Category Archives: Sandshoe

The Card

29 Friday Oct 2010

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A Little Bit of English ...... by Mike Savard (an American, apprently)

By Sandshoe

Conversation between Yup-I-do and Shoe with Lee-Leah talking to the cat in the background:

“Listen,” I said, “She won’t know what on earth I was talking about. You know how you told me you’ve got a card in the glove box of the car for me?”

“Yeh,” he replied, like he always does if he’s positive what I’m talking about.

“I told her I’ve got it and I haven’t. It’s still in the glove box of your car. Least I think so. Unless you took it out.”

‘Nope, it’s in the glove box of the car. How did you know it was there?”

“You told me last year.”

“Listen, listen,” I heard a muffled giggle. He knew a story was on its way. He was listening. “Listen, I got a card in the mail and I rang her up and said to her I really love the card. And she said, ‘O, that’s good, I hoped you would like it.’  I said, ‘I do, I really do. I love the bit that says how much you liked the card I sent.’ I thought she hesitated, but then she said, ‘Yeh, yeh, good.’ She said she gave it to you to give to me and she was glad you dropped it in. I said, ‘No, um, well, I thought it came in the… no, it came in the post, he must have put it into the box. When did you give it to him?’ She said, ‘Day before yesterday’ and I said, ‘It was in the post box yesterday’. ‘O,’ she said, ‘He dropped it in the, um, he probably changed his mind and posted it, that’s good you like it.’ ‘I love it,’ I said.”

It wasn’t for me, I was explaining to Yup, the card I took out of my postbox and assumed came from her and telephoned her. It was for the neighbour with the same name as mine and that was the card from A. And Yup thought it was funny the name was different when he called in meantimes and I supposed she must call herself Ally sometimes, after her surname, He thought that was unusual, he did not know she ever did (he hadn’t looked at the card they were giving me. It transpired).  She just decided to be different, he had said, she’s like that. Which would explain the A. Instead of L.

“Now,” he said, “Wait til you hear, I went home and she said to me you finally gave the card to her and I said no, and she said well she reckons you did!”

He laughed. “Don’t know when I am going to give it to you. I should pull it out and write on it 2009 and 2010 and be done with it.”

“You might as well mark it Happy Easter now and save time. I reckon you might as well throw on Happy Birthday while you’re at it.”

He laughed. “I reckon I could save a packet by making it.”

“No, no. We so could make money out of this.”

“I’ll design a card.”

“We’ll call it One Card For Everything.”

The Horse*

23 Saturday Oct 2010

Posted by in Poets Corner, Sandshoe

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the old Onehunga School, Auckland, NZ

By Christina Binning Wilson (aka Sandshoe)

I have dreams to tell

and you would have me quiet

demureness your necessity

I have dreams to sell

and you would tell me chastity.

Be still.

There is a horse.

It is in the tree.

My horse is as a friend.

You speak of rain.

It is upon the pane.

* Through a picture window, I watched the behaviour of a canopy of great branches extending across the gully from where an oak tree grew beside the verandah of a bungalow I occasionally glimpsed on the other side; sometimes there was a person was briefly visible seated in a chair. However the wind blew it fascinated me a formation of a leaf at the end of a branch that swayed closest remained to my eye the shape of a wooden horse that was a diminutive gift from Sweden given my daughter as safe keepsake by a friend.

Written at ‘The Castle’, Parnell, Auckland, 1987

Docherty

12 Tuesday Oct 2010

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By Sandshoe

I moved with an even attention to not raising the alarm of the many eyes I believed were watching the trespass and tugged at Docherty’s boots as they manipulated frantic purchase on the sill of the entrance into the grass hut. The distinctive difference of the hut on stilts Docherty had run towards and deftly up its ladder was its higher elevation. He had in the same movement pushed athletic bulk in the dense black of the narrow entrance. A crescendo of murmurings suggested to me the compound’s native inhabitants in the likely proximity I had interpreted from eerie silence as Docherty and I approached just ahead of the others the red dirt track leading down to the settlement and grove of cultivation.

I supposed Docherty could not hear the murmuring in his scrabble part-inside and part-out of the construction. His legs and rubber-soled boots seemed to be pushing him inwards. Thick woven walls and his excitement doubtless insulated him from eruption of noise in any exterior world. The sound of the voices cackled in my mind with the danger I had sensed in the surround of tall native grass clumps and straggling palms and trees. These were people who had not seen the full potential of a white invasion I wondered. Their tones sounded referential, consultative rather than rabidly murderous. They might slit our throats with some polite justification if Docherty did not withdraw himself out of the hut I considered.

