Tug Dumbly - Dedicated

Dedicated

I’m an inscription reader. I can’t pass a plaque on a bench without stopping to read it. Or on a bubbler, or on a tree. Any plaque will do. That torch out there? That’s me, brailing the dedication on the BBQ in the darkening park. Any park, in any country town, while the rest of you, let’s say, warmly chow down on heritage sweet’n’sour at Lee Fongs, third best Chine-Stralian joint in the place, and surely worth a plaque in its own ancient right.  

Go on, off you all pop to Target to get the kid some roller shoes, or whatever. I’ll busy myself climbing the cannon, or inspecting the Bofors gun in the RSL rose garden, or reading the Boer War memorial, or scanning the cenotaph, looking at whole male lines wiped clean – ‘Johnson’+, ‘McClean’+ … father, brother, uncle, son, all crossed off the roll, Dead Without Leave.

My eye scrolls to ‘F’. I’ve never once, anywhere, in the whole country, found my family name etched on a war memorial. Brings a lump of porridge to the throat to think what a courageless breed we are. Or principled. Or smart. Take your pick – skin-saving guttos, or peaceniks before our time?

I read inscriptions of any kind – old trophies, school honour rolls … and don’t take me to the cemetery. Not unless you can outbore the dead. I soak in every crumbling stone, cram my melancholy craw with every name, date and maudlin quote. The more pathetic the better. Child graves get me most, and the drowned, and the consumptive young, they’re a deadset onion to the eye.

Or we can go to the gallery if you like. But set aside a week, because I’m that plaque-reading freak who’ll pore over every single spidery note, on paint style, brush stroke and plein air technique. The Louvre, lover? Do you really want to go there? Coz you know they’ll find my corpse centuries hence, walled up, like a Poe tale, down in the catacombs rating Rodin with the rats. 

Look, this is a lovely picnic … but before the sack race, do you mind if I just duck off and see the breed of that tree, and which dusty mayor planted it in 1903? I need to know which whiskered alderman opened that bandstand, like a tuna can, and how long ago, and imagine who was there, and how, and why. Yes, I need to picture the crowd, those bonced-up ladies with parasols, those gentlemen baking like potatoes in the heat, hearing the speech of some rummy-red walrus of Empire, dedicating this or that Arcadian drinking fountain, donated by some mummy-collecting Victorian fop …

I think I read these signs to take a tiny pulse, feel History’s breathe.      

I no longer hold my breath about other people. I’ve quit caring how blind most people are to public stuff. The depth of their incuriosity has ceased confusing me. I’m blind to plenty of things they like, so fair enough. I’m trying to quit the missionising aim in general. Still, when I’m gone I wouldn’t mind a mention on a bench, have my name shat on by the odd gull, my plaque gently buffed by the cardiganed backs of codgers, who might once in a while say ‘him?’ What’d he ever do to cop a plaque? What did he make? Who did he save? …’

‘ … Now dentists, they should get plaques, eh Charlie? … Charlie? …’

‘Huh? Wos that?’

‘Ah, shut up and watch the waves.’

Tug Dumbly - Great Expectorations

Great Expectorations

I catch bits of sport in passing, like a virus, on screens in medical centre waiting rooms, or maybe while queuing to pay for petrol. And what I notice, from just that small exposure, is a blizzard of spitting – of hoiking, hacking and gobbing. There are flecks flying everywhere. It’s like downtown Beijing, where spitting’s a big thing and you have to do the dance of the pavement oyster.

I did voluntarily watch half of the last rugby league Grand Final, partly for anthropological research, and partly to try and fool my nephew and brother-in-law into thinking I’m a man of the people. And in that forty minutes I saw enough phlegm to fill a skip. The field was treacherous with foamy little patches of footballer mucus, like it had just been crossed by a crab army.

I got to wondering if spitting was a tactic encouraged by coaches to slipup the opposition. Then I got into it, and started admiring the style of the spits and the flair with which they were delivered, which I found more interesting than the match. These spits were no clumsy scatter-gun sprays, but tightly controlled missiles, shot with an insouciance that was thrilling.

