jose: News

Jose writes urban poetry to music and his every day love affair with life is sung into the veins of suburbia and the streets of multicultural today with a voice of yesterday. He paints A vast australian landscape, where the immigrants stand on the docks of times passing, sidney nolan shakes hands with serge gainsborough, french chanson is found sitting by the fire storytelling alongside the larrikin, the poet next door and an eastern european gypsy. A merging of the suburban, migrant, from cuban, brazilian, yugoslav, macedonian, french chanson to gypsy to australian pop and the love of telling a yarn, all spread across the canvas with broad multicultural and contemporary strokes. Gruff, rough, poetic, cutting edge, earthy and beautiful. Jose is a celebration of cultures, nostalgia, past eras and merging of ethnicities, moments of the domestic in the every day. To be savoured and treasured and to be danced to bare foot in the dust and the
dirt. Sumptously romantic.

Kim Queen

THE RAIN

[a short story by jose]
copyright 2007

The rain was still falling heavily on the roof of the workshop, hammering down on the sky lights and flowing in sheets over the old windows. Giacommo fixed the new spring in place locking it down with the power drill. The State Transit Repairs Depo smelled of lino and upholstery, glue and spray-paint and today with the factory clanging around him and the rain drumming down on the ceiling, he felt like he was working back stage at a modern symphony. He picked up the next damaged seat from the pile and tried to remove the warn spring. The general idea was good. A section of the bus had three seats on either side that automatically flipped up and out of the way to make room for strollers and wheel chairs, and then fold down as priority seating for older people. The spring was jammed so he knocked it with a hammer…but why do they think so carefully about all the needs of particular people and then completely ignore the most basic things… like their size…These seats were tiny...some lame economic rationale no doubt…the spring finally gave way and pinched his finger hard…’shit!’... he would regret that later and was already regretting the fact that the foreman had been watching from the office door... 'wake-up dream boat'…he called across the factory floor…


Giacommo sucked his finger and pulled out the new spring unit from a box and screwed it down…he held the seat up to look at it…these really were designed for the smallest possible human bum…Bums had always interested him but none of the names for them seemed satisfactory. Arse was too rough, too aggressive, too broad and too macho and too hairy if you were thinking about a man and lacking all tenderness if you were talking about a woman. Bottom was perfect for a child but embarrassing when spoken by an adult and demeaning when used of an old person and impotent when referring to a man and incapable of conveying sexuality in a woman. Bum was the embarrassed auntie’s word. She wanted to say shit or fuck but all she could manage was ‘Bum!’ Or she wanted to talk about some ones bottom but ‘bottom' sounded too naked ortoo old fashioned and so, embarrassed, and wanting to sound cool, she said bum…
but a bum is also a term for a derelict …
Ass could be a donkey and or an American bottom and fanny is a bottom in America but in Australia a fanny can be a vagina depending on who you talk to...and too avoid confusion you have to pronounce the American bottom 'Aaass' and the donkey ass. Kiss my aaass. Kiss my arse. 'Kiss my big fat hairy Greek arse' Tasso would say when he didn’t agree with someone and, looking at him, you knew it was true... but how did Tasso know about his own bum…and the picture flashed in Giacommo’s mind; Tasso naked, twisting his fat Greek body and wringing his neck to be able to see his own bottom in the mirror…his backside, posterior,
date arse buttocks butt behind rear end…the foreman was waving his hand in front of Giacommo’s face.
'You look totally autistic when you go off into dream land like that...come on, days over lets pack up’

Giacommo had started putting his tools away when a fat hand snatched the rivet gun.‘Doesn’t go there maestro!’ The fat moustache laughed
and threw the rivet gun into a drawer.
'Thank you'.
'No worries mate, anything you want to know, just ask me'
Giacommo had opened one of the bottom cupboards and peered into the darkness.
‘What are you looking for? Money?’ The fat moustache bounced up and down again as he laughed.
‘Do you reckon they ll let me borrow a tarp?
‘What you going to wear it as a rain coat Malaka?
‘No its just …I want to cover my…’
The moustache turned to the viola case and twisted with contempt
‘what you got in there anyway? Big fucking machine
gun?’
The forman broke in ‘bet he’s never heard that one before Tossa’
The moustache tightened. 'Tasso, malakas', he said with dignity, ‘my name is Tasso and if Greek is too hard for you malaka at least try and learn English...’
The typical surrealism of this comment made the whole workshop laugh as they lit cigarettes or changed into clean boots and Tasso felt good as he always did when he made people laugh.

The foreman threw Giacommo a bunch of keys.
'Here, Jack , tarps are in that cupboard at the back. Bring it back tomorrow or you’re fucking dead.’
‘Thanks Danny’
‘No worries...I’d ask you down the pub with us but they don’t have chamomile tea!...’
The whole factory laughed again as they jostled out the door.
'Thanks again Danny’
‘hey lock up and leave the keys with the office…’ and the foreman left with the rest of them.

A sort of dirty glow filtered down onto the factory floor. It felt silent though the rain continued to crash onto the iron roof with more force every minute. Giacommo looked put his chin on the window ledge and scratched himself against the peeling paint and stared through the water coursing down the smoky factory glass. The workshop had the feeling of being under a magical sea. A sea that was half water half air. Water and air mixed in a way that you could breathe and drink at the same time. Clouds like a heavy grey blanket over an underground sea. As he lifted out the tarpaulin he could smell his Dad. Diesel fuel and dirt on a strong body. His throat started to hurt and then suddenly he was crying.

He stayed like that for a few minutes. There was no one around. The girls in the office were talking to each other and the rain on the roof covered the sound of his grief thoroughly... so after a while, crying and staring out into the rain, he pressed his fingers into his neck and stopped his grief and
spread the tarp on the concrete floor. They had floated the old jeep like this. Rolled it onto the tarp, wrapped it up and slid it into the river. He and Dad on one side and Uncle Jerry on the other wading waist deep in the shallow part of the river. Diesel fuel and sweat and the muddy smell of the river.

