Balaclava

 

Gardenvale, half a league, Elsternwick, half a league, Ripponlea, half a league onward, Balaclava. Again, fourth time this week. All in the cuttings of Death’s Head Graffiti (DHG) ride the six or so carriages. Forward, the Jaded Bayside Commuters! (JBC) Charge your glasses! Charge your credit card! Charge at windmills! Charge your battery! Into the valley of Bagels ride the six, or is it seven, carriages. Go fourth, Jaded Brigade! Is there a man dismayed? Or woman, for that matter? Not that the driver knows, speaking through his nose, airing backup trackwork messages through crackling intercom, it’s no romcom, the timetables have blundered. Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to place digit to phone; past Graham Kennedy’s childhood home ride the six carriages. Alighting they cannot to right of them, cannot to left of them, cannot in front of them, the blue-and-yellow Comeng volleys and thunders, storms on like a bat out of hell, a cat on heat, a rat up a drainpipe, a yacht out of Brighton, them scarcely affrighting. Jadedly the JBCs ride the swell and well you know how it is what with one thing and another, into the next automatic doors stop breathless, into the mouth of “well, well, well!” ride the six carriages, into Balaclava Station. Flash all the door buttons bare, flash as they turn in air, serving the goers and comers there, charging their mykis. While all the world wonders, plunged in the battery-smoke right through the line they break, Ukrainians and Russians, realed from the finger-stroke streamed and selected shown by pressed digits on phones, shattered and sundered, image after glassed image a fingernail flicks up and back, not just six hundred, seven, eight, who’s counting. Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon behind them volley and thunder, stormed at with shot and shell, while anti-hero and hero fall outside camera range and drone: JBCs nail-flick the fight with “well, well, well” through their jaws of Death, picturing before-and-after the mouth of Hell, all that is left of invasion, left of six hundred persuasions. When will their power fade? O where’s the charger mate? All the world wonders. Charge the jury! Charge the drink driver! Charge the laptop! Charge like a Mallee bull! Honestly what’s the charge, officer? Honestly Jaded Bayside Brigade, noting the next six hundred tiktoks! Half a league, Windsor, half a league, Prahran, half a league onward, Balaclava fleeting a forgotten thought, all in the valley of DHGs, ride the six or whatever it is carriages. Seven, eight, who’s counting. Fourth time this week. South Yarra, more trackwork, more delays, more often.

Gardenvale

 

The eye alights upon Legoland crimson tilework cobbling downward from divides, nestling on its laurels curving amiably about the highslung gutters and ageing eaves. Rooftops and cupolas and penumbrae of illustrious eucalypts meet the window vision of Jaded Bayside Commuters (JBC) semi-slumped in their select blue train seats, their eye tracing ibis-like antennae standing on one leg above jigsaws of roof corners tracking who knows what frequencies of telecommunication to their visual ends, or did once upon a time, countless screens beneath geometries of tin and tile, metal-grey and Tuscan-brown, rust-lined and lichen-patched, corrugated and crenelated, wavy and choppy. The eye is the most refined curve inspecting cubist roofscapes of the cubist age, the bayside squares of Georges Braque rampant between beachfront and ten-lane highway, those famed half-shadows sudden hard edges in relief, those multiple vanished vanishing points someplace behind solid walls abutting complexities of cut-and-paste. Rainwashed spires, rainsoaked leafage lining rainflecked guttering, raindashed aircons, raindropped wroughtiron laceworks are drying to the eye that discerns the differences after the rain. The eye registers redbrick amidst piled high foliage, mission-style chipping grey patches behind rounded wattles and pruned exotics, zigzags of units’ railings rusting under mountains of jasmine and scarlet native pea. The eye has scant seconds between doors opening airily and doors beeping shut again, to discern curlicue Victorian gothic, post-Victorian reshapes, mock Queen Anne tendencies, pre-deco daring, pre-modern modern, peeled deco stucco, charmless postmodern modern, post-deco parapets, harmless prosceniums, balcony frames, and pottery sculptures, some terra cotta. Gardenvale’s orderly mazes are spaced distinctly for good living, the eye would seem to be saying, assembled across bayside sandy soil: larger foreground, distinguishable middle ground, wherever the eye gazes towards distant rooftops of the same. Except, the mind of the JBC says, what are the lives going on apace beneath this vision of dwellings, their names, their desires, their ins and outs? The mind kickstarts imaginings of daily activity, as the carriage shifts gently into action again, wishing to step Alice-like through passing casements of dull reflection and portholes of inner glow and infrequent double-glazing row upon row and business frames with repeat lighting and repeat bay windows and Georgian fanlights, if only to catch a glimpse within, of whom? Not that the mind can, as roofscapes accelerate to be replaced with others, downpipes, solar panels, satellite dishes, offset by green firework palmtrees, powderblue gums, deleafed elms decidedly deciduous …

