Be You Tiful

[Books and Beans in Brisbane on 6/25/24]

Today, I woke to sounds of crickets. Leaving my room, I heard a street sweeper working in the semi dark. Two minutes later, I saw five dogs playing or flirting with each other in the middle of a traffic free street. Trotting closer, one half recognized me so didn’t bark. Where have you been, his eyes asked.

For three weeks, I had woken to a parliament of unseen creatures. They hooted, hollered, catcalled, whistled, grumbled and squawked. One always lamented most bathetically. Another often erupted into a litany of wrongs. A wise one affected a reflective tone.

“What are these birds, man?” I asked my host, Mark.

“I don’t know.” The only one he’s familiar with was the bin chicken.

At night, feral cats wailed and growled like injured ghosts.

“You know, Mark, I saw exactly one monkey during eight months in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was a baboon. There’s more wildlife in Aussie cities than African ones!”

Oriental too. Most humans dwell inside Southeastern Asia. More mouths per square mile ensures fewer creatures breathe. The amount of food carried by Oriental travelers astound Aussies. It’s sniffable and edible heritage.

Before coming to Brisbane, I was asked by a Saigon friend, Mây, to bring back a book or two. “I trust your taste.” In three weeks, though, I didn’t stumble onto a legitimate bookstore. Even Mark couldn’t think of one. At Pulp Fiction on Adelaide, you can grab Christopher Paolini, Frank Chalmers, Sarah A. Parker and Samantha Shannon, etc. At nearby Books and Beans, there’s a ton of garbage to peruse with your flat white. I opened one book that’s possibly interesting, Keith Miles and David Butler's Marco Polo, only to find “mother FUCKER” in pencil and triple underlined, right on page three. To an ahistorical and semiliterate wokester, all white explorers were racist colonizers.

Just before Australia Day in 2018, a Captain Cook statue in Melbourne was doused with pink paint. In 2022, Cook was covered in red. This year, James was sawed off at the ankles. On his pedestal in red, “THE COLONY WILL FALL.” Should whites abandon Oz in a sci-fi scenario, Indonesia, China, Papua New Guinea or even Timor Leste would bump Aboriginals aside to claim land.

Outside Central Station, I spotted a young woman reading a thickish book, but it turned out to be a Rick Riordan sedative for half minds. Here’s the pitch for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, “In his continuing quest to earn college recommendation letters from the gods, Percy has to pet sit the goddess Hecate’s polecat and giant mastiff during Halloween week. What could go wrong?” If yo chide be reading dat, you’ve fucked up royally.

Bookstores, libraries and museums are curated halls of learning. Even a print dictionary reveals unsuspected ideas and perspectives. FaceBook, YouTube and TikTok have bred generations of jumpy morons. If born today, even Shakespeare would have a hard time slogging through all the static, mud and porn. His beloved bookstores are mostly gone. James Shapiro:

There’s no way that Shakespeare could have bought or borrowed even a fraction of the books that went into the making of his plays […] London’s bookshops were by necessity Shakespeare’s working libraries, and he must have spent a good many hours browsing there, moving from one seller’s wares to the next (since, unlike today, each bookseller had a distinctive stock), either jotting down ideas in a commonplace book or storing them away in his prodigious actor’s memory.

Like everybody else before our increasingly impoverished era, Shakespeare also had a wealth of direct, tactile and smelly experiences to feed off.

Though I could have ordered Henry Lawson through Amazon, I didn’t think Mây needed to be immersed in Aussie issues and history as written in 19th century Oz English. Though she had worked in Manhattan, English is Mây’s third language, after Vietnamese and German.

I blundered through this trip. Since I only wear two shirts, packing shouldn’t have been too perplexing, yet I only brought one. In Brisbane, I thought my other shirt had been blown off Mark’s balcony. I confused coins and coffees. Booking my return, I got the month wrong. In Sydney, there were two 10:15 flights to Saigon on 6/24/24. That shouldn’t happen. Flying cheapo Vietjet, I went to the gate for Vietnam Airlines, so had to sprint like OJ Simpson to avoid disaster. I did manage to write six articles, though, and my street photography went well. Most importantly, I got an education.

