7. Eyelight & the Physics of Mood:
ways of understanding certain complexities of diplomacy after the village is inundated by large cars. The narrator also falls briefly in hate.
[Note for readers who haven't started from the beginning of this series of tales: AF (Annoying Friend) lives in my head. Dick is a highly educated cat. George and others are human characters who may exist outside my brain]
Richard jumps on the desk and stands over me, eyes big and round, tail upright but slightly crooked in the shape of a question mark. Re-e-eoo?
You’re right, Dick, and thanks for your concern, I say in response to his thoughtful question regarding my state of mind. I don’t have to explain my powerful aversion to marking papers written by AIs because Dick sympathetically intuits my temper and tolerates my moodiness about this and other institutional failures and corruptions of purpose at my place of work as I grieve for the days when universities like mine were more collegial teaching institutions than real-estate concerns, or cogs in the wheels of the academic-military pipeline investing in opaque Defence Science Partnerships, meanwhile ‘resting’ humanities courses and embracing kooky notions of ‘excellence’ (Jesus god, that word!) according to metrics based on deeply dodgy criteria devised to support the so-called ‘vision’ and ‘values’ laid out in ‘mission statements’ expressed in language devoid not only of subtlety but of meaning itself.
Richard doesn’t cock an eyebrow, as he has none, but in a pragmatic first-things-first manner simply precedes me to the fridge. (Cat-scheduling is precise and it is Fridge Time.) It’s not that I don’t care about the devastation of higher education—he mentions over his shoulder—but it’s time for you to kindly mobilise those opposable thumbs of yours in the service of Tin Opener, who is in the service of The Cat, who is lord of all he surveys or sleeps on.
Ok, lordship, rank offal out of a tin is your preference this morning? Not a side of buffalo or anything?
Yes, offal, please. With lots of gravy. Ideal.
I spoon out a generous serve then make a pot of tea for myself, pick the laptop up from my desk and go out onto the veranda. It recently stopped raining and the plants are looking chuffed. Soft air, soft light. Downstairs the first customers are arriving and there’s the wonderful smell of coffee, bacon, garlic. I take a seat on the ancient cane sofa. A large drop of water falls into my tea from the leaky awning. Moments later, Dick jumps up next to me. So you were saying, Person?
I consider continuing my lament about senior management’s crazy-making aspirations for the university, plus the deep tediousness of working across multiple malfunctioning platforms, then discard the idea because it’s boring.
Oh, you still got in an abbreviated whinge, though, didn’t you? mutters AF, emerging from a cranial nook. Get over yourself.
‘Get over yourself’! Nasty. Yet I am only moderately bruised. (Insert smirking emoji).
Dick says, humanpeople-systems of all sorts plus the greater systems that contain us are all changing. Splintering like the Titanic’s hull meeting the iceberg.
Similes, complains AF censoriously, slinking away to secrete himself somewhere private.
The sun is benevolent today, all understated authority, just visible within a bank of cloud, violet and silver, nacreous as oyster shell. I inhale the delicious tang of salt in the air. I can hear the waves lapping on the nearby beach. The angophora trunks have pinked up, their leaves pleased by a tiny breeze… then I become aware of a low thrumming, and it’s increasing in volume second by second until it’s like approaching thunder…
A joyful roar: a convoy of huge cars comes bellowing around the bend.
Huge. Don’t know what make they are, but they have the sharp lines and long bodies of the ones you see in last-century American road movies with freedom-lovers being adventurous in them, cars that were retro when those films were made. About ten are now parallel-parked in front of the kids’ swings under the trees that overlook the beach across the road, just along from the lamppost with its poster that asks gnomically, ARE YOU HERE?
It takes a while for their drivers to settle. First there is some residual grumbling of the engines, grrr, mrrr brrr, plus the odd sporty rev from their monstered mufflers, purely for showmanship. This is followed by the companionable chatting of men over elbows resting on car window frames. I go and lean on the balcony rail for more effective eavesdropping.
Mate, your car’s fuckenfilthy, man, all that dust. Next time I pass you I’m gonna clean your windows for you, zzzzt, like this. He thumbs the lip of his fizzy drink bottle and sprays.
A bit more banter through their fumes, exultantly spuming after their ride through the national park, small Sunday pleasures, out with mates, wives, kids, everyone. Richard smiles down upon them with generous, feline benevolence. Clearly, he feels secure in his eyrie.
Your car’s so loud, man. I mean, it’s loud as. Sounds really good.
Yeah, got the whole new system from a scrapheap, cost fuck-all.
BWAAAAAH, shift, BWAAAAAHHHH, so cool.
Richard’s ears are cocked and his eyes wide. Loud, eh, Person? Handsome machines. But smelly.
Loud, Dick. Handsome. Smelly.
Your nervous tic’s come back.
He’s right. My eyelid is twitching.
They’re now on the deck in front of the cafe in their logoed leisurewear, drinking coffee. More bits of their conversation come snippeting upwards to Dick and me.
… gear head … catback … muffler delete …
Air con sucks … dual zone, mate, if you’ve got the wife on board, eh, Marie?
Shut up, Nick …
… silverado …
Fucken ace … pretty awesome blasting through the M5 tunnel …
Yeah but Jacko borrowed the car and it came back with a trailer on it, jeez …
I think I’m falling in hate. Then one of the men happens to look up to see me looking down. Smiles. Happy and friendly, thought I was friendly too. Ha, godsake. Then I notice that suddenly, surprisingly, I am. I mean, their cars stink, but honestly, that was a really nice, open-faced smile…
It’s the eyelight does it every time, mentions Dick. You might not get that that’s what’s doing it for you, but it is.
Dickens. Lots of humanpeople, including me, get eyelight. Working with it is a common skill among teachers, for instance. I sigh. And real-estate agents. Then I think of Pellmell and her tiny round glasses with her cautious but friendly eyes blinking behind their lenses. And actuaries, I add. Then there’s diplomats and mediators, the speakers-across-borders, the watchers of gleams and flickers …
Yes, Person. Of glints and shimmers …
Flashes and glisters …
Fulgurations and scintillations. Have to be awake to signs or mood shifts that might portend hope or grief or danger.
I agree. Eyes are very eloquent, Dick. And so also are gestures: the touch to the elbow, the tap of the finger on the tabletop, the words left unsaid, the breathing spaces, the lovely ellipses …
The subtle complexity, considers Dick, of the elegant artifice of diplomats that can conceal one truth while revealing another.
Man, I look like a picklehead in those photos!
Marie! Is it members-only on Sunday? Reckon they check numberplates at…
A bit flat … straight-piping …
Set himself up at the traffic lights, I reckoned. I’ll take you, mate …
Onya … aw, ma-a-ate …
Yeah, like I said, nuke the cat …
… crazy drone …
I can feel AF making his way back into my consciousness. Gadzooks! he exclaims (an expression he must’ve dug out from my ‘charming redundancies’ node and now uses whenever he can). Get the motor-love of revheads!
Yep.
But, AF continues, you were speaking of diplomats …
So we were. Eyelight sensors who engineer policy changes with sensitivity and discernment.
Yeah, well, that’s the theory, You. And did you read about how this wild diplomat—
‘Wild diplomat’? I snort. Sounds like a kind of chive, roadside forage.
Shut up, You. Not a chive. Someone high up at the UN. Maybe highest-up. He broke a rule again the other day—the one that goes, Thou shalt use euphemisms.
Diplomacy claims subtlety, announces Dickson, Professor of International Relations, from his new location on the coffee table, where he’s partially secreted himself among the ribbon-like leaves of a big native orchid. But, he resumes, often enough it’s just obfuscation. Mincing words because direct language is too hard. Truth’s too hard, I suppose, for humanpeople.
Truth is scary, Puss.
Don’t call me ‘Puss’. The anger people feel when they’re frightened is what’s scariest.
Obviously, comes AF’s self-assured rejoinder. And plenty of people got really angry this time. Maybe as much about the breach of protocol as the substance of what the wild diplomat was saying. But others really loved it. He said: we must end the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature. How’s that?
Despite the fact that Dick often finds AF’s invisibility discombobulating, it is clear that he’s impressed with this pronouncement. His tone is almost awed when he replies, Spoken like a bona fide member of the animal kingdom: direct, clear. Sane. Truly inhuman.
How many people do you see in a day, Richard Dickson? (I think I’m being clever.)
Not that many, obviously, and not all at once, but over the years I’ve met quite a few coming and going in and out of doors and all that carry-on. And lots outside. On the street. Carrying bags or walking lightly, all usually a bit annoyed by their clothes.
Annoyed by their clothes?
Yes. Saying things to themselves like, Argh, my knickers are up my crack, or, I look like a peripatetic mushroom in this big hat,
or—red is too loud. I hate red so why do I kid myself that it’ll make me less of an introvert anyway? Or, Do I look serious enough without a tie? Or, What was I thinking, my upper arms are too skinny for these cutaway sleeves, but at least the turtleneck is flattering...
Is it flattering?
Gotcha, Dick, and we could talk more about people’s clothes, but we were discussing diplomacy and the real and present cataclysm, AF reminds us.
Then below the clothes, continues the impervious cat, there’s skin and muscle, all the organs and veins full of blood talking quite loudly, and then you’ve got the larger body of sensation extending beyond that, but unlike cats, few humanpeople are aware of it, because you can’t see it. Stupid—sight is so overrated. All those feelings and impressions rippling out and bumping into other people and nobody knows what’s happening because you’re always looking ahead, such striving animals… But yes, this is part of why humans rarely hear what each other think.
Richard can see I’m getting impatient and now he looks embarrassed. He tries to disguise it by raising one leg so that he looks like a feline cello and starts cleaning around his anus.
You’re right, Richard, I say placatingly. That’s a lot to have to deal with, inside and out.
He glances up from his toilette. It is, isn’t it? Then he lowers his leg and regards me almost admiringly, as if I were a really good pupil he was proud of, and says, You’re quite bright for a beast with only two legs and limited understanding of the physics of mood.
Thanks, Dick.
What I was saying, you two, AF breaks in, about the diplomat and the war on nature… He’s over so-called subtlety, which, often enough, is more a kind of… a kind of…
Negligent understatement, Dick supplies. I alluded to that earlier. But to be fair, don’t diplomats have to tone down all they say so the people they’re trying to negotiate with don’t just tune out?
Or slam down their shutters, I suggest.
Or shoot them, AF adds. Although shooting’s probably not that common in UN meetings. Yet.
But what will happen, I ask my companions, with no intervention? Just more ‘cool and normal’, like murdering a few more million creatures and making it impossible for those who fled ever to return after another whopping great hole’s been blasted in the ground and filled with a thousand more child slaves digging away so some megacompany can disgorge another gazillion shit tons of poison into the biosphere.
The secretary-general handled the situation in a civilised and possibly useful way, says AF. He said, We need disruption to end the destruction.
The most senior diplomat in the world calling for civil disobedience? I feel a hope-inkling spiralling up my spine. I’m thrilled with this valiant bureaucrat. My heart lifts, just a bit.
Marie!
Get in the back, Gus, Gus, in the back!
Got the esky?
Seeyez later.
Brrrmmm.
And they’re back in their joyous stink-bombers, heading back the way they came, up the road through the pink trees under the blue sky and into the salty-sweetness of the air. Galahs scatter and kookaburra clans applaud. Or yell blue murder, hard to tell.
