Gifts from a friend

It might end in tears. But think what may be if it does not.
_

Necessary noise ... part 10

Barbara wrote:

Last night I was walking home from the Traverse alone, having seen a splendid new play by Paul Higgins who is a wonderful Scottish actor. An ambulance passed, lights flashing but no siren and travelling rather slowly. I was transported back to your accident and heard you saying you thought all would be well because the siren wasn't playing. Felt in some ways like a long, long time ago and in other ways not so.

You've achieved so much to be proud of since then - and exceeded everyone's hopes and dreams for your health and in every other way.

Sitting here in Sydney on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Spike's violin and accordion music playing (Sophie Solomon) as she prepares her portfolio in another room, I had a quiet wee weep. Not quite sure why. Melancholic Scottish middle-aged man shit, I would say.

_

Incomparable

On the one hand there is every man on Mother Earth ... the "awfully large number of average looking men" as well as the above average; and

On the other hand there is the white peach souffle and a glass of Pommier Chablis Premier Cruz at Pier Restaurant, Rose Bay, Sydney.

No contest really.

(photograph showing a young woman on the verge of a comatose slumber after dinner with, perhaps, the most boring date of the 21st Century ... a man who can send polar bears to sleep with just one glance)
.

Tea for four at the Wentworth

Not this life

Where do twenty years go? And how
many boxes can contain life’s essentials
stored regretfully in an empty room?

Years stacked up against each other,
one on top of another, but not necessarily
in chronological order.

Nineteen eighty-eight sits awkwardly
with nineteen ninety-six
and two thousand and two is crumpled

in a heap in the corner, rubbing
shoulders with the elbows of four
or five more years, eventful years:

not one will ever come again.

Paintings and prints lean patiently,
almost with no interest in the outcome,
against the barest wall. A frying pan,

bought in France maybe and carted home,
rests adjacent to twelve or thirteen
albums of photographs that span the years

we never thought would end until
they ended, not as one might wish
they’d end but like an appalling soap opera,

a version of events going on elsewhere
in someone else’s life.

Soulmate?

According to Wiki -

Soulmate is a term sometimes used to designate someone with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, friendship, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality and/or compatibility. A related concept is that of the twin flame or twin soul – which is thought to be the ultimate soulmate, the one and only other half of one's soul, for which all souls are driven to find and join. However, not everyone who uses these terms intends them to carry such mystical connotations.

One theory of soulmates, presented by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, is that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.

Delayed gratification is not always worth the wait

You might think that after taking forty-five minutes to prise open a new jar of Vegemite one's taste buds would be in a state of near sexual frenzy at the anticipated delight. But no ... fundamentally, when all is said and done, a vegemite sandwich is basically some bread with a vitamen B paste spread over the surface.

Hawk's Nest breakfast and beyond

Drove the 25 kms north to Bombah Point. Found a ferry. Sadly it was not operating; I think because today's gale force winds made the water just a wee bit too choppy (even on such a short crossing). Of course, maybe it's simpler and there's no service on a Sunday but I don't think that's the explanation. It's just as well. Given the way my mind was operating this morning, if I could have crossed over to the north shore I might just kept going and not looked back.

It's not my photo by the way. That'll have to wait until I read my phone's manual to find out how to download pics. I'm sure there's a wire somewhere that I'll need.

Photograph by this guy

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Brilliant writing. Utterly charming story. The witch queen woman is definitely not a pleasant person (that'll be Presbyterian under-statement, then). How could anyone do THAT to a unicorn?

Check out Neil Gaiman's web site

For hire: animal borer - wild and domestic. Satisfaction guaranteed

dreams, doctor?

I’m walking west across a peat bog in Scotland. Like all peat bogs, the water-saturated ground gives just a little beneath your feet. It’s like walking on a natural sponge made up of living material. Where the earth is most saturated it seems almost black in colour. Where it is drier there is the characteristic reddy-dark brown of peat. Short, hard grass and heather lie across the surface like a blanket of bristles or maybe like the stubble on the chin of Desperate Dan.

Then I find myself in a manicured public garden not unlike Hyde Park in Sydney. The whole area is elevated above the surrounding streets. I’m about five metres above the surrounding roads as I head north. At the edge of the park all the exits (bar one) are sealed with chicken wire. I can see the other side of the road, which looks like a Georgian Terrace in Edinburgh’s New Town.

To my left, beyond more chicken wire fencing, a ramp crosses the road. A woman with crutches and calipers is walking up the ramp slowly. She turns to look at me and smiling in friendly way she says, I hope you make it too. I follow the one open route, which leads me down a dozen or so steps, along an underpass then up many more steps that lead me into a room that might once have been Martin’s lounge room with a bay window recess in his enormous flat in Grosvenor Place, Edinburgh. Now, this room looks like the insane gift shop at the museum of Scottish tackiness. There’s tartan everywhere; tartan goods of every conceivable type – scarves, gloves, Tam O’Shanters (of course), fridge magnets, highland cattle, cute little sheep, toffee, fudge, God knows what. The way out is up an impossibly steep staircase with a dark, dark wooden handrail. Someone says, I hope you can make it.