Only three ancient elders sitting in rock-like silence on a bench in the centre of the compound, about a quarter of the distance from the circular wall of huts where it bowed away neatly from our line of sight where we had entered the arena suggested habitation. The red ground of the compound beneath our feet that I supposed was tramped by generations into a compacted floor was so bare of debris it appeared fresh-swept. The rock-like silence endured of the elders and I wondered as I glanced discretely towards the row of men if they could speak. I supposed the venerables were left behind by the fleeing men, women and children who it was seeming had abandoned their village at the sound of our progress along the track from the landing strip on the edge of that high mountain place. The elders looked fragile, skeletal, but sighted or not seemed observant in their still demeanours and I drew the sense of their strength, their respect into a reservoir of belief I may be saved as I reached to grasp Docherty’s boots again.

We flew to the location in a plane that was chartered as result of a chance conversation in the Port Moresby Club. Docherty, buying up big and ferrying trays of exotic liquers he was insistent those who had never experienced them try got into a confrontation with a patron it transpired was a pilot scheduled to fly to keep an appointment in the Central Highlands the next day (He said it was social; a Saturday afternoon piss-up we surmised later). You will see natives, he assured Natural Ringleader Docherty loudly, Good Fun, Loveable Docherty, waving a dismissive hand at suggestion danger was involved. He would fly a little earlier than he intended, that was all. We could do whatever we wanted on arrival at his destination as long as he was left to his own devices and we meet him at the scheduled time for the return flight. If you don’t, the pilot warned, I’ll leave you on the mountain. On our arrival, he waved us in a direction opposite to his own.

Tugging sharply on Docherty’s right boot, I realised as equally as I did there was little danger for us in the original environment, that a sense they were in danger had begun crowding the natives from their hiding places. Big Docherty was used to being in charge. He needed strong persuasion to reverse his impulsive lunge. I said firmly, “Docherty, get out. You’re trespassing. This is the private property of these people.”

“No, No” I heard the muffled voice declare as if the magnification of the soul of an hypnotic, “There’s something in here. I want to see. I’ve got a match. I’ll light a match.”

I reached further into the dark cool and commanded by a combination of touch and tone that Docherty get out.

“You’re in danger. We all might be.”

I could hear the grasses rustling more loudly and rhythmically.  The rising crescendo of murmuring was louder because it was drawing nearer.  I just knew, although there was no sound of feet on the earth or on twigs or fallen palm branches.

“Everybody’s out,” Docherty had casually commented when we arrived on the edge of the mountain overlooking where its slope fell sharply on one side into a ravine and to a glimpse of the peaks ahead of huts in a circle. I was awed by the silence as we looked down on the splendid array of bright-leaved fronds and tropical bushes interspered with palms. “The people are hiding,” I said, instinctive, young, sensitive, attuned immediately to the meaning of the sound of a silence I had never experienced before and cherished for knowing.  The air was crystal-glare. Despite our elevation and the sun was near enough its height, on exertion the heat was a swelter. It was air stripped nevetheless of the extreme stress of the sweltering heat of Moresby.

The bareness of the red-brown earth of the compound was a striking monochrome of colour in a rich mix of hues of green beyond the circle of this evidence of residential life.

As if a light had come on in Docherty’s head deep in the hut’s interior, Docherty’s head popped out of the black mouth of the hut. Docherty to my surprise looked mildly confused by himself, as if he was even grateful if he was to about to be slaughtered it would be from a standpoint of a renewed consciousness of realism. Having shown not the least consideration of fearful possibilities, possibilities seemed to be occurring to Docherty in a rush like the onset of a sudden tropical downpour of rain that is heralded by an atmosphere of pure swelter. Beads of moisture glistened in the sun that was falling over him like an illuminator of lost dreams, his face changed in the same thought to a sense of hope in contrast to sense of loss. I suppose he suffered hell. I supposed he thought of his one child in the States who he told me on our group chartered flight from Cairns was home in the States. That was my first experience of hearing the word “weed” and what was meant as he told me his despair his son preferred it to law school and described its effects. No Doubt Docherty as he scrabbled off the ledge of the hut now considered his own status, a now common trespasser attested by the extra tinges of pink flaring through the tan of his affluent and untrammelled face. The murmurings of the voices like the presage of a mob moving closer had remained uniform as if the same words and similar were being repeated by different people under the direction of a conductor of an invisible choir of voices reciting an orchestrated sound symphony. I had just finished High School. I was 17 and it was three months before I heard a choir perform an acapella sound poem I heard as a similar musical effect. As instantly as Docherty exited the hut, the music of the voices faded and fell to a low volume before rising to a cacophonic babble. Docherty flared red above his light cotton round neck t-shirt.