Ripponlea

 

Uniform was compulsory for the speckled youths who congregated on Ripponlea platform that Saturday of all Saturdays. Shirts were tucked in that time alone promised would hang out. We piled into the red rattler with an effort at adventure, but somehow the prospect of boat races, and only boat races all day, lent internally a certain sinking feeling. Energy was kept up through loud voices with louder opinions, the vision of passing Melbourne streetscapes, in an atmosphere lacking deodorant. Seating in red rattlers was hard upholstery of a kind lost to mind for your average Jaded Bayside Commuter (JBC), designed for the age of the ramrod spine and steel buttocks. It was easy to hide behind a newspaper, which stretched across half the carriage. Werribee made way for Corio and soon enough hoved into view the underwhelming sight of South Geelong, ergo inevitable wave upon wave of an afternoon’s rowing. Some of us were already wishing for rewind, to that happy time previous to ‘the gateway to the South’, Ripponlea. But, like rowing boats, time moves forward even though the rowers face in the opposite direction. Hordes of uniforms, nowadays called cohorts, mooched downhill to the tiresome grey expanse that was the Barwon River. Caulfield, as always, were consistent in their performance throughout the day, consistently last. This did nothing to improve the general outlook. The sight of scintillating Scotch and overwhelming Wesley winning most contests, was abject. That the same number of rowers (8) in similar skinny shafts of boat ended in the same result, left one in a state of the St Kildas. (Ripponlea is a gateway to St Kilda.) The word for the wrist action that swivels an oar above the waterline, the name of the glue that keeps the cox attached to his seat, the long history of Geelong Grammar collisions with other craft – all the finer points of this pastime, were irrelevant to discussion in the face of such wholesale Titanic from Caulfield. Time to stroll through the picnickers on the other bank, parents and old boys quaffing bubbly, cheerfully chewing drumsticks outback of Range Rovers and Rovers and such, in mock heroic emulation of something English. Each raucous “Rah-rah Brahton!” and “Up School!” from bescarved onlookers only compounded the sense we were trudging through a lost weekend. Wearisome Wesley and soporific Scotch were enough to drive a teetotaller to whisky, as they crossed the line again in record time. One longed for return views of the You Yangs from the exhausted distance of the jolting red rattler, the last word in discomfort; thence to join other JBCs on the way back to where the whole wretched business of keeping up appearances began, geranium-bedecked Ripponlea Station, parents waiting for the evening pickup.         

Elsternwick

 

Most people are not aware that Elsternwick means Village of the Magpies. Many residents are oblivious. Elstern (German) n. pl. Magpies. Wick (Anglo-Saxon) n. Village. Elsternwick Station rests in a deep cutting, far from the hurly burly of Glenhuntly Road’s west end. It is a green thought in a green shade. A gentler, friendlier ambience imbues this charming hideaway. It is one of the city’s best kept secrets, as they say in real estate pamphlets. Generations ago the level crossing was removed and a trench built for trains to travel below the hurly burly. This saved the government from doing it now, thus avoiding delays and bus replacements and, importantly, the unalloyed expressions of annoyance from so many Jaded Bayside Commuters (JBC) with short fuses and 8.30 appointments. As I sit at Elsternwick, gazing from my oblong pane of train glass, thoughts float up past the ivy, brambles and other greenery of the secluded station cutting. The dinner party we attended in 1995 at a well-appointed apartment in Elsternwick, house-sat by friends. A pleasant red with nose of strawberries but full-bodied with an aftereffect of the floating world of Hiroshige. Medium rare steak and roast vegetables, yes parsnips too, are served with mustard. Conversation takes divergent turns. The understated influence of Sheridan le Fanu’s gothic imagination on James Joyce’s last novel, if it is a novel, residing as it does in a swirling present that cannot escape past or future, a hotel or a churchyard? The neighbours, and their habits, an unavoidable topic of concern for those staying in Elsternwick for the short to medium period, are broached in broad strokes. The guy three doors down who threatens legal action if you park near his verge. The more friendly person over the street with five cats and counting. The family of noise. The hoarder on the corner. Anonymous Magpie Villagers who defy black-and-white portraiture, walk briskly. Apartment blocks of JBCs. Fruit salad homemade to follow, then coffee that rises to the nostrils a noirish aroma. The shimmering sounds of The Blue Nile flow through the soft-lit rooms their Glasgow perfectionism. Workplace relations get a go, let go of when workplace relations get tricksy.  But already, cheerful Magpies in Melbourne Black are strolling up the ramp towards their Village, doors are beeping shut, and the train starts to depart from this green vista and its 1995 dinner party. Only another six weeks of trackwork at Glenhuntly, soon to be Glen Huntly, Station (east end) before return to ‘normal’ on the Frankston line, Elsternwick green thoughts a caption from the past, not a present continuous of connecting buses to and from Brighton Beach and Moorabbin, rain threatening and JBCs shaking out umbrellas.