He put the viola in its case flat on the tarp, wrapped it and tied it with ocky
straps. Then like someone hugging a friend he held it and walked out of the factory into the pouring rain.

… The bus splashed slowly through the river that had taken over the left hand side of Clarence Street and pulled to a stop. All the people in the queue had been trying out idiosyncratic methods of keeping dry. Giacomo had watched from the shelter of the hotel opposite while newspapers and brief cases were hoisted over heads, coats were pulled up and people edged closer to the next persons umbrella. One young guy was amusing his girlfriend with his face up to the sky pretending to dodge each rain drop as it fell. Futile of course, but ultimately successful because the mix of rain and tears of laughter on their faces looked out rightly beautiful. Giacommo pulled up his coat over his head, hugged the da gamba and crossed the street onto the bus.

The instrument didn’t fit snugly into the luggage compartment at the front of the bus, so he pulled down one of his spring loaded priority seats and sat close in case it slid out of place. The bus was pretty empty and he could always stand up if someone got on in a wheelchair. He pulled down the seat next to him and put his bag on it as the bus sloshed away from the kerb and out of the city. The romance of urban living was still strong in him. He looked forward to crossing that amazing bridge and didn’t think he would ever take it for granted. The windows were all steamed up with the breath of thirty of so passengers all reading or staring out into the rain. Silent as a library with the same unwritten injunction against talking. All breathing. Complete trust in the driver who spoke only when necessary with an air of antique etiquette.

Giacommo opened his leather satchel, put his hands into the warm smell of hide and took out his copy of Kundera. Reading was, for him, that moment of the fall. When you lie with your head on a brick or a rolled up jumper and exhaustion takes over creeping up your body until suddenly the strings of consciousness snap and you fall, literally, into another world that always seems more honest more whole and more true. For Giacommo the fall was complete and the fog and the smell of his leather bag became the taste of the Czech country side as Tomas and Tereza cross the border in refugee convoy. So…lost in literature...

...he didn’t notice when Belinda sat opposite him. And she didn’t notice him because she had to be ready for her ritual. She pulled down the seat on its tight spring and put her canvas Maddison bag on it to weigh it down while she took off her mackintosh, rain dripping onto the lino floor. She took the dark green cashmere scarf from around her shoulders and tried to dry her hair all shiny black and silky from the rain. Then still holdiug the scarf to her hair, she lifted the bag and held the seat down awkwardly with the back of her knees while she stuffed the cashmere into her bag and sat down, her full bottom spilling over the edges of the ridiculous seat. She was ready. The bus edged its way down the hill and toward the bridge. Every day at this point of the journey, no matter what she was thinking or doing, she would always stop. Take it all in. Try not to think, but to see. See the river muddy or clear or shining like a crystal mirror. See the trees on the bank breathing out a blue haze on hot days or breathing in the fog and rain on days like today. She wanted more than just to see. She wanted to drink the light that bounced off the surface of the river on crisp early spring mornings or inhale that other light that dissolved into the mist when the season turned. She wanted to be a perfect witness to the duck that skis to a stop in the middle of the water course or to the young man canoeing in the rain. The bus reached the bridge, crossed it and began its ascent on the other side and it was then that she noticed ‘The unbearable lightness of being’ Milan Kundera held between a thumb and a forefinger with a serious bruise.

The unbearable lightness of being. That was exactly how she felt. She weighed nothing. She was nothing. She was not a body, not a mind, not a heart. No ideas or feelings or plans or hopes or fears. She was not even the eyes that she could see with. She was the light and only that light. The thoughts and emotions she had at other times seemed like bad acting in a bad television drama…This felt more sane, more real, more normal but it only lasted a few minutes and now she was already wondering about the novel and the man who was reading it in his football jersey, the pupils of his large eyes dilating as if in love, his thick brows becoming protective or concerned and then...he did something she recognized…he breathed in more deeply than normal and shook his head as if the beauty of the writing were too much. She knew this feeling. She knew him at this moment. The bus swerved to miss something. Belinda grabbed the hand rail and watched her bag slide off her knees and splash across the floor, lipstick and phone and pens and diary, current and expired bus tickets, tampons and fliers for beauty therapy all splaying out over the wet lino and under the reading man's work boots and all she can think about is how she really wishes the beauty therapy flyer wasn’t there…how of all the things in her bag that one is the embarrassing one. This would declare her to be an idiot and deny her the light from the river and the tender moment of recognition she had just felt…and already the bus has straightened itself and the man is reaching under his seat to help her and Belinda is standing and bending to pick up her things and saying no no its fine and hoping the bus won't stop suddenly. Accepting her phone and lipstick and the beauty therapy flyer from Giacommo and managing to keep both her balance and embarrassment in check until , almost relieved, she sits back down without looking behind her, where the spring loaded seat would have been if Giacommo hadn’t recently repaired it.

She hit the floor heavily and the contents of her bag made a second escape and finally the embarrassement exploded in waves and, completely despite herself, she looked up at Giacommo. Their eyes locked for a moment and she felt as if he had stumbled on her as she sat on the toilet. Hair over her face and her bottom wet on the swampy lino floor and Giacommo is up now and leaning over her and picking up her things for the second time and saying ‘it probably doesn’t help but later on tonight you’ll think this was really funny’ as he hands her her phone and the beauty therapy flyer and of course what he had said doesn’t help her at all until... he sits back down where his spring loaded seat would have been if he hadn’t repaired it recently and if he wasn’t at this moment falling in love as helplessly and as surely as he was falling onto his bottom on the floor of the bus.