Collide Yonder - Ch.6

6.
The next day for Sam was spent recovering from the baffling side effects of a previous night that included no heavy drinking but whose following morning replicated the symptoms. Passive smoking was rather more potent than Sam had given credence. He couldn’t now remember how long he had breathed someone else’s used drug – but from his sluggishness and aversion to light he guessed it must have been some long time. Slowly his capacities returned to states where they could operate without nausea or a headache so bad it made him giddy. About lunch-time he was contemplating his new unemployment and the International Relations position with its open interviews. He lay on the couch in an inconvenient but unavoidable sun-beam, his eyes were closed and he made a list of preparations to undertake.
First things first. His resume was a disaster. And he spent more than an hour with it: editing, updating and lying. He had some experience in a scholarship program that he half-heartedly participated in when he was a scholar. He had written the occasional article in the college rag but he found that sort of stuff boring. Indeed boring enough to study for 3 years. He embellished these truths into a portfolio of work. He even awarded himself an obscure certificate of excellence that he whipped up on the PC. He ummed and ahhed for some time about including it. It did look very official and real but in the end he discarded it. Making the certificate was fun work that distracted him from the more boring tasks. When he was satisfied and bored again he checked he still had the correct business accoutrements, shoes, shirt, tie, jacket and trouser. He dug through his wardrobe before finding a good enough set of items. He sat on the balcony in the fading light of the afternoon shining his shoes.

The next day he awoke before his alarm after having a fitful night of sleep. It was still semi-light and so he had about five hours until the open interviews began at 10 am. He made a cup of his favourite coffee and its aroma cut through the chill in the morning air as it brewed. In the greyness outside a middle-aged bald man of wiry fitness jogged past at an impressive pace. Jogging in the area was popular of a morning despite or perhaps because the hills. Sam sat on the balcony to watch the birds and the traffic wake up. It was so quiet, so still. In the summer the sun rose so early it could be bright as midday and yet entire suburbs were as ghost towns. The air was fresh and everywhere there was an emptiness of event. Then slowly things would start to happen, one building on the causative ripples spreading from another.

It’s funny how fast clocks move in the morning.

Sam realised that he had no exact idea of how to get to the interview. He assumed there would be buses and trains but could not rightly imagine the path. He rarely travelled the financial districts. He packed himself into his suit and put his documents in his handcase, and swept out the door with what he assumed was enough time in hand to deal with unforseen interventions and enough time he assumed to wait at stations and stops to counter the vagaries of the system.
He reckoned on taking three legs to make the trip. The first was the train to the regional hub, thence a bus to the next regional bus-hub and lastly the bus to the financial district with its tall glass buildings. Sam also expected he would have to walk a block or two.
The train journey passed without incident except that the first train he waited for this rush hour was so full he had to pass it up. Ten minutes later it was as if exactly the same train had arrived again – equally as full and containing the exact same elements of personage and detail (these just distributed differently among the passengers). There was the large business man who found that he had to cram himself onto a seat and then be huddled around the briefcase on his lap — body language apologetic for his size. There was the moody young one behind dark sunglasses and headphones — these were so loud that you could hear the snare hits of the songs. Everyone was crammed in and didn’t like it and didn’t talk because of an age-old social code: don’t stand out.
But some people were unaware of the code though — confident and thick-accented country folk not tuned to the frequency of the city. Or instrument carrying colourful people who were given the courtesy of extra seats by aghast conservative types. Aside from the repellent few most people had automatically adopted ‘threat-watch’ and they always found one. Some man or woman who talked too loud and said ‘fuck’ as noun, verb and adjective. Maybe he or she struck-up conversations with people who weren’t paying any attention and only wished to end their cheerless transit painlessly. When they couldn’t avoid it the coiffed and made-up women (and men) sat straighter when near these ones and looked with great interest out to that same old movie of land and city scape outside.