Next I find myself in the street. For some reason I think I’m in Liverpool (England). I enter an old Victorian era department store. Once inside there are lots of individual shop fronts. They are warmly lit, inviting places. None of them seem to have doors. I can see happy customers and friendly shop assistants reflected in wall mirrors mounted in the window displays but I can’t see the people themselves and I can’t enter any of the shops.

Quantum of Solace

Vacuous even for a Bond movie. No matter how many things they blew up it was still as boring as bat shit. They managed to make the Palio of Siena appear tedious, which probably takes some doing.

Daniel Craig is very good but has very little to do, so he runs around quite a lot. Judi Dench stands still, exuding contempt for a quite dreadful script. It’s as if she’s really saying … don’t walk away from me James Bond! Don’t you know I am the magnificent Dame Judi Dench? I can’t even remember the Bond Girl. Gemma Arterton as Agent Fields (left) is probably the freshest part of the whole thing but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out her fate. Theme song is risible.

Gifts from a friend

Thunder (as forecast)

Let it roll in from the west
bearing the cleansing torrents
of rain unleashed upon us
without regard for who we are,
our small concerns, our big hopes,
the million little vanities
we throw high-up before us
into the charged atmosphere
to see if hurricanes may blow them
this way or that way but far from view,
far from who we think we are
when we confuse not only foolish men
who are, themselves, already
well-enough confused, but also draw
the wrong conclusions from the storm.

Necessary noise ... part 9

Sydney College of the Arts graduation show 2008

See more at Sydney College of the Arts

.

Okay is never the answer

Are there truths too terrible
to contemplate in the conscience mind?
Must they always come by stealth,
when you least expect the abyss
to open up in your front of you,
suddenly awake in the middle
of the night and at the very core
of your being? Or in the shower,
perhaps, on a summer’s morning
when the world outside is filled
with hope and life and light
and the world inside is bursting out
with hope renewed and fragile
anticipation of the idea ... 'maybe'?

_

south of Ulladulla

picture by Sharon Smith

The bosun's lament

turning the page

If you listen carefully
can you hear the new season’s
grass grow in the quiet morning
when not even the harbingers
of dawn’s chorus have risen
to give voice to the hope
a weary man might look for
in the half light of a new day?

And if you sit still long enough
to witness one full revolution
of your whole world filled,
not only by silences and space,
but with people, players, places
and circumstances, births, deaths,
marriages, soap operas, plays
and sonatas that might uplift
the perplexed spirit of a cliché
masquerading as a man
of wit and wisdom

could you see the point
of departure on the axis
as it spins beyond control?
And if not, how do you
deal with life’s certainties
we can neither touch nor taste
nor hear nor see nor feel?

Someone ought to write a manual.
Passionate intensity for dummies,
with a contents page, a proper index
and one or two cartoon characters.

If you’re lucky you’ll find it
in the remaindered section
of book shops everywhere
until you need it
more than you had ever feared.

Life

every now and then you catch yourself staring blankly at the screen in front of you, thinking nothing at all then thinking ... this cannot be happening. but it is.

thank fuck for the peace and quiet of the office on a Sunday.

Necessary noise ... part 8

Life’s a bit weird. I used to be someone who slept late and had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of bed. Yesterday, I got out of bed at fourish. This morning it was three twenty-seven when I looked at my phone clock then thought, “fuck it – no point in wasting time here.”

Yesterday morning was marvellous. I put my friend Spike’s Tallis Scholars CD on to play as dawn came up. There were no early morning trains, no traffic humming somewhere in the mid-distance, very few birds. There was just me and the emerging light and the voices singing Media Vita for 6 voices, its transcendent sound filling the flat, doing something to me that I don’t understand but, when you’re wise enough, you simply accept for what it is.

Today, the dawn is still an hour or more away. But the music is with me to help me start a day on which my entire world looks completely different. Without any warning.

One moment you allow yourself to believe that all one's hopes can indeed be realised. Next minute you know that’s not how the world really is. Up or down the music remains transcendent. Today it does something different to me that I understand no more than I did yesterday. I simply pray (although I am not a man who believes in the power of prayer) that I am and will be wise enough to accept it for what it is.

I looked for Media Vita for 6 voices on the web but couldn’t find it. Palestrina will have to suffice.

One man's essential truth

I love you without condition, without limit and forever. Nothing else matters.

Play's done

B J Wilson and the Voyage of the S S Heliotrope

A radio play in three Acts

Dedicated to Miss Amelia Starr

dreams, doctor?

It is early morning, still gloomy (in a Scottish autumnal way) before dawn. We might be looking at Queensferry Road in Edinburgh, just south of the