Brighton

 

It could be said that the great majority of Jaded Bayside Commuters (JBC) live in the Brighton area, to judge by the supercilious eyebrows and world-weary grimaces of the slightly overdressed passengers stepping on and off Brighton platforms. Could, though perhaps they have driven from outside Brighton to take advantage of car-spots. This business of laughing at Brighton has got to stop. It’s been going on too long. Not all Brighton people are like that, not even half, the truth be known. The idea is ridiculous that their nerves are strengthened by daily intakes of rosé prosecco, that their favourite word is pistachio, and their every third thought is yacht. We have to get beyond these stereotypes. It’s not their fault that they found themselves from an early age relaxing for a lifetime on the correct side of Nepean Highway. Or that half of them can date their residence in this bracing area of the metropolis back to 1840. More than half, maybe, hard to say. It’s true, 1840 is considerably earlier than 1860, 1880, or for example 1900, something that needs to be kept in mind when JBCs step onto the train from Brighton. 1840 is very early. Demeanour is not to be ignored. However, comedians have been making a name for themselves for too long now playing the line that Brighton, intermittently pronounced Brahton, as if this were actually the way the place is pronounced, is the largest island in Port Phillip Bay. It's time to put an end to this schtick. That locals from this part of the mapped universe choose to travel north at all, towards the wilder extremes of Gardenvale or Prahran, shows they have an awareness of something outside their own parish, or orbit. There is firm reason to argue that these places are connected by dry land. Walking is out of the question, and the five automobiles are currently not in the garage, so try the train. Embankments, overpasses, and elevated stations afford an awareness that causes their heads to be raised high and shoulders set straight. Such a posture allows for eyes to look down upon the passing surroundings and the jewellery to glint attractively at unusual angles. A light, reassuring smile betokens the simple pleasure of knowing that no matter how far they roam, there is no place like Dendy Street. They are in no way your average JBC, they have seen the world and it cannot compare. They were  connected before anyone else, really, as train lines go. They know their place and it’s time to get over the ridiculous idea that the satnavs in their five automobiles are set to bistro and their minds dream all winter of beach bathing boxes. Figure it out!         

Yes

 

