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.’