“What will we do?” he asked me.

I said lightly and pleasantly, accepting my leadership as survival, turning, looking at Docherty over my shoulder, “We walk back the way we came. Follow me.”

Docherty followed me to where the others waited ashen-Docherty greeted his  wife shame-faced and she gathered him-and I walked with an easy stride indicating “Follow”. Everybody seemed to realise the safety cue I might best be seen with the red sun leaping through my hair as a young heroine leading Docherty away from dangerous mischievousness. We walked towards the narrow gap between two huts the way we had entered the compound. The silence that fell of the invisible people who lived here and had fled I was sure from their homes at the sound of our approach reassured. It meant we were free to leave. The sun etched a mottle on the trail through the vegetation when I glanced back where the huts described their edge around the circle of trodden red soil that was flat and occupied again only by the three old men I now did discern on the bench seat. I would never know them. We walked across to the red-dirt earth of the hill track we had followed down the mountain to the village and the sun blasted its heat on the steep aspect of the hill as we climbed to its top.

 

 

 

The Volunteer

08 Friday Oct 2010

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Simulated unkempt Tasmanian

The Pig’s Arms Welcomes Sandshoe !

A young woman on a phone is excited. She’s negative geared. She’ll lose and someone else will profit, but she’ll win in the end. I can tell. I hear from behind the screen in the next booth, “Hi. What are you doing tonight … mmm … well, I’ve got a couple of tickets … what sort of a bad time … Grandma … o … well, look don’t you drag yourself out for me … you’ve got enough in your bed without dragging yourself… ”

The fellow with the dark moustache and an urbanity that fits loveably in with an idea he is a to-be-fat grandpapa dashes incontrovertibly past between the desks like a convertible for all seasons. He’s so smooth the wine is not yet picked from the vine in its nascent form as a grape and he’s telling you it’s got great bouquet.

“Look, I’ve got to go anyway,” the voice on the other side of the screen says. “Its  been a long time and I’ve work to do … no … I know we’ve not been talking long, but in this office … yes … you know … bye … o, have you seen Claudia … the girl who …. the one at your …. no … well, it doesn’t matter now because I know you must be suffering. I’ll have to go.”

The telephone receiver clicks quietly into place. Another number is dialled.

“Jack? No? On my lunch break. Just got up the nerve to ring Pauline. What? No. No, it doesn’t go over well. I think she made up an excuse not to go out with me. She knows I am going to ask her. What do you mean? Well, I’m still not healing. It’s hard to believe though her grandmother is ill. O, you have to go. No worries at all. I’ll be doing something with Peter on Friday night.”

The receiver drops with an audible clunk onto the rest. A protracted sigh carries over into a silence that sounds like a single thought gong. I think the head of the owner of the voice is in his hands.

The brisk footsteps of the supervisor sound as if the carpet is woven from the finest sheet metal. He crinkles. His shirt crinkles. His tie crinkles. The cuffs of his trousers are caught up in a bunch on the top of his scuffed day shoes. A woman heads him off as he approaches the desk.

She engages him. She who comes past with a coffee balanced on the top of a sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper. Home-made style. Favourite. From the business directly over the other side of the brick courtyard between the Council building and the shopping centre. He nods his head after several sentences. His assurance is a reiteration. It’s all been seen before and done with mirrors breathes a young man in Aged Units. His desk is across the way. Ostensibly behind a screen. O, the stress he suffers and has since the transfer from Dogs. Why, nobody knows, only dogs became the catchcry in the suburb around him at a glimpse after he mentioned over a card game at the cricket club no provision had been made for moggies. He politely laughs to himself, scratches his crotch and adjusts the zip of sensible lounging trousers out of sight. My considered guess is his shoes have not been polished for some time. He stands up as large as life. I must polish myself up: he introduces himself. He tugs at the knot of his tie so that chest shows where the shirt gapes.

I thank him and tell him my name. He starts as if he knows it and he can’t. We agree surely not. “This position is paid for by Agricare. The only contribution the Council makes is the computer, the space and the chair. It’s a business to decide on terms of reference after the contracts thing.” He waves a hand.

He mentions by the popular name thing, the Standards Inspector. In the local clink. Nothing to do with Agricare or a social entrepreneur, he agrees. I demur in defence of clarity. All of a sudden a flurry rocks the divider on the side opposite to where the voice continues to make telephone calls. That innocent voice searches for friendship. In my booth I stand for reason. The divider appears to be falling. The agent is revealed as a buxom woman. She is a pin head with glasses above overpouring breasts. Her breasts spill in a cocktail frock. The woman cries out. The screen slides away from its base and collapses.

