Category: Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs (page 2 of 8)

The ajumma comes to the end of her story – the slicing of a giant onion into irregular chunks – and looks up at me as if I am about to leave. The truth is, I just sat down. She tosses the white stories into a pink plastic tub and picks up a second tale. I pick at my kim chi like it’s an excuse someone’s about to give me, and which I do not want to hear. But the truth is, I’ve heard it a thousand times before, and this time the kim chi tastes just as vinegary, just as spicy as the last one. I look up at the old man cooking pork on the little grill and mistake him for someone I once saw at my grandfather’s funeral – leathery, small, beaten down by time. The truth is, I have seen him before. He’s the guy who tried to shake my hand in the laneway and tickled his index finger against my palm, like a small worm against my skin. He recoils from me now, anticipating my inevitable reaction, and goes on turning the small slices of meat story. The old man looks up and sees a friend out in the street, goes to get up and then thinks better of it, looking sadly instead at the small glass of soju with no companion. It could be crime to eat alone here. Between the cracks of boisterous social encounters, however, the small seeds of loneliness and isolation shoot up like outcast weeds (him, me). The small glass of soju – I can see the exterior of the glass is dusted, from lack of use) twinkles in the intermittent strobing of the light behind the wall fan, wishing itself empty, knowing that in truth this is not its purpose – a soju glass should always be full. The half-empty bottle stares at the glass balefully, all the while aching for the warmth of the old man’s palm, knowing also, in all truthfulness, that its fate will be to be thrown into a crate of empty brothers and sisters, then transported back to the bottling plant, either to be smashed and reformed as another green glass story, or to be simply washed clean and free of human prints and then filled, just like the last time, with the clear and glacial liquid that keeps old men warm and conversations flowing. The room looks at us all with its usual ambiguity, its hangul signage worn and crusted from corrections, cancellations and sad amendments to the list of a dish’s ingredients. The hangul characters, red and orange against their teakwood skins, radiate an uber-cool aloofness, existing on a plane beyond menus and orders, beyond conversation even, though in truth the conversations themselves attempt to mimic the script’s everyday practicality, its scientific charm. The air forgets us all, forgets even the scent of the onion, the pork fat frying, the cigarette smoke slithering, the dust gathering on wood and glass, the incense in its corner. The incense has no story. The plastic chairs have no story. The glass windows will have no story until evening falls, and the world turns neon, giving them something to reflect. The ajumma continues slicing her stories into small white chunks, irregular but million-fold. They will be placed into small white storyless bowls, and green shoots added to them, along with the now-familiar vinegar saga. We will make stories from the pork and vinegar, roll these in the plotlines of sesame and salt, dip once into the ever-changing vinegar bowl, now greasy with pork fat, picking up where we first left off, being sure also to grab in our shining silver chopsticks without story or meaning a small sliver of white onion, and then taste the whole mysterious historical combination on the ever-unfolding storyboards of our pink wet tongues.

First published in Peril, Issue #2 (October 2006).

There was a trumpet somewhere but it was tarnished and could only play the theme from F-Troop. There was a drum but it got broken when someone I once knew drove a fork through it, just for something to do. There was a guitar but three of its strings were missing and noone took me seriously enough to play it. There was a harmonica but it fell in the bath and I left it there to rust. There was a flugel horn but you should ask my sister what happened to it, that day at the performance. There was a triangle but it decided to go to Bermuda for a holiday and, strangely, was never heard from again. There was a bass but it got confused with a US Army installation and was arrested for some trifling offence. There was a keyboard but I used it to write things on my computer and it ended up not being able to produce any sounds at all except for the cowbell. There was a saxophone but that went out of fashion in the 1980s along with shoelace ties and pointy black boots. There was a harp but it got drunk on mead and has never been the same since. There was a melodious Irish tenor but he got lost in the foggy dew and came back as the ghost of Enya. There was a backing choir but they got enlisted as extras in Sister Act 2 and – well, you know the drill. There was a paino – see “keyboard” above for its fate. Quite sad, really. There was a banjo but it was reincarnated as a colonial poet and, since that colonial poet died quite a long time ago, it’s now also dead. There was a lagaphone but I’m afraid the bush band revival has been over for some time now. There was a gum leaf but a koala ate it. There was a spoon but a junkie stole it. There was a mellotron but I’m not even sure what that would have sounded like anyway. There was a zither. There was also a ukelele. But in the city of Rau all of these instruments have been silent and sad for a very long time now.

That vision of you standing in the snow was my secret talisman, a lucky charm to ward off bad weather, frosted lips and crunch hips. This time, dumbstruck by seasonal variations, I’m moving slowly along a gigantic wedge, following my own reversed footprints in the hope of getting home before dark. That monkey, sitting on the dead tree bough, brought up insane cackles from deep within me, then was gone. This dream, in which all the scenes freeze as if it’s a dirty dvd, causes strong motion within my stomach, and the wind’s howling and the tree is gone. That might sound melodramatic but I’m unfamiliar with sub-zero survival and I’ve got no idea how to keep out the forgetfulness of cold. This bridge, festooned with ice tentacles, promises nothing in the way of supplies, shelter, fire or rest. That bar is no longer there, so I dream of plum wine as if it is my own blood, unfreezable, treacle-like, swaying. This nightmare, that recurrs, involves a long boat and a knife. That knife, whose sharpness I have never tested, nevertheless cuts me open, then drops to the floor with a death-clatter. This death is just like all the others, neither painless nor swift, neither liberating nor constricting. That phone call will come, some verdant mourning, and you’ll drop the pen and crossword, rise up from the sink and smash their mealy mouths. This could be a call to arms for all my family, only I can’t hear them right now and they’re scared. That guitar lesson taught me few things, but I can still remember them, even when I am drunk and there’s no guitars. This morning, trudging through the ice, I made a decision which I had to revise as soon as I saw the car coming fast towards me. That decision, regarding pouring rain and silent snow, comes up again every once in a while, to the nation’s detriment. This year of living daisies is coming to an end but what’s a year, anyway, compared to a yew. That was meant to be funny and cryptic and ambiguous but then again sashay past me and the game’s up. This cringing tide, this anagram of speed, this multiple-poled universe. That dry ice, that federation of losers, that crusted envelope. This girl, that girl. That boy, this boy. This way, hurry. That will never happen. This is your guarantee.

