Perilous Adventures
spacer
line decor
line decor
spacer

Pandora

sponsored by

Olvar Wood Writers Retreat

 
 

Railway Table Chronicles - Episode Four

Carla Billinghurst
 

I've got some mirrors if anyone wants them. A wall of mirrors we pulled out of the house. Who has mirror wardrobes nowadays? Well, Wayne does. He's just built a wardrobe for his daughter and she wants mirrors. He'll pick them up the next time he visits his mate in the pub at Wang. That way he'll have the ute with him. And he won't be burning carbon on a one-use trip.

Use everything twice.

Good philosophy, Wayne!

It means change, though. That was three weeks ago and I don't know how often Wayne goes to Wang. I also don't know how you can use some things twice. Ryan is having the Waiting Room painted. How do you use paint twice? What if you could take paint off a wall, somehow? Unbind its molecules from the plasterboard and brick and pop it neatly back into a can?

Permaculture asks us to be sure everything has more than one use. Paint is easy: aesthetics, sealent, hygiene. But how could you actually use it twice?

I search the books on the Railway Table for a clue. Nope. Last week I found Jitterbug Perfume and took it away for a re-read. It's a story I've read twice; once as a virgin and once as a mother. The first read, I came away wanting to make perfume and practice immortality breathing techniques. This time I was overjoyed to find there was a happy ending.

Can you use a story twice?

Of course not! We are participant observers and stories bind to us like paint. I'm afloat in Ole Man Heraclitus' river and the Jitterbug Perfume I picked up last week will bond to me in entirely different ways than the first one did. Then I was brick and now I'm plasterboard. As plasterboard I have almost no memory of what it is like to be brick. I don't remember what changed in me the first time I read this book. And I don't remember what has changed in the world so that when I read it now I'm reading differently.

I'm not using the story twice. I'm using it once. Two times. I'm not coming back to a thing that is the same, a standard, a monument to measure the world against. Even stone changes. The world changes around a story. An apt metaphor becomes clumsy or trite. Language shifts underfoot.

An immortal being reading A Tale of Two Cities when it was first in print and reading it again now will have very different reflections on the story. Our Immortal has stood in too many town squares, heard too many rousing libertarian speeches and read too many books to believe, any more, that one revolution can change things for all time. And all those revolutions have seen countries heave up and then stay the same. Our immortal has stood by too many Railway Tables and seen the same books go by. Revolutions must keep on turning over and over and over. That way the train moves forward onto new track; that way re-use becomes invention.

I drift along the platform away from the paint fumes (some things I don't want to use twice). The train is delayed but I have a story to re-read. A revolution is slowly whirling around the Railway Table. A change in the way we satisfy our desires. A willingness to relinquish immediacy and let things happen when they will. To allow books to turn up to be read, revolutions to triumph, and mirrors to be picked up. Eventually.

Last Episode: Giving Things Away

About the Author

Carla Billinghurst is the reviews editor for Perilous Adventures.

 

issue 11:01 | archives by category | archives by author

 
Site by Olvar Wood