Yes to the Give Way sign flattened at the school corner on my walk this Bloomsday morning. Yes to scoured concrete paths, chipped and repaired and etched with twig landings, that I walk along from my local library visit, off the train. Yes to the deceptive elegance and reach of the eucalypts that stretch across the street, teetering on blossom time this Bloomsday. Yes to different fences of weathered brick, white palings streaked at nail point, multi-shade pillars upholding the transit of a multi-shade cat giving highly original mrkgnaos. Yes to the Give Way sign that points the way home along the hillside, thoughts of why is Ulysses an experimental novel in a way no other book is an experimental novel that hundreds read every day with regular enthusiasm? Yes because it’s already, in the very process of being written, not a novel with a start or an end, but a creative structure that is about styles, borne on by the body. Yes to the winter sun hard-lit on the roads and against the night-cold walls. Yes gives way to new, it has to anyway, change there is for sure, and we changing with that. Yes to the door opening and the borrowed books falling out of the bag and conversation with late-risers who soon will go out into Bloomsday, whatever that is, this day, almost the winter solstice for us. Yes to lunch of reheated frittata with mustard, views of the rooves grooves and grids, thoughts about what else to extract from the forest of scribble in my Bloomsday paper. Yes to the litter of words across the pathways of paper, odd letters that never even find a way into the tomorrow paper. Yes to afternoon at home, the therapeutic washing-up, the catnap next to the napping cat Obsidian, the browse of hand-me-down old issues of the London Review of Books. Yes to the needle in the groove, the irresistible truth of I’m Only Sleeping, the inexplicable majesty of Tomorrow Never Knows. Yes to the Voice. Yes to everyone who grasps the elementary decency of the Voice, the dignity of the Voice. Yes to the necessary next step that must be yes. Yes to where that begins at the place where slowing down is required, giving way, watching for Give Way signs, listening to the glistening trees in sunlight. Yes to the birds high above our kinds of windows, turned inwards against cold, square to keep the warmth in. Yes to the small words starting up a story half-forgotten, returning in inexplicable humility from the groove days of Good Day Sunshine. Yes to the interludes agreed to, timeout from not seeing the forest for the trees. Yes to this LRB writer who, notice, says in her great rambling poem going over several columns, open your eyes. Yes to the regular punctuation mark of Bloomsday that is yes, somewhere on pages litterly every place, right there in front of you, yes in your face, giving way.       

Cat

 

When making the bed, is the cat simply trying to help? It is a truth of domestic life that no sooner has the human arrived at that moment where the bed from the night before must be set in order for the night to follow, than the cat arrives and proceeds to stand in the middle of the bed, pressing his (or her, as may equally be the case) paw onto the mattress, for what purpose no book has yet explained. Theories doubtless abound, such as the cat is testing for monsters below the surface, a mouse or the like, like their ancestors. Perhaps they are marking the place where they will later curl up in tranquillity, an improbable theory given the extensive period it takes them to hold up progress setting the bed on its return to tranquil unrumpledness. Determination to be under the doona before the doona is even squared and smoothed is an added conundrum. They might frolic and pounce. They might rest quietly (he, she, any of them) beneath these coverings, pretending nothing is happening. Their human is stopped in its tracks, interrupted in the shake and fling of bed-making. The cat has no skills in this area. Its presence seems designed only to provoke annoyance and certain acerbic remarks about feline motives; feline used here in its negative sense. The cat has never done a day’s work in its life and certainly never once while anywhere in the precinct of a bed. Gallantly sheets are tucked into corners and under the trim yet piled mattress. Pillows are made plush and covers puffed to airy lightness by their human, no thanks to the clawing and tramping of the one true possessor of this queen-size quadrangle of languorous linen. The burrowing form curves beneath the spreads, unsettling all efforts at perfect turnouts. A telltale tail curls below the unsheeted sheet, pyramidal ears poke from an unexpected quarter, it is impossible! There’s nothing for it but for the human to fetch its quarry, lifting the nonchalant charmer from its fun and delicately plopping the cat on the floor in a graceful four-point soft landing. Is the cat a creature of ritual? At the very least, this temporary stoppage to the domestic routine must occur some hundreds of times in a given lifetime, cat and human alike. The human frets, the cat licks its fur. The human huffs, the cat stands and stares, giving a brief thought to its next move. The human must hurry or the cat will hop gaily into the centre of the bed again, else preen a while in anticipation. The human has one minute, the cat has all day. Duty duly done, the cat’s human gives the edges a final brush and is out of there, for the thousandth time this lifetime, leaving her (or equally, him) to sharpen claws against the bedpost before ascending the bed and choosing a snug area whereat to turn into a snoozing curl and turn in for a few hours of undivided at long last tranquillity. Humans, what to make of them?     

Thanksgiving

 

New Testament scholars are like other people, searching and reflecting and revising. Some of them write poetry. Richard Bauckham, whose work 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' is an important revisionist view of the Gospel narratives, has just published a book of poems called 'Tumbling into Light'. He tries different forms, including the perennially popular haiku. Steeped in scriptural understanding, his poems join in on the subject of today's readings about Faith and Thanksgiving.

 

Genesis 12 tells of the call of Abram, God’s promise to make of him a great nation and to bless him abundantly. At each step of the way into Canaan, he sets up an altar, an act of thanksgiving for all that has been provided.

After paradise

not even Lot’s wife looks back.

