EMMAE GIBSON
Scotland
You live in the country now. You lived in the country before, but this is the real thing. Mountains, stones and oceans, trees, green islands and untrodden valleys, and shortly before the 4th February you realise in panic that successful 4quating is an urban activity.
For a start, deer don’t read. Just have no idea.
Secondly, the amount of horizontal rain here lately would wash the profundities of Kleinzeit deeply underground.
Thirdly, you did bus stops last year.
Land and seascape so pristine, a shred of paper of any colour gets dirty looks from green people. Of which you are one, naturally. Yellow paper with black capitals fluttering on a tree trunk? Looks fine in a romantic movie, but you could get your name in the local newspaper; think of the ignominy in the same column as ‘Man Bites Diggs,’ you’d be ‘Woman Accused of Yellow Loitering.’
Out on the waves? Now there’s a pretty thought, a Riddley message in a bottle bobbing, bobbing. But - plastic or glass - Coke or Glenfiddich? Both death to turtles. You dare not.
So you find yourself in the city with your man, who’s always on business, the Saturday night before the Sunday 4th February morning, on the fifth floor of the Thistle Hotel, listening to the raucous voices of party-goers in the street below long after 3.a.m. In New York all you could hear were sirens; at least Glasgow still has its well-documented, human element.
You brought a carrying book, a spare paperback copy of the first Hoban you ever read. You remember another hotel, the one where you read it, how it took you by surprise on the long way home. You could throw it out of the window now and surprise someone else. Not exactly A4 in its presentation, not yellow in deed, but yellow in thought.
But no, it might hit someone and how user-friendly is that?
You go back to sleep. The yellow paper waits written and folded inside the book of surprise, with the golden words:
‘The ends of things are always present in their beginnings…. the ends are actually visible in the faces of the people with whom one begins something. There is always an early face that will be forgotten and will be seen again…. some aspect of the person that is always seen early and will inevitably be seen again, no matter how the seeing changes in between.’
In the morning you go down to breakfast with your man and your book. You don’t leave it on your table for the waiter. You don’t leave it in the room when you check out, or at reception; no, she’s not the one. By now you’re getting desperate. You’ve failed to 4quate, you’ve let the team down, and soon you’ll be back in the car speeding guiltily towards useless, wide-open spaces again. Man asks if you’re okay - concerned - was it the steak last night?
You’re the one with the car park ticket and the money.
“No charge, hen,” says the man in the kiosk with the another-boring-sunday face. “Residents free!”
“Oh?”
You pause for a second as he turns away from his little window, to yet another-sunday-paper. The car starts to slide away. You know he’s the one. You slide the book on to his window ledge, the yellow folded bookmark sticking out.
You could have said something, given it to him, explaining, but that’s not 4quating, is it?
It has to be surreptitious. More fittingly Hobanesque, for the recipient, for the bored man in the green luminous jacket, you have to give him the element of discovery, surprise, the change of face.
You’re sure he was the one.
~ ~ ~ ~
Emmae's previous 4qations
Have You Heard The One About...
I don’t want to go to Hoban Square any more.
The other night I dreamt of bus timetables. The ones I’d looked up showed long
strings of inseparable numbers, places, times dep. and arr., fares,
concessions, symbols, exceptions; map legend heaven for any transport buff or
tourist. I’ve been seeing this bus in town - not dreaming it - ice cream
white, pink and blue no.417, destination board saying, HOBAN SQUARE, and I’ve
let it be. Bus and I, biding each other’s time, nodding as we pass, until the
day I would be able to get on it, the wistful cousin, perhaps, of FULHAM
BROADWAY. February 4th fairly beckoned, but it didn’t happen, I was on the
west coast.
Back in the region of Auld Reekie, I
wanted to see Hoban Square, whatever it was, half an hour away in Broxburn,
before I lose my eyesight straining after receding, FIRST buses, so I took the
first rain-free morning off, parked the car between leafless trees and walked
to the bus stop, my golden yellow papers discreet in a Harvey Nich’s bag. How
happily they hummed, quotations, sources and links, all printed out in glossy
black Lydian!