Last message seen walking around, “Veterinarians are four times more likely to die by suicide than the average person. Sophie was one of them. Respect your vet staff.” Above it was a smiling Sophie with three puppies. Brisbaners are constantly told to behave better. Above sinks in public toilets, “Please wash your hands.”

Riding Uber to the airport, I smiled at a Norman Hotel billboard, “Brisbane’s Worst Vegetarian Restaurant.” It’s “a beef centric venue with a meat cabinet that will make any butcher blush.”

At the terminal, I browsed a promotional pamphlet for Ipswich. It began with this “Acknowledgement of Country”:

Gurumba Bigi (good day) and welcome. Ipswich, located on Yugara/Yagara Country, known traditionally as Tulmur, has been home to First Nations people since the beginnings of recorded European arrival. The Traditional Owners of the Ipswich region are the Jagera, Yuggera and Ugarapul people, those who are part of the Yugara/Yagara Language Group.

We recognise and acknowledge the Jagera, Yuggera and Ugarapul peoples as the custodians for the beautiful land and waters in the Ipswich region. Ipswich is proud of this ancient culture, which have [sic] been on Country for thousands of years, and respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Country on which we work, live and play.

We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging as the keepers of the traditions, customs, cultures and stories of proud peoples.

We look forward to working with all First Nations peoples in the Ipswich region to share culture through tourism, in a spirit of mutual respect and reconciliation.

Even private companies have Acknowledgements of Country. Here’s one for the Bruny Island Cheese Company:

WE CARE ABOUT REAL CHEESE. AND BREAD. AND BEER. AND COUNTRY…

We acknowledge the nuenonne people as the traditional owners of Lunawanna-alonnah (Bruny Island), our island home. We live and work on country that is the ancestral and spiritual home of the Palawa peoples, the first Tasmanians. We stand for a future that respects and celebrates our Indigenous culture, language and history and we acknowledge that their story is an integral part of the Tasmanian story.  

We honour the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, their Elders past, present and emerging and thank them for caring for the place we now call home.

Mark used to drive trucks for them. Refusing to be “vaccinated,” Mark got no more shifts.

An ad for Newstead Indian Pale Ale, “THE UNOFFICIAL BEER FOR LIGHTHEARTED INSUBORDINATION.” Oz’ outlaw or rebellious past is often evoked. Eureka Rebellion flags are flown at construction sites. I had an Angus beef pie with smashed instead of mushy peas at Felons. It also came with Vietnamesey raw leaves and Indian influenced tomato chutney sauce.

I said to Mark, “It’d be easier for me to find a pie floater in Vung Tau than here.” I can just go to Belly’s, Emily’s Kitchen or Ned Kelly, the latter just a seven minute walk from Cóc Cóc Coffee, where I’m typing.

At Sydney’s airport, there’s a woman around 50 with this hoodie, “Made from Recycled Boyfriends.”

On the packed plane, there may have been six masked passengers. One nutcase near me didn’t dare to breathe freely during 10 hours aboard.

From Saigon’s airport, I had to take a passenger van to Vung Tau. At a brief stop, I grabbed a baozi, my inadequate dinner. This morning, I made up for it with an excellent bowl of beef noodle soup at Phở Rùa. The older waitress wore this T-shirt, “MOURIR EST UN EXPERIENCE EXTRAORDINAIRE.” Of course, Céline wrote Mort à credit. Let’s close, then, with the most horrific end to Captain Cook’s amazing life. Twain:

Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment. Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished and lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of the limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance at this spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen thousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly origin with a groan. It was his death-warrant. Instantly a shout went up: “He groans! — he is not a god!” So they closed in upon him and dispatched him.

His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of it which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook it for the heart of a dog.

It’s only 8PM, so two hours before Cóc Cóc closes. Since they’re out of coconuts, I must be content with a sour lemonade as I stare at exhilarating life. In Brisbane, I found much of it at Fortitude Valley Train Station. A lovely girl was delighted with her new trainlink card. Her mom wore “BE.you.TIFUL.” I can’t agree more.

[Brisbane, 6/24/24]

[Brisbane, 6/24/24]

[Brisbane’s airport on 6/26/24]

[on Vietjet flight from Sydney to Saigon on 6/26/24]