Memory turns round

is how Bauckham encapsulates Genesis, saying of God

God is the endlessly unexplored

garden

of the house where I belong. 

 

Psalm 50 declares a God of might who speaks with strength to his people. Righteousness is with the Lord. Although sacrifices are acknowledged, the people are reminded that every living thing is his, and that their sacrifice, or gift, should be one of thanksgiving and paying of vows. To do so assures them of his care in the day of trouble. The poet finds ways of giving thanks through words, as when he describes creation

Here among the trees

green

is a whole rainbow of colours

even asking of the Psalms themselves

If there were glory

only, praise like the last psalms,

would that be the end? 

 

Romans 4 reiterates these passages, emphasising that like us, Abraham “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.” Paul says that “his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness,” the same message being sent to us who attend to his Word. Bauckham says in another haiku:

Posing as righteous

even to myself I lie.

You are Otherwise.  

 

Meanwhile, Matthew 9 gives different expressions of faith through story. Matthew the tax collector simply gets up and follows Jesus when called, a moment that segues into accounts of Jesus hanging out with others of Matthew’s ilk, sinners and who knows what. In this case, mercy is the teaching, as distinct from simply making sacrifices. Similarly, it is faith, whether expressed in words or silence, that leads to cure for the women in need of restoration.   

Truly to face God

without looking at oneself

facing God – Jesus!

 

Too clever by half

are the foolish. The wise know

the folly of God.

 

[Pew note reflections by Philip Harvey on the readings for second Sunday after Pentecost, St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne.]

Rumpelstiltskin

Skin rumples that’s held tight by stilts, stilts of bones that may have known better days, mobile maybe agile but somehow awkward and disjointed. Rumpelstiltskin describes Rumpelstiltskin. Rumble of thunder, stilts of lightning, skeins of sky. Etymology aside, the name sparks at nerve ends, reverberates a hundred active verbs for danger. Though etymology is never simply an aside, as a name radiates its own extraordinary connotations. Room pelt style scan. Ruin pulse tilt skint. Rumpole Skilton. Always more than the sum of its parts. Germans know no such thing as suffix-skin, skin a diminutive as we say munchkin. Literally, as far as they’re concerned, rumpel rattle stilz post chen little being something someone somehow makes noises with in the house, earth tremor shakes, bumps in the night. The manikin of our undivided attention is a small rattle, for a German, woodenly ringing the changes of those he chances upon. His name is a child’s toy, he who would take a first-born child from its mother’s care. A mother who would name her child more mellifluously than Romp Bump Hell Stale Skimpy. What were his parents thinking? Throw the child a rattle! That will keep him quiet, not. Keep him entertained for hours. Unforgettable his name, actually, for a secret name no one’s supposed to know. Unforgettable once you know the name, by which time its power has vanished, now you are left with only the name, he having vanished into the earth. Again. Like a bedtime story, once again. Like you, the child will live to tell the tale. Tell the tale of the imp in all its simplicity. The imp with a limp, a chip on his shoulder, a chimp of chance, a simple solitary alchemist. And how come he ended up like that? Centuries later, still making trouble due to a lack of care? Reepelsteeltje if you are Dutch, Rumplchimprcampr if you are Bohemian, Rompeltisquillo if you happen to be Spanish, Europeans being as keen as anyone else to turn dry grass into solid gold, fearful as anyone else to lose their child. Fearful of being found out, fearful of things all falling apart. Ramble Steep Scorn. Well, tell the bedside story again and overcome the fear. Great François Rabelais (pseudonym, Alcofribas Nasier) invented the name, but who invented the story? In Urdu they call him Tees Mar Khan and in Hebrew, Ootz-li Gootz-li, the tiny terror who turns time’s turf to timeless treasure and teases the tormented with tragedy tee-hee. She will live and learn, she will be herself, she will trust to what’s best, she will trick him at his own game, his fall will be fast. His name will be a by-word, it will go up in lights, the movie of the book, the musical of the hit single, the author will be signing copies during the launch. It will be a sensible name on that flyleaf, with a joke anagram to help things along. Emit Skull Prints.  Kismet Runt Spill. Lust Prism Tinkle.      