“Do you know why it’s called Hoban
Square?” I asked a comfy-looking woman in the queue. She seemed to think I was
from Channel Four News the way she looked round, before admitting she didn’t
know.
“It’s jist whaur the bus feenishes up!”
she said, fingering her Bus Pass.
“You mean – the end of the line – a bus
station?”
“Naw, naw. Jista kinda turn, y’ken?”
I’d been tempted to research the Hoban
connection, but refrained; rather wanted to meet the Square square-on,
uninfluenced, the raw, gritty anti-climax I expected. As for Broxburn, it’s
named from the Scots word, brock, meaning badger, and burn,
meaning stream. Stones and oceans in miniature, with Frances and co! Couldn’t
be all bad.
The single-decker came sprayed with
seasonal chocolate. The driver’s name badge said, Archie McDowell. He looked
as if he’d been born and bred in the driver’s seat and his grey eyes assured
me I would ask for nothing but, “Hoban Square, please.”
“He was a Bishop,” Archie said, as soon
as I opened my mouth again, (honestly, do I still look like a tourist?)
“Catholic” he added benevolently, his eyes seeming to turn green, and white,
football strip, home game.
“Oh?” and that curious word, ‘orangeism’
flashed across my mind.
The Bishop was a good omen, though,
because I was carrying quotes from the most religious book, perhaps, that R.H.
has written. (I haven’t read the one about the Actress yet.) Further, by the
guttural voice level of the passengers, old, young, sheepskin coated or belly
naked, all seemed to have known each other since Christ left Dunbarton.
Some blurb-writers do not romanticize:
‘Broxburn developed from a village in the 19th century on the
Edinburgh-Glasgow road, into a centre-point for transporting people and goods.
The discovery of coal, iron and shale resulted in an increase in population
and the creation of gigantic waste ‘bings’ which surround the area.’
Top marks for real estate truth. The once mysterious ‘bings’ are apparently
full of waste population.
“What d’you expect -” hissed the bus as
it shoogled between roundabouts, cemeteries, supermarkets and lazy traffic
lights, “- Elvis Presley Boulevard?”
Brown winter fields and three golf
courses later, came Ardbeg storage, Outlet Crystal, many Italian restaurants,
churches, hairdressers, banks and pubs. We had just passed one called the
BADGERS BROOK, when Archie suddenly took a sharp turn off Main Street Scotland
and we trundled up a hill. Expectation rose in the climb through the evergreen
tended pages of Homes & Gardens. An incredible sun came out, the sky showed
blue. I could see at the top of the hill, another bare, red-brown hill beyond
the rooftops - and knew at once it was a bing. I’d never been so close to one
before. In no time at all I was about to alight, the last visible passenger,
at Hoban Square.
Where was it?
The comfy-looking woman was right. And
the Bishop, if he were alive, would not be writing home about it, unless there
is a language of papal graffiti. I had hoped I would be wrong, but I was right
too, about the nitty-gritty, suburban realism. In the burst of midday light,
one green-framed bus shelter in a dull lay-by. A man and woman appeared from
inside and got on the bus, which left immediately. Apart from any aesthetic
concerns, where would I stick the yellow paper?
The sharp breeze seemed to belong here,
in what constituted the Square; adjoining the pavement, a three-sided row of
grey, single-storey dwellings, the kind they build for elderly people, one
central tree, concrete slabs, no sign of human life and the bing waiting
eerily on high. I walked to one end where a green park began with paths
leading round the back towards open fields, the reddish layered heights of the
man-made mountain beyond. It reminded me of the skirted mesa hills between El
Paso and Las Cruces, only they were ochre and sunbaked.
Leaving Hoban Square behind I tightened
my scarf and made my way up the sloping field, the wind upscaling as I went.
At that point I heard a whistle. A little brown dog barking in the distance,
running towards me, figure of a man some way off. His pet looked like a cross
between Corgi and Jack Russell. Fearing for my ankles and cursing Diana
Slickman, I tacked sideways, but the dog changed direction too, ignoring his
master’s voice.
A swinging choreography ensued, which
eventually brought the three of us face to face in the middle of the field.
The dog continued to dance on the grass, the man who was comfy-looking and
almost elderly, but had escaped waste population, obviously thought I was
lost.
