Roselands, Monday Morning

Roselands Shopping Centre, Sydney (est., 1965); Monday morning 10.00 AM; a small crowd most will go to Miranda nowadays; people wearing face masks rushing about here and there; how to know who is fine and who is not; “Where are you marching?” (Quo vadis); the rich get richer, the poor grow poorer; profits versus prophets; “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you” (Jm. 5:1); I like the quieter places; this was one of my old haunts; I wore a mullet short at the front and sides long at the back; on the wall near the escalators large black and white photographs commemorating the past; a handsome young Roger Moore in one looking into space; a grandmother in curlers sitting at the fountain with her grandchild expressionless in another; Jimmy’s Kitchen; appetizers; fired rice or noodles; Paul Bocuse; Alain Ducasse; Anne-Sophie Pic; I look around past my right shoulder; a cluster of friends sipping their short blacks; they are old Greek men characters from a past story; one of them is against all vaccines, so he says; I understand what they are saying; they are ‘killing time’; I remember Sophia P. from Russia; we studied theology in Thessaloniki; she told me that time “was all we ever had”; R. C. Sproul (1939-2017); “The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in”; the triumph of grace; it is not good to regret; except for some few times; why did I have to cross the Cretan’s path; almost lost my mind not to mention my hope; had to rediscover the remnants of my faith from the crevices between the floorboards; “In the multitude of the anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul” (Ps. 94:19); the old self still wars strongly within me; “Here is the work, there the reward; here the struggle, there the crowns”; St. Barsanuphius the Great (6th century); Rainbow Lorikeet; Gouldian Finch; Rainbow Bee-Eater; the infection in the jaw has returned; another cracked tooth courtesy of Mae Sot; drilling into the calcium phosphate; pain is a reminder of mortality; who is Tom O’Bedlam; read me another poem, my dear man; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YMJcIvpUlc; the cemetery is the greatest university; from Latin universitas ‘the whole’; Sapanta cemetery, Romania; Cimitero Monumentale di Milano; Père-Lachaise, Paris; the aseity of the Deity; “in our image, in our likeness” (Gen. 1:26); back down to earth; Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck); George Milton and Lennie Small; scrambled eggs on sourdough toast with fried tomatoes; a regular Latte with skim milk, please; a glass of water to wash the tablets down; that’s the reality; all is good; by the grace of God; my waitress friend asks me questions; “when are they going to microchip us”, she asks; “when we are ready”, I say and secretly weep into the web of my right hand; “The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place” (Rev.1:1); apocalypse “an uncovering”; Patmos in the Aegean Sea; hold these little flowers; don’t break their stem; water them through to the end; Daffodils; Gardenias; Marigolds; I now look back around my left shoulder; a young couple [heavily tattooed] hold hands to complete the picture; next to them a family of five waiting for their order; I remember our Reno Café; the exotic syrups for the milkshakes; passion fruit; tropical banana; cool lime; an early memory from the ‘shoppe’; Mother by the Philips radio calling out to Father; “George, they’ve killed the other one!”; Father in response, “Who, Helen?”; it was Robert Kennedy; it seems like yesterday; I close my eyes and I am back sitting at my favourite table with my homework; in our Reno Café where I first scrapped my knees and heard the stories; Mr. Bill with his gold rimmed glasses; ‘Sir’ Ronnie in his dark suit and fedora hat; and Big Jack with his Kent Brewery (KB) long necks; cigarette smoke and tall stories interleave just beneath the ceiling; across the road from the ‘shoppe’ my first school; Newtown Primary School (construction years 1875-1921); my earliest football coaches Mr. Riley and Mr. Higgins; Morse code; the duration of a dash three times the duration of a dot; unearth the words from coals and diamonds; Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943); Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983); “Life is a marvellous, transitory adventure”; Lavrentis Mahairitsas (1956-2019); San Ton Palio Stratioti; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm8iCTFyTGQ; an itch on the tip of the nose; another beneath the left eyebrow; like yours right now; we are more alike than you think; same fears and dreads; a ‘one-way ticket’ in the back pocket; “And this is where the story lifts into the air”; The White Road (2015); Edmund de Waal; comedy is vital; satire even more; they have brought down tyrants; tensions in Tigray rise; Mexico surpasses 100, 000 Covid deaths; Black Lives Matter protests emerge in Brazil; another coffee before I leave; this time a plain white no sugar; George Carlin (1937-2008); Pierre Desproges (1939-1988); Richard Pryor (1940-2005); Monday morning 11. 52 AM; three new books from the bookstore on the ground floor [opposite Mr. Mint]; Shuggie Bain (Douglas Stuart); The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel (Akwaeke Emezi); The Happiest Man on Earth (Eddie Jaku); Bakers Delight; Roseland’s Florist; Go Vita; Katina concluding with ISTAS 20; Global Technology and Development; Public Interest Technology (PIT); Jacques Ellul (1912- 1994); Oh! If only you were here today you wise soul; “Technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization”; I too must leave soon; take Mother to the ophthalmologist; she is preparing her eyes for the long journey ahead; “From Here to Eternity” (1953); Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr; directed by Fred Zinnemann; Thespis; Theatre of Dionysius; T. S. Eliot poetic drama; life on the wings of bees; change the nectar into honey; for the love and for the wounds; l must remember to reply to Howard; to our amazing Miss Pat; to Cathy A. on the progress of the journal; friendship a precious balm to the soul; “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born” (Anais Nin); Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson); Robert Schumann (1810-1856); Piano Concerto in A Minor Op. 54; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynky7qoPnUU&feature=emb_logo; Protests in Bangkok against the long-standing monarchy in Thailand; AstraZeneca announces Oxford vaccine; crisis in Ethiopia and demonstrations in Uganda continue; “Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering” (Fyodor Dostoevsky); moral sense of right or wrong; El Greco (1541-1614); Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957); Nikos Xilouris (1936-1980); I hope George hasn’t forgotten his licence back home in Gerringong; our drives down together are precious to me [I wish for him too]; a group of people in wheelchairs with their carers; pray I could speak to them to ask for ‘the keys’; they know; I wonder who is out there right now reading my pulse; the statue of David; Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I; the Sistine chapel; "We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world”; Uncle Vanya (1898); Anton Chekhov (1860-1904); benevolence; resolution; departure aka ‘take off’; do svidaniya.