At the hub Sam got off and saw that he had not a long wait for his connection. In the tunnel to Platform 3 there was a beggar woman. Sam wanted to stare but not catch her eye. This one had studied the arts of subtlety — she would say something unintelligible but much like, ‘excuse me’. But she pitched it just right so that it caught in you. It was a broadcast to suckers. Another of her tactics was to constantly adjust herself and her pitiful effects. How magnetising the site of someone squaring a hat with lines in the tiles can be. It only takes a second to watch – but by this time she had begun to resettle herself – refolding a leg beneath her or brushing a strand of hair. And so you get caught watching and waiting for repose – but she never assumes it. If you could, from a safe distance or inside a store, watch her for a time you would see that she is incessant, constantly disturbing your eye. Sam felt his usual pang of guilt, pity and disgust when walking past a ‘rubbish-person’ (as he had been instructed to think of them) and acting as though they weren’t there.
“E’scuz-me-miz-der…”
But he covered himself in the crowd and ascended the stairs to Platform 3.
He was making more excellent time than he had hoped and would probably now have to waste some – as much as two hours. So he bought a coffee form the merchant who wandered the platforms with a samovar on his back. He worked for On-Tha-Go, a reputable and vastly profitable company that sold coffee to stressed-out workers wherever they congregated. On-Tha-Go served and increased a market need. People who needed coffee often needed more. On-Tha-Go’s wanderers were much like the cigarette girls that could be found when everyone was addicted to cigarettes. In other busy cities On-Tha-Go wanderers carried side-arms as they cruised about offering refreshment. Long-time wanderers workers often struck up great rapport with the station staff they worked alongside and had from time to time shot to death young men assaulting these associates.
On-Tha-Go’s coffees weren’t great but were legendarily potent.
As the company grew it changed its corporate identity to Ontago and bought up the whole coffee supply line and used GM seeds (Ontagocaff™) in Third World countries and made communities therein well-off. Good corporate citizen. As a result goodwill was fostered and Ontago had a group of eager third-world workers and rather than exploit them Ontago treated them as ‘real people’ and educated and paid them well. Ontago farms were quite often attacked by ‘non-Ontago elements’ and were later protected by private tactical squads made up of Ontagocaff™ farmer’s sons who could, by now, read and write, drink clean water from modern plumbing systems and enjoy the rich, full flavour of Ontago’s finest.
The attacks were from other locals and were fuelled by jealousy, pettiness and hunger. They were foiled with British-built four-wheel-drives, Chinese-built walkie-talkies and Israeli-built assault rifles.
After a period of five years service members of the squads were awarded with a Colt pistol with a big silver ‘5’ in the handle as a personal gift from James G. Smite — the current owner of Ontago and member of the NRA. These pistols were highly prized and served as terror weapons for the squads when they wanted to throw their weight around. The men with nickel plated Colts on their belts were not wet-behind-the-ears farm boys who sprayed bullets all over the place — these men were survivors. In the vernacular pidgin the term ‘cinque-pistolo’ came to symbolise the elite of the squads and their weapons. The CP men were treated with greater wariness by hostile ‘non-Ontago elements’ and held as officers by recruits. A system thus self-organised where before there was none.
Men of the Cinque-Pistolo sometimes left, or were captured, or maybe killed and stripped of equipment and so inevitably cinque-pistolos appeared on the black market and became a sort of fashion accessory among big men of the region. When cinque-pistolos (and cheap imitations) started to be used to rob banks and shoot people in nightclubs in the greater region Ontago stopped the practice of distributing the ‘5’ gun and instead awarded suitable candidates with brassy chevrons to sew onto their uniform sleeves.

***

The in-bound from Platform 3 pulled away and this time Sam got a seat because when boarding he waited behind someone who looked pushy and was. The girl who sat beside him was a secretary, he suspected, and probably an ornamental one at that. She was dressed expensively in a style now called ‘business-provocativ’. She fished for her mobile phone in a leather satchel which contained a prospectus she liked to keep in there for self-delusory reasons. Across from him was the large blocky businessman again huddled over his briefcase. Both man and girl were wearing headphones.
The in-bound from Platform 3 was old and rickety and Sam was glad to get off. By looking through the glass doors between carriages he could see the differences in track, car-to-car, causing the forward carriage to perform alarming gymnastics.
So he began the last stretch to get to the 10am. With 90 minutes in hand and only one bus to catch Sam decided to calm his nerves a little. His nervousness had been steadily creeping up as he travelled into the city that day, and only now did he pay it conscious heed.

At the bus stop Sam saw that the bus was not due until 9:03am. And so with over half and hour to kill he decided to go for a little walk. It was cool, sunny and breezy. Yellow leaves rolled about in eddies of wind. A block away from the stop he stumbled on a small farmers’ market. Alongside the many rows of green leafy things that looked good to eat were the usual attendees of markets. There was a fellow selling jewellery and ‘pieces’ wrought in metal. Near him was the lady selling food bowls and backscratchers carved of heavily stained red wood. Though highly amenable as gifts Sam still wondered whether anyone actually sought such things specifically when they went to markets.
Someone over there was selling goldfish and plastone mouldings of Buddha and of dragons coiled around incense holders. People here also sold flavoured peanuts, home recipe preserves, their latest partially useful inventions and worn out old things that so many people enjoyed the presence of. There was a busker — a German fellow — who had great red arms and barely fitted into his kinda-sorta traditional attire. He did however have an authentic voice: deep and strong. He accompanied himself on the concertina and for it to keep up with his weapon of a voice he was throttling the life out of the delicate looking thing with his butcher’s arms. The concertina case laid flat on the concrete was well patronised with the smaller coins. He was better paid than other buskers because he made his routine not just a show of technical proficiency. It doesn’t matter how awful you are provided you are entertaining. If you are entertaining and good, so much to the better. To supplement his busking income the German had a part time job as a vacuum cleaner salesman. It was a job in which his presently concealed comb-over served him in good stead. At the end of a folk song he would put down his concertina (and make it sigh) before wiping his forehead with a handkerchief and tweaking his ‘stache. By these actions he drew attention to his exertions and his prized possessions.

