smoke and mirrors machine called ‘telecommunications’!
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Lovely story Lehan; and the painting reminds me of a Chinese fairytale called ‘The Peach Baby’, about an old couple who, long after they’d given up on ever having a son, were surprised one day to find a baby inside a peach, where the stone would normally be… I forget what happened… Don’t think I’ve read it since I was about six years old…
🙂
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Asty, if it’s out there, you can bet a Pig’s Arms patron has read it, heard it live or seen it ! Well done for the sheer obscurity of your story within a story !
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Hi Asty. It’s a Japanese fairytale, called Momotaro.
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Japanese was it? As I remember it was a kind of oriental version of the ‘Tom Thumb’ type… do you remember what happens in the story?
🙂
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An old couple discovered a giant peach floating down the river, and found him inside. They adopted him, naming him Momotaro. He goes off with some dumplings, and gives one to a dog, a monkey and a pheasant to help him fight a bunch of old devils. The pheasant unlocked the gate and pecked the old devils’ eyes, the dog bit their legs, and the monkey jumped on their backs and the devils were defeated and gave them all their treasure. Momotaro and his old parents lived happily ever after. Nothing is known of the whearabouts of the pheasant, the dog and the monkey.
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