Spitting is generally not something you want that nice old lady on the street to see. For most public spitters there’s a degree of shameful concealment involved. But stick cameras and a television audience of millions into the mix and the picture changes. These majestic shaved apes were like garden sprinklers. Their spits were a touretteish part of some fluid physical continuum.

The camera would focus on a sweaty Cro Magnon head, its brow furrowed in concentration on the next crunch of bone, when phwit! it would eject another tight little wad, with the velocity and accuracy of a beautiful torpedo pass. It was all just so flowing and natural, unthinking as blinking, or opening a twist top with your foreskin before adding GBH to your date’s drink.

Most of us mere mortals can manage to swallow our spit. It’s already been in our mouth, after all. But maybe in sport, spitting’s a performative tough guy thing; a kind of animal kingdom survival mechanism, like the warning of a blown up puffer fish, or a jackal raising its hackles: ‘don’t fuck with me, eh bro’.

I’ve entered the age of the medical checkup, and have recently twice been to a medical centre for different glitches. The first time was to get my eyes properly tested. My gummy vision was still good enough to see the game on the waiting room screen. It was American baseball – just the thing, I thought, to entertain three legally blind Aussie pensioners and a sports phobic poet.

There was a lull in play, and the camera was focussing on some jock who was waiting to bat (think Tom Selleck, in Magnum P.I.). The commentators rattled off his stats and stud pedigree. I didn’t catch his name, but let’s call him Brick Whittler, of, say, the Amarillo Nutsacks. Brick was chewing gum like a bastard, but between every few chews – phwit! – he’d shoot a little gobbet of spit, like a sharply bunted baseball.

Chew chew chew – phwit! – chew chew chew – phwit! … Seamus Heaney couldn’t compete, and I had to put down my book of the master’s poems to watch. Brick had my full attention for the style and volume of his output. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy simultaneously had nothing on Brick’s cool mechanism: chew chew chew – phwit! …

It was the casual skill of Brick’s spitting which got me. It was well executed yet seemed so gloriously automatic, like he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it. I wished the commentators would stop faffing about Brick’s batting average and get down to dissecting his sputum trajectory, and all the honing that lay behind his seemingly throwaway style. This was spitting as iceberg principle. You only see the ten percent, not all the serious business supporting it.

I could only shamefully compare my own small spitting history with the elan of Brick’s beautiful game. I thought of the times I’d attempted a cool spit and misfired, to end up with a string of slag spider-webbed from my chin to a big oyster on my T-shirt. An embarrassing thing, especially on a first date at Bilsons.

A few weeks later I was back at the same medical centre. This time it was to get an MRI on a suspected frozen shoulder. I didn’t even bother taking Seamus Heaney from my bag, as my attention went straight to the waiting room screen. Today it was European football, or what I gormlessly called ‘soccer’ as a kid. (How quaint!) It was Utrecht versus Brussels, and I didn’t have long to wait before the glorious shower began.

While the Belgians put the phlegm in Flemish, it was the Utrecht striker Dirk Slotboom who rained supreme, with three exquisite on camera gobs, and lord knows how many off. He was almost matched by the Utrecht goalie Whim Landers who, during an injury time out, was shown nailing the goal mouth with a couple of beautiful white darts. I was annoyed when they called me in for my MRI. I could tell that Slotboom was working up a goodie.

I suppose spitting is a context thing. Bikinis and budgie smugglers don’t raise a brow at the beach, but a few blocks back from it they can start to look weird. Just so with major sports spitting. Even so, I wonder if spitting mightn’t extend to other sporting realms. Women’s netball, for instance. Or basketball, where spit could add some real frission to that polished wooden floor.

Or Wimbleton. Wouldn't it be a thrill to see Venus Williams hoik one up on court before the Queen? Or our dear Ash Barty cuss a flunked volley with a good hack. I know a bit of spitting could only pep up a game of chess between a couple of grand wizards. Checkmate … ah, hoik-tung!

Or extend spitting into other realms of public life. Parliament would be a buzz with Tanya Plibersek setting sail a golly across the chamber into the government benches. Perhaps spitting mightn’t be a good look for a kindy teacher. But can you doubt that a bit of a spit might have beautifully punctuated Seamus Heaney's poetry readings?

the last word

the last word