Book and broad beans

A feeling I haven’t had for a while… on the tram yesterday I knew there was a book brewing. Luckily, I had pen and paper with me and I managed to jot a few things down. Without warning, I know the shape of this book and a little bit about what it will feel like to write it. I know where it starts but I don’t know where it ends. It’s real. It already exists and now I have a job to do, to bring it into the world.

That feeling, when it happens  (and I guess I can remember about five times and only three of them turned into books and only one of them has been published) imbues all of life with a new energy.  I become more sensitised, at every level. Today, I’ve been walking lighter, smiling more, thinking, planning, shaping. Wondering where I’ll find the time to make this happen!

Tonight, as I made one of my favourite dishes–broad beans–I found myself enjoying the process more than usual. The act of preparing and cooking the beans made them more than just beans. They became links to the imagination and to childhood. Memories of my Nonna who taught me how to cook them and peel them.  And the tactile memory of the furry insides of broad bean pods. Remembering a younger me who imagined what it might be like to sleep in a broad bean pod. Well, imagine it…

So there’s a book brewing. And the beans became infected somehow. BTW, they were delicious, with olive oil, chives, black pepper and salt. Normally I add lemon juice, but the lemons are all gone…

The feeling itself is worth something

“The feeling itself is worth something” The sentence came to me fully formed. It articulated something much bigger, more profound than I can properly articulate, I’m guessing. Partly from a yoga class that tested my expectations, unexpectedly [funny how those two words go together]. Partly that my orthotic inserts have finally started to work so my feet hurt less.

At the crack of midnight (or so it felt) I got up to go to yoga. It was a struggle, and I watched myself struggling, wondering what the problem was yet unable to untangle it.  All I knew was that I had to go and I wanted to go, but my legs were made of lead. The part of me that can’t help trying to work things out came up with two possibilities. (1)  I haven’t kept up with my practice as I feel like I should have. ‘Should have’ - says who?  After all, the reason that re-starting yoga after a 15 year break felt so good had nothing (NOTHING) to do with what I should do.  So I’m working on dismissing that one. (2) I haven’t been going to bed early enough.  Only one way to fix that one - get some balance back!

But I got to the tram stop and the tram came on time and I got to yoga. The teacher didn’t, however. Poor petal slept in!  But another teacher was in the class - and he teaches differently to the regular teacher. So we got a class that I hadn’t been expecting and I didn’t enjoy it (to be frank) but I think that doing yoga puts me in a frame of mind where I will actively examine my responses to something. I can’t let it rest at ‘I didn’t like the class’. I had my buttons pressed and my legs, formerly like lead, were forced to do things that the other teacher had never made them do. They became great aching torches at the centre of every thought and non-thought. Oh, the struggle not to be my legs.

But leaving the class, in a frame of mind that is only possible after yoga, breathing consciously, feeling all my body open, stretched, warm, flexible and alive. Feeling cells and fibres, or so it seems. And at the bottom of the stairs, a person. A stranger. A human being. Alive, I smiled. He smiled back. A smile that lit up my world. Just that, and a feeling of connectedness and rightness. We passed, and the smile lingered, with residual feeling of yoga- and smile-induced peace and happiness. Yes, the feeling itself is worth something.

humans before doors!

The 109 at St Vincents Plaza, not far from the top end of Collins Street.

Another tram tale (there are millions).

At the top end of Collins Street, there is a tram super stop. It’s so super that it actually has a coin machine so you can change your lobster ($20 note) into coins to be used on the coin-only ticket machine supplied on all trams. Super Dooper!  Another thing that makes this tram stop super is the expediter. I don’t know if that’s what Yarra Trams calls this role, but what he does is hang around the stop during peak hour (and beyond) shepherding people on and off the tram. This tram stop can get messy because it’s not far from Parliament station so lots of people get off the train, walk to this tram stop and then catch a tram to another city destination. And people get off here too, to go to work. From about 8:00 am it can be disorganised, full of pre-coffee commuters completely fixated on their own destination and too deafened and dulled by the sounds emanating from their ear-buds to remember that there are other people trying to get on and off and (more to the point) other trams coming… any minute now…

So, Mr Expediter shouts at people to move away from the doors. He tells them to get on and off quickly. He exhorts them to think of others. I used to think that he was a good guy. He seems to care, and spouts aphorisms like ‘be good to each other’. He has a piercing voice and a slight accent. He wears a greatcoat, and on sunny days he also wears sunglasses. I think he loses the greatcoat in summer.

My view of him has changed.

Last week, I was on the tram at an unusual time of day (around 2:00 pm) I guess Mr Expediter’s shift had finished, because at the top end of Collins Street he got on the tram. What he didn’t notice as he got on, was the drama unfolding at the back of the tram, where an unfortunate woman had stepped off the little plinth that her seat was on, had somehow misjudged the distance (I think she was lost in a book or something). She fell. A young bloke went to help her and she said she wanted to get out of the tram so he held the door. Well if you know the C Class tram at all (almost exclusively used on route 109) you also know that the doors are just a teensy bit temperamental. It seems like sometimes if you hold your mouth wrong, the doors play up. The young man who had rushed to the rescue of the fallen woman held the doors open for her. How gallant!