Alligators crawl through the slippered streets, punctuating the monks’ marches for alms. Bathed in a tropical punch glow, the women wash green vegetables in the shallows by the wharf. Cradled in her mother’s arms, a moon baby peeks out from her blanket of snow with cinnamon eyes. Deaf boys run shouting through the markets, each point of pressure upon a sack or bale containing languages, symbols, conversations, memory. Everywhere the smell of pine needles and gunpowder, as the chiefs gather straws on the reed mats, then toss once more for fortune. Forgiven, the street dogs return from their dark pound, whining majestically all the while. Gnawing at an old sock, the village cat does not even deign to move as the early train shoots past its tiny sphere of influence. Having given up on dancing, two drunk men stagger towards a wall that’s already warm, and somehow jam wedge themselves between the soft earth and the curiously expanding bricks. Imagine a world like this, where you and your kind have not yet set foot; nor will you ever come to know if this place, stolen from the itineraries of travellers and merchants, holds even migratory ducks. Jettisoned from the misery of a globe with only one side, it does exist, if you care to close your eyes and give up the attempt. Knowledge is a small brazier being attended to by wasps and the grisly night. Liminally conscious of its depths and, likewise, its shallows, winter comes and goes. Margarine could be a cursing word or a lubricant, were it not coloured like the sun and so prone to its rays. Nothing escapes the attention of the oracle, though no one here knows just who that oracle actually is, each having long ago given up his or her right to distinctions. Only the gravediggers are known by name, in this town where nobody seems even to die, or to care for sleep. Poppies blowing in the green breeze of the mounds, the gauze creep of the corrals. Quiet spaces, no more shall we sense them, know them, breathe them in through nostrils clogged with noise and slint. Restored, the grand walkway of the stars billows pain comets and milk teeth, caught by small children lying on their backs. Silhouetted against the puppet theatre stage curtains, two lovers explore each others’ thighs. Teach me to remain calm when your gaze is directed this way, phantom bird of the abstract jungle hair. Unlike moon babies, our spiralling lives must end somewhere, together or wrapped in clean sheets. Vertical graves, silent tongue dances, half-moon kisses for your eyelids. Waxen, your smoky cheeks grow roses, setting off chain-reactions in atomic fields. Xanadu, I suppose. You never gave that city a name, not even when the last rains came, and it was time to bring in the red peppers. Zookeepers have forgiven animals for lesser escape attempts; now comes the time for you to size up the wend of the wires.

It’s just been built but already you can see the tyre-marks on the roundabouts, the skidding tales of midnight smashes and the crumbs of shattered glass. City without a history, merely a pamphlet, that used to be handed out at the now-closed tourist information centre. The letters of its name have been stickered crookedly onto the glass, and the decor of the booth’s interior betrays all the tell-tale signs of a 1980s housing development. City of reconstructed dragons and false ceilings. City of site meetings and grazing animals. City designed to correct the imbalances in a country with too many empty cities and only one that’s worthy of the name. Administrative districts, quiet districts, lane districts, wooden districts. Empty allotments. White markers and red string. Nevertheless you can feel a certain hope in the air, a kind of metaphorical rumbling in the bellies of its brand-new inhabitants. City of roses and frog-marches. A city that comes on to you innocently, like a phone game. You call me. I’ll call you, let it ring three times, and then hang up. Then call me back. I’ll film you talking on your phone and you’ll pretend you’re not watching. We’ll descend into the moonless sewer of a nightclub and touch every person there. Who needs dancing anyway? It’s never as simple as it looks. Trust me, I’ve sprained my boogie bones so many times now, they’ve named a wing of the foreigner’s hospital after my pet crutch. Honestly. City of laser-like advances, robot retreats. Sinking into the arms of a wet chair, while a barman parades his Hitler uniform like a cocktail, igniting a tower of glasses with his own sweat. Tanks and fake matchboxes. Graffiti walls like album covers, slightly mildewed and smartened by a layer of filth and barely-disguised innuendo. Hot soup girls in the fractured shadows, handing out fliers for insect bands you know you’ve heard of. The remains of a sub-culture you’re sure you saw in the last city you visited but hey, this is a holiday. You’ll enjoy the correspondences. Signing your name on invisible buttocks. As you would like to, with a glow pen. Listening to your own music gives you that secret sensational feel, doesn’t it? Mmmm .. rewind. This is our holiday, after all, from reality. Pink anthems, rolling in the festival muds – it’s good for your online complexion. Reading of your contemporaries being bashed, or thrown into rehab, makes you want to punch somebody’s lights out. Alone, in the chamber reserved for you in this newest of love-hotel streets, you switch off the flourescent bulb instead, before cracking the set-list in your imaginary, trembling hand.