“Can I help you?”
I usually get on well with older men, so
I entered into the swing of the bing thing. Which pleased him no end. If I had
wanted a tour guide…in a sheepskin deerstalker…. We stood surveying the alien
landscape while he answered my questions. This bing was shale, which had been
mined here, paraffin oil extracted from it, then dumped to the side, ever
higher and higher. Deep, deep mines, thousands of men, millions of tons of
shale. Wild horses run around on it now, and optimistic trees struggle on the
top of the “red ash.”
“No’ very nice, is it? There’s no saying what else might be buried in there,”
he said grimly. “You’re actually standin’ on a smaller bing. The Council put
grass on it.”
Underfoot was close enough. The sun had
vanished and we walked back down to escape the icy bing-wind. He blamed the
Council for the poor amenities, the vandalized signposts pointing in the wrong
directions, the Square of senior citizens’ homes being bought up. As other
dogs, leads and people began to appear on the path, he took a biscuit out of
his pocket for every dog.
“One more question,” I said, before he
and his dog crossed the road. “The Hoban connection?”
“Oh, he was a Canon. In the parish here.
About the 1930’s.”
Canon Hoban! So much for your Bishop,
Archie. Then he asked me a question.
“Are you… a tourist… or have you come to
live in Broxburn?”
I told him the whole truth, though not the whole canon of Hoban, which didn’t faze him; I think his lunch might have been waiting on the table. Tomorrow if he passes the bus shelter, he might see the yellow page I blutak’d inside, and wonder at the colourful word-pictures of Amaryllis Night And Day:
| A bus was coming. No numbers on it, only the destination, FINSEY-OBEY. Not a place I’d heard of. The bus was a tall and delicate thing of bamboo and rice paper, sheets of yellow, orange and pink pasted together and candlelit from within like a Japanese lantern. It was much bigger than a double-decker, towering so high above me that even when I tilted my head back I couldn’t see the top of it. |
I went back to the lopsided signpost and put one there for passing dogs,
masters and mistresses. If the gold withers away, the words will still be
written on the wind:
| Sometimes between two people it’s as if one is a lock and one is a key and they take turns at being lock and key; but at other times it’s as if both are keys or both are locks and nothing can be done. |
I hope someone else will ponder one of
the personal favourites I left on an empty seat in the return bus, driven by a
replacement Archie. Out of Pilgermann context it might not seem to be
about what it is really about, but to me, is part of the essential R.H:
|
The miracle has happened, no explanations are necessary. With a miracle one is immediately thou and the rest follows, the rest has been going on before one arrived, the moment is prepared and ready.
The centre of time is, as I have said, the waiting. This is now off the centre, this the motion of the everything, the action of the universe, the destined world-line of the soul, the living heart of the mystery. |
Back in my hometown car park, I pinned a leafless, young tree with the news:
| Loneliness… is the essential human condition. Everything else is gravy. |
Thank you Diana. Bings of blessings on you and the unfolding worlds of your
brainchild, sa4qe!
~ ~ ~ ~
Emmae's 2004qation
Two weeks of all our lives ago it was Yellow Paper Day and my appointment at DOCTOR HOOPER'S HAND CLINIC was for ten past ten. Gray day, sleeting slightly. My gloved Hands and I got there early. Negotiated barriers, muggers in disguise of ticket machines, the remotest of car parks and Hospital signage designed to enforce prolonged, lethal exercise. Then the initiative test, locate O.P.D.2, by way of the vast, scaffolded heart of a building site which seemed to be edging dangerously close to completion; a common architectural feature of the N.H.S. In the waiting room there were other hands, twice as many as people, waiting in a variety of poses and states of good and bad nick. Naked, bandaged, mittened, tied up, plastered, ringed, pierced, dangling, clasped, slung, pocketed, fidgety, still, hidden in long sleeves... Doctor Hooper had his work cut out. Predictably, not one hand rose in greeting, recognition or kinship. You don't expect much in the way of words hereabouts, but a few fingered letters of the deaf alphabet might have broken the ice. The coffee machine gasped occasionally in French, "C'SSHEURDRE!" A malaise of magazines grew on coffee tables. Posters portrayed the labelled parts of the hand, wrist, fingers, thumb, bones, arteries, nerves and digital joints, of skeletons; I made mental notes. Apparently everything gets a name in this world, yet the body remains a joyous mystery to me. We were all beginning to think in our universal hand consciousness that Doctor Hooper may have hurt his hand jumping through hoops for the N.H.S., when the Sister called my name. Twice, actually. I was surreptitiously 4quating. Sister pointed an index finger in the direction of the Door, upon which Hand felt obliged to knock. Doctor Hooper was a tall, square-cut man, square-shouldered, square-faced, fit and smiling, nothing hoopish or rotund about him at all, except thick glasses. I popped off my coat, popped on to the chair, popped my bag with the yellow paper popping out, underneath. His hands looked at mine as if they'd seen them somewhere before. My right wrist, to be exact, dutifully, infuriatingly painless in time for this moment. His had very thick skin, I noticed. How many hands had his hands held! If anyone knows about the hand of Christ it will be Doctor Hooper, I thought.