R

 

When the crucial meaning of a story is a character’s secret name, a name no-one must know, it seems a super-spoiler who uses the secret name for the story’s title. Even to use the character’s initial R in re-telling the story is to limit the possibilities of the secret name to one letter, rather than twenty-six. Be that as it may, R raises all sorts of questions and conjectures, whether we know his name or not. The original story is clear, he is a he. (Hehe!) R might be a figment of the girl’s imagination. He may equally well be the unexpected answer to her most desperate need. Unlike her, R can turn straw into gold. This is not elemental monetizing for the girl, whose very life depends on being able to turn straw into gold. Her interest is life itself, the desire to exist. So, as well as his secret name, R could be called Saviour, the Tempter. He is the Answer to her prayer, but he introduces his own Questions. R is a Q-figure, a mischief maker who seems to hold the key to what will happen next. Problem being, her father has actually claimed she can turn straw into gold. He is socially ambitious, able to believe what he says at the time regardless of whether it’s true. The king is very greedy. He is prepared to believe anything if it will extend his power. He will kill the girl if she doesn’t turn straw into gold. That is a threat and a promise. The king thinks this will make something happen, gold or death. Locked in her room she weeps. Then R appears and turns straw into gold for her, provided first she gives him her necklace, then her ring, and then a promise to hand across her first-born child. Such is the king’s happiness at seeing so much gold, he decides to marry the girl, poor though she be, and within a year they have a child. Quite forgetting her promise, she encounters one day soon this very same R, whose name may be Retribution or Repayment. She is even more bereft at the thought of losing her child than of not turning straw into gold. She, now the queen, had not imagined finding herself being in such a debt. This is more serious than any riches. But R provides her with an Answer. If the queen guesses his name, she keeps the child. Truly, it is extraordinary how many names there are in the world, just starting with the letter R. Each one possesses power well beyond its simple sound. For two days she comes up with an abundance of simple sounds, but they’re all fool’s gold. He laughs, for none of them are his name. On the third day a messenger tells the queen they had overheard while walking in the forest a song about a name, sung by someone fitting R’s description. It is the most extraordinary name and what were his parents thinking at the time. When R returns the last time, she teases him with names like Ruinator and Devil before spelling out this extraordinary name.  R recoils in anger at being found out. He finds himself being dragged into the earth, home of all that silent gold, and torn in two. (Hehe!)

 

 

Idea

 

I heard such iridescent rainfall turn to runoff and sunny yelling mingled everywhere with voice and whistle and the operatic noises loud then soft again, dog and breeze and wave, from earliest outsides out, having no idea that such nature amounting in unloosed meanings to be its very own music could sometime recede into silence. I opened the book that took me into my friends’ tales and fortunes, merry as is though some had their personalities, each day a more unexpected turn of events, mature perspectives as it was put with no idea whatsoever that I would one day close the book, and all the others like it, their palpability and parade, their affective news something to go by, thence then to go into the place of no books. I walked down past the houses to the friendly shop with easy to access hot food and jam doughnuts and impressively toned oranges, the emporium of et cetera, with no idea that such suburban walks under bird-rowdy trees along tram-clanging streets would ever come to a finale in a sverdrup of end things, or a quiet room of once belonging. I lived with the body in all its litheness and torsion, its limberness and tension, soft shape aching with desire or tired from the day, with no idea that the knuckle and the knee, ribcage and clunky cranium could slip up, or would let me down, let me down so this then was all of me. I spoke with the incessance that youthful insistence streams across the airwaves, of others all with names abundantly, of the thrall that travel beyond fell into in a world like this, a world of horizons, of days that triumphed magnificent shapes and colours in changing shade, with no idea even as I took a breath, that such talk was once and for all in present company sufficient, trained to say the most in a little for reasons that silence will meet when silence intervenes upon the unstoppable flow, echoing as such silence may prove. I wrote words aided solely by my adolescent mind, aided by vocabulary oft defiant of yon dictionary, their enquiring sprightliness and shimmying adjectives, with no idea such years of words and ascension of ideas would in time speak backwards to a past rather than forward to a present, let alone a future that is for others, such a future combining to forget or remember or remake those words in its own youngest thrill of discoveries. I learnt to take from the wardrobe and return to the wardrobe on hangers from earliest memory my shirts, and most effective coats, shoving and shoring them regularly along the rail to make space for other shirts and coats, with no idea that an actual moment would come that was the last time I opened a wardrobe to return a shirt, or coat, having no further call for clothing.