Near the section that sold small pets an Italian sounding man (who was actually Sardinian) was selling pondweed to the people who had just bought goldfish from the people selling plastone Buddhas (rub his belly for luck – but ask first. You are invading his personal space, you paedophile. “It really makes you think,” Coste said). The Sardinian had deep, dark, green tanks full of aquatic snails from which he produced lustrous fistfuls of the weed. He would then with great joviality extol its values to anyone within his sphere of influence. In the stall beside this extrovert was a woman all in lavender flannel sitting in a chair. She sported a large raffiah hat, an engrossing book and no customers. She was selling sunflowers. No one wanted to buy any. Although they couldn’t quite nail it down the people not buying found the giant intimidating.
Flowers are little, pretty things which can be used for decoration and go well with the colour pink. Suitable for children, as only the safest of things (such as Jingo the Bunny Wabbit) are. Flowers weren’t supposed to be six feet tall and have faces a foot wide that moved.
The sunflowers were turned to the morning sun that had crept over the edge of a fifty-storey bank. Sam went into this pocket of flannel calm in the busy markets. It took him a little longer to feel it than other people but as he was walking among the giant stems he felt the honesty of viridity – as if the giant flowers were emanating the blind force.
I am life
You can’t kill me. I shall be here after you have gone and I won’t remember you. I shall take all that you were and grow from it and then you will become a part of me
And then I will have you
And because I can wait forever and it is foregone, you are already mine

The woman in the lavender flannel knew this. She felt part of the flowers and both were part of a larger way. An avenue between the flowers led back to people and Sam took it as the flowers, without eyes, watched him go.

Sam felt that that was not that first time he’d encountered the green force. It was a different feeling than that day in the bamboo. This was non-human power, not a panic attack. No, it was from when he was much younger, when his mother was in hospital again like she was many times. And so like so many times he was sent to live with his aunt. He didn’t know why he was holidaying with her but didn’t ask as the grownups were sad and uncommunicative. Sam could tell from a young age when was the time to be quiet. He forgot those questions after a few days living in his aunt’s sprawling house, with its wide verandas, creeping tropical mildew pulling its erect colonial posture back toward the ‘everything’. Because she lived in the tropics her garden was rampant. Dark green things clamoured forth in verdance, winding around each other and whatever else would give them more sun, more soil, more life. Plants that would have been shrubs at home here were giants. They had huge sheet leaves like slick leather. They were green only in the right light, black otherwise. Toward the back of her property, past the crumbling white wall, ran a little stream and there in the surrounding darkness he encountered the children over the back fence.
Three, blond and happy, with whom he instantly made friends and played with in the stream for hours that were too short. The eldest boy had a blunt little pocket-knife and he fashioned rude spears for them. With these they fished with great mirth and caught absolutely nothing while stalking loudly along the banks. There were actually things to catch in that stream, had they been able, eels lived there and turtles and other smaller things. One night in a massive tropical storm, swept in from the seas, a diadromous fish, five feet long, entered the stream from the ocean. The downpour had widened the little brook into a surging main cable. As waterways pulse and decline fish find their ways into all sorts of places. The ocean fish left with the swollen waters of the stream and no one ever saw it or imagined that it was there. Although, on another ‘holiday’ – this time with his father – Young Sam once imagined something similar.
They were at a waterfall that had a deep pool halfway down its total span. Little Sam imagined there lived a great old fish that was wise – Grandfather Cod – who was stuck there but he could never be caught and would never die.
Sam’s father asked his son if he would like an ice-cream.

With the blond children and on another yet ‘holiday’ Sam went to a park that had a tree in it that had the most remarkable fruits a young boy could hope to see (in fact there were two trees): their fruits looked remarkably like poos. Though they were firm, weighty and green they still dangled and hung just like the giggling children imagined poos must. The fruits hung on long cord-like stems that were unbreakable. The poos could be pulled off with difficulty but once separated from the tree they weren’t as funny. They were funnier to bat around or swing back and forth. The eldest boy called them ‘bommy-dangles’. This name flattened the children with laughter for a few minutes. Then they went to play on the merry-go-round. In the car on the way home the eldest boy would turn around in the front seat and to the younger ones in the back seat mouth the word ‘dangle’ and reduce them to tears time and again. It was on this day Sam’s mother died.









Just as there is Tasma here so there is a tasma between people and all things out there in the real world. But out there in the real world it is only a conceptual process not the solid and real process it is here. And also out there in the real world it is being made so fast and by so many events that it moves faster than can be seen.
         It is happening in three dimensions over an already omnipresent structure and frame. Any change is a spherical ripple in density moving outward through the tasma, speed increasing as probability decreases. The more unexpected the faster and powerful. And as it comes into continuous and varied contact with other ripples sundry ripples are caused.