"Jesus!" he said, looking at my notes. Ah, maybe he is approachable, throbbed Hand under the moment.
"Surely not that bad," I said, tendons trilling like escaped budgies.
"Slurks?" he asked, squeezing a little.
"Jarrow full of mocks," I nodded fervently.
"Crickles and flegs when you trachlitt?"
"You bet," I said, "like kindling." Three lumps in a chorus line below the ball of the thumb swelled to the occasion and flegged their fire-dance there and then from 1 to 10.
"Can't be skelped," Doctor Hooper said, letting go. "More common in women than in men. No known curse."
"What about the Sinistra?" I asked. "And the Ulna - the Carpals and the Olecranon -?"
"Too close to the Gangliocampus for surgery," he said, unimpressed. "Trubba being, it would only come back."
"Does that mean -?"
"Exactly. Gangles panfully for a while then pans out. We don't cut dastardly any more," he said and furrowed his square brow.
""Don't I have to curtail my - my eating, drinking or maggidigifrolicking?"
"Not even that," he said. "Just keep an eye on El Bow."
My arteries arched. "How come Gynaecologists don't share your reluctance to scalp?" I asked suspiciously.
"Buggered if I know," he said turning round, "it's about all we rhinos can offer."
"I think you've gone far enough with this plagiarising."
"More common in men than women," said Doctor Hooper, still with his back to me. When he birled to face me again, he held in his dexter something that looked like a manual pogo-stick. "Try this for a month," he said. "It works by Revere Perpetual Motion."
"Enough is enough," I said. "Time is my boss," and I popped off.
On the waiting room coffee tables the yellow pages still blazed with black block caps as I passed - FOR ANYTHING LIKE REAL CONVERSATION YOU HAVE TO GO TO STONES AND OCEANS, they said, complete with bibliography, www, etc.
From there we three drove to the Mall, along the lines of Dave Awl, slipped some yellow in the tourist brochures, right beside Dewar's World of Whisky Tours, all folded to the same size, DON'T EXPECT ME TO BE HUMAN, SAID GOD.
Popped along to Boots and bought a tube of pain relief cream called UCANBLEEV-Plus, then Hands and I continued along the M8 to Edinburgh Airport to meet others of the same ilk, to 4quate randomly in the designated areas, (tricky in the presence of police cradling long black guns hand on heart across their white-shirted chests,) and to depart for sunnier climes, mountains and streams, stones and oceans.
Guess who was on the plane.
No, yes, really!
"Hand", a sketch by fellow Krakenite Catherine Milne.
With
the quotes [in YELLOW CAPS], I was aiming for depth and brevity (the soul of wit,
according to Shakespeare) and for the quick-fix reader. Imagining how someone
might be fleetingly diverted. From
Kleinzeit
for their succinctness and wider implications, for the alliteration of the
first, (stones and oceans...kissing almost,) and the rhythm and present-day
relevance of the second, and for the love of the spirit that is in things and
places. Good tools for getting through the waiting rooms of life. Blame the
sinister sound of Doctor Hooper's Hand Clinic for the rest.
Dr. Hoban comments: Well popped, Emmae! Keep taking the stones and oceans as prescribed.
