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tonight, I'm all over the place, doing five things at once, just like
Jean Cocteau![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170908003432im_/http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p_8rr-XC_QQ/Rs6ST4NedeI/AAAAAAAAALU/zeejk33jX44/s400/jcmain.gif)
If you're concerned, annoyed or angered by the recent changes at Australia's multicultural public broadcasting service, SBS (especially the changes to the tv news, commercials interrupting programs, the risible excuse for a weekly movie review and so on) register your opposition by signing the petition.
Yesterday I put the old hail-dinged 1994 Daihatsu in for a service and oil-and-grease at a country garage with a dark interior and nicely imperfect, handyman-built wooden storage shelves. A few cars were parked in a dusty, ditch-pocked gravel yard under a couple of dried-out trees. The two mechanics, in black overalls, were leaning into the engine of a big truck. I thought of Elizabeth Bishop’s classic poem -
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
- this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color -
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO-SO-SO-SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Elizabeth Bishop
I once lent my copy of Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III to someone and I never saw it again. Borrower, are you out there ?