All I can do is ask, we are face to face, can I help.

Such presence of mind to question who an unknown person is when a divider falls. This unexpected woman with breasts asks.

“Volunteer,” I blush. “I’m allowed. Editor. Newsletter. I’ve got a pin to get in. I can’t get out for a break. I went to get out. I’m locked in. I was waiting for the supervisor.” I turn and find he’s gone. This worm has turned. It is another horrible experience of being a volunteer. Its insight is sharply keening. I am a staffer who is nobody’s responsibility. This is a form of prison.

“You’re the woman. You have a deadline. I can let you out.”

“Why can’t I get out on my own,” I ask as we walk to the door. She slides a card in the reader. I turn the handle of the door and experience the exterior like a large china bowl of freshly delivered reality. Just-how-sweet-freedom-is. I hear the word ‘Security’. It’s closed. The door.

Down the steps is a wheelbarrow. James is leaning over it. He seems to be looking for something that is lost. We greet each other when he looks up at the sound of my step. He is usually smiling and does not always say hello. He clears leaves, branches and furrows of silt and sand run-off that block drains. Through the bollards at the end of the short path to a small staff carpark is the reversed utilty someone has parked for James to ferry his wheelbarrows of detritus to fill. He takes off with the barrow in the direction. I step aside from the path. James stops. His face breaks into an intimation of a smile as I smile at him. I speak. “James, do you remember me?” He shakes his head. His curls bounce. His is the curly head of a blonde pre-schooler, his countenance is a child’s. I smile. James smiles. I walk, saying see you again. James waves.

Cowboy boots, hat, camel socks, white shirt, black felt hat with peacock blue feather and slick moleskins. Lanky, like a moving grease spot and twitching, it’s Jack Jacobs. “Hi,” he manages to say. His face opens in a smile. Where the grassed ampitheatre makes a green depression in the brick paved surround of the entrance to the shopping centre a brick wall holds a gaggle of girls who giggle. “Jack,” one calls out. A girl coyly sidles. She rocks from side to side as she draws level. Some meaning is exchanged between her and Jack. She opens her mouth and says something that is run over as surely as an accident happens. A train of supermarket trolleys comes through. “Watch out,” a lad calls who spits his saliva in the wind. His sputum dollops on brick paving. I call out angry reason. He retaliates. “You can’t expect me to collect in my lunchtime,” he swaggers. Jack is walking by now into the maw of the centre. With him the rocking girl who has a distinct gait.

I go into the shopping centre past the loungers at the door. The floor has a fresh glaze. I meet my friend, Daani, as I anticipate. She can’t speak for infectious giggles shaking her upper body. Her pearls are jiggling. Have I seen the advertisement.  I follow her to the escalators.

Get rid of your unkempt Tasmanian

“Get rid of your … unkempt … Tasmanian.” She points helpless at the depicted bust of a puny white man with a giant brush of tangled hair on a more than life size illuiminated screen. He is an astonished comedian. “Get a … smooth … Brazilian. Take a photo. Have you got a camera.”

The toned figure of the chocolate hued Brazilian is in full aspect with a six-pack and a soccer ball grasped under one arm.

On the way back to work I telephone two people from Tasmania I know. They were flown from there to exile on the mainland. One can meet me immediately at the end of my release from my remnant day’s work in Council. He is obliging. He poses by the illuminated sign. Men in broad band striped t-shirts and shorts tucked in them by rolling their outsized bands swarm past to their transport to the basement. Women in tent dresses and others in giant jeans stretched over giant bottoms push laden carts of shopping. I take photographs.

..... and a cheeky cartoon bird angling ....

..... and a cheeky cartoon bird angling ....

A silent European man with a straggling long beard and long hair is standing near the foyer to a set of descending moving stairs as he calls them. He is positioned beside the advertisement for the Brazilian. He dandles in his hand a plastic bag – Please re use, don’t forget me – with toilet paper in it he has purchased on special on his way to this appointment. He urges a gentlewoman out of sight–in baggy jeans- to take more photographs and she asks to pose him as well beside the illuminated advertisement for the gentle toilet paper on the ascendent side of the escalator. He agrees, walks across to the screen with the toilet paper (and facial tissues – why rough it-and demonstrates a pack of the alternative brand out of the plastic bag -like wiping an arse with a quilt. A labrador pup gambols downstairs on top of snowy white toilet paper- yet another variety-that unravels fresh in luxuriant abundance on a giant picture screen. In a succeeding flick a blue cartoon bird angles with a fishing rod and cheeky smile for a frozen pack of whiting.