port story 2. — verandah

The following time after I walked past the cafe, I noticed the verandah that ran along the southside of the building. The wooden supports were clad in ivy, the highest fronds running along the zinc roof. Along the verandah tables and chairs. I walked along the gravel path to select a chair, an empty wooden armchair suggests an existential presence, enough anyway to suggest that it expected me. This sense grew stronger during this first working trip to the west, its hegemonic heartland, where there was a strange sequel to the veranda. After practicing fast turns in the Ford Maverick, I would park and we would go to drink in a cowboy bar in Fall’s Church. After a while, since I was the volunteer driver who cannot drink I would go for a walk in the paranoid-psychotically grid structured streets, by the time I was walking most of the work traffic has gone, the pedestrians fading away. On this memorable occasion I was about to turn back towards the bar when I ended up standing indecisively in front of a modern building, they are all modern buildings I realize, at that moment I saw a woman pirouetting in a deep blue dress. She is holding a long glass of some drink, perhaps a cocktail or other, she leans against the juillette balcony, half there and half absent, she seems to need company but has been deserted. Who would desert her you think? Later on the verandah drinking tea and looking at the restful japanese stone garden I notice a woman pruning a Japanese Elm bonsai bush. She studies it for a few seconds more, picks up the black bucket with the pruned remnants and greets me across the years from Fall’s Church…