Mr Expediter, standing near the door and blocking the fallen woman’s exit when she did manage to finally stand up and get herself going could only say. “Don’t hold the doors open. Big trouble.” The young man tried to explain but the man used to pushing anonymous commuters onto and away from trams every day simply spoke over him. “Don’t hold the doors open.” Meanwhile, fallen woman, helped by other passengers, had verified she was not hurt and was making her way shakily to the door. Out she popped, and was standing by the rail, trembling as she dialled her mobile phone.

Next thing, the driver’s door opens at the front of the tram and the driver strides angrily down to the door that had been held open “Who held the door open?!” he yelled, clearly quite cross. Mr Expediter (who it turns out is not only a bully but also a dobber) points straight at Sir Galahad and says, “It was him. I told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. Nothing else I could do.” Not only a bully and a dobber but a stereotypical example of the institutionalised public servant-esque defensive aggresiveness that makes all our hearts glad…

So a few of us other commuters stood up for the knight in shining armour, who by this time had sat back down, next to a little old lady who smiled at him and patted his arm, no doubt thrilled to bits to find that there are still young men who will help a fallen woman. It could happen to anyone. “Hey,” we said. “A woman had fallen over and the guy was holding the door open for her. Look, she’s there” [we pointed] “She’s still shaking.”

Mr Expediter spoke up too, just so we could all be sure about what part he played in all of this. “I told him not to hold the door, but if he doesn’t listen, what am I supposed to do?”

At this point I found my fist in the air and I was saying “Humans are more important than doors! He did the right thing! Let it go!” I was on my way to a job interview and this was just what I needed to be sure I performed my best.

I think the driver sensed that if he shouted any more he’d have an angry mob on his hands. Maybe he also saw Mr Expediter as being a questionable ally… so he turned his little key in the door mechanism (this is how they fix these things) and marched haughtily back to behind his sliding glass door, closing it forcefully and keeping us out. He tested the doors and we were off, headed down Collins Street. The woman remained on the platform of the super stop, resting heavily against the railing and speaking into her mobile phone…

Tags: Trams

Two men on a tram

We are so vulnerable in the mornings, when we get on the tram. Our hearts are open even if our minds are sleepy. And speaking for myself, I just want to be left alone… I don’t want tinny little iPod noises from people who let their own need to remove themselves from their realities leak into my own peaceful morning. I don’t want to overhear this end of endless pointless telephone conversations.

Worse than iPods and mobile telephone calls, I have discovered this week, is the angry chewer. I haven’t been terribly consistent with my tram times so it’s not like he’s on the same tram every morning. Somehow his inconsistencies and mine have put us on the same tram twice now. And our consistencies have us both sitting up the back of the tram. He is so effing LOUD that I can hear him over everybody’s iPod and mobile phone conversation! Chewing with his mouth open, yes but with a bit more than that. He chews angrily. With is eyes sort of glazey. He’s a machine. Wet chewing sounds from a machine. Uggh. Double Uggh.

The other funny thing that’s happened is that both times I’ve had the angry chewer on the tram, we’ve had to change trams at Kew depot. “Er, ladies and gentlemen, we have a defective tram and I’ll have to ask you to get off this tram and take the one in front.”

Okey dokey.

During the tram changes, I’ve managed to move away from him - but not so far away that I couldn’t fix him with a baleful stare from wherever it was. Because of course, that will help, won’t it. A baleful stare can really create change for good in the world on a Wednesday morning! What I really want to do is go up to him and tell him to shut his mouth while he’s chewing. I resist the urge.

And then a funny thing happens. An old man gets on the tram at St Vincents Plaza.  He’s making a noise. It’s almost like Buddhist throat singing. A motorcycle goes past and it seems like they are at the same frequency. For a moment the man’s throat noise is the same as the motorcycle engine. I’m sitting right behind him and I feel like through the seats I can feel that he is scared and that this noise he makes is a way to keep things at bay. Then I’m standing, at Spring Street, ready to get off at 101 Collins.  I’m standing behind his seat. A clear thought comes into my mind, and I follow the impulse, putting my hand on his shoulder before I get off. As the tram slows he looks up and I smile at him. His eyes are watery and faded and this weird thank you thing happens. He’s thanking me and I’m telling him it’s alright. And this is all on a tram on a Wednesday morning, with angry chewing man frantically exercising his jaw at the other end of the tram.

There’s no really purpose to this story; it’s just a short description of two little encounters. I only mention them here because they have stuck in my mind and I’m carrying those two blokes around with me everywhere at the moment.