“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein)

“Be on the watch. The gods will offer you chances. Know them. Take them.” (Charles Bukowski, The Laughing Heart)

https://www.weekendnotes.com/free-parking-paddys-market-sydney/

It took some weeks getting used to replacing my freshly pressed black cassocks for the loose-fitting cleaning overalls, but I began to love going to my new job at Flemington Markets, popularly known as Paddy’s Markets.[1] It was a season of peace compared to the rancorous world I had recently removed myself from, and at the same time it was a new type of learning. Raymond Carver says it well in Cathedral, his astounding short story on ‘inner vision’: “I’m always learning something. Learning never ends.”[2] I was hired as a cleaner: toilets, floors, potato conveyers, fruit crates, large vats, giant coleslaw mixers, windows, walls, and more. My balletic moves around [and on] the vegetable sorting machines had to be seen! I was also proud of my new ‘vestments’: a pair of weatherproof boots, gloves, the teal overalls, and a yellow raincoat with a hood. The hours as well, they suited a night owl like me. Work started eleven at night and I would clock off the following morning around seven, it was not full-time so I had rest days in between. There were many things I enjoyed during those months that I was able to stay at Paddy’s before I left to focus on the first of my dissertations on the Apocalypse of John, the one dealing with the infamous “number of the beast” (666).[3] Each night I looked forward to greeting my new ‘con-celebrants’: the Asians who would cut and prepare the salads; the sunburnt farmers; the animated stall owners; the testy truck drivers; and the pest-control fellow with the silver earrings, who would also moonlight as a Reiki Master.

The coffee-breaks were history classes in themselves, ‘evidenced-based’ as I would later call them. I heard many stories of divers kind in that smoke-filled kitchenette from these well-weathered men who had seen much. Some would show genuine interest in the books I would bring along with me. Tough but honest folk, with a beamish quality about them. They reminded me of the abattoir workers I used to help load the meat trucks in the early hours of the morning, to add to my allowance when I was a theology student in Thessaloniki. These burly fellows who would drink cold ouzo throughout their shift from their secreted hip flasks to then hurl verbal [but ‘friendly’] abuse at each other, were also not lacking in the stories department. I felt troubled some days, perhaps even guilty, for I would think there was more real understanding of the mystery of God in the lives and in the raw dignity of these men and women, than I had discovered among members of the clergy. Of course, I knew then as I do now, there are priests who move about us marked by the grace of Pentecost. I would read whenever I could steal a few minutes during the morning breaks or in between my scheduled jobs. The Philokalia[4] and the Art of Prayer,[5] were invariably within my reach. Yet again, I would be taught that wonderful and encouraging lesson often heard on Mount Athos: “It is not the place, but the Way.” For are not the rainbow and the moonbow both dependent on the reflection and refraction of light? I might have been without a pulpit, but still I would soliloquize on these and other things.

Other times it might be as simple as the positive energy good spirits release into the air. The felicity between humans who appreciate the history which the ‘other’ brings into the room. Is it something similar to ‘sonder’? Given my earlier life growing up at our café, and the years I spent as a little boy living and breathing in the atmosphere of this great old ‘ark’ of the human condition, this was not unexplored territory. Later I would largely draw from all of these experiences when I first began to experiment with the micro-story format. I look back over more than twenty-five years[6] later when I first put on the cassock and I realize it is with these ‘straight-talking’ people, at places like Paddy’s markets and King Street, Newtown, where I am most happy and comfortable. I would have stayed at Flemington for much longer if not for my pride: “this perpetual nagging temptation” as C. S. Lewis referred to it. I knew, too, that I had ‘unfinished business’, to paraphrase Martin Heidegger. I also learnt more on friendship. And this I must admit, did in some good measure frighten me. For I was, for the better part, almost entirely left alone. This awareness would haunt me for years to come and it was not a good thing. It was like coming to the sudden realisation that as much as you might love the world, you will never get to experience all of it.

He then secretly blessed them through the soap suds and the potato crates

The young priest Grigori G. Popov was now unemployed. It seemed that there were “two” Gospels. They should have informed him of this during orientation week, he thought, or at the very least, made a note of it in the course handbook. He made the hard decision to stick with the older version. Unemployed priests who opted to receive the “older version” would find some few hours of work at Flemington Markets. Grigori G. Popov chose the late night cleaning shift; he would put on his yellow uniform and waterproof overshoes with pride and honour. He remembered the “putting on of the vestment prayers” when he would prepare for the Divine Liturgy, and these he would now recite once more… I will enter Thy House, and in Thy fear, I will worship toward Thy Holy Temple. Though no one knew he was once a priest, they would instinctively call him “Father” and he would rejoice, Lord, how he would rejoice. He then secretly blessed them through the soap suds and the potato crates.[7]

[1] https://paddysmarkets.com.au/history/

[2] https://www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/file/2f%20Stein.pdf

[3] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=infopapers

[4] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Philokalia

[5] https://www.amazon.com.au/Art-Prayer-Timothy-Ware/dp/0571191657

[6] As I now write it is closer to 35 years from that Sunday morning of the 25th of January, 1987, when I was admitted into the priestly ranks of the Eastern Orthodox Church, ordained by the then primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia, His Eminence Archbishop Stylianos. The ordination took place on the Feast Day of Saint Gregory Nazianzus.

[7] This micro-story was originally published in Southerly (70)1, 2010. It belongs to the longer collection titled: “Short Stories off the Wing”. Here I have made some few changes but the essence of the story remains the same. It is a good example of how my little stories are inspired by real events [or biographies] or at other times by an observation in real time which might manifest onto another landscape.

Journal

I began to love going to my new job at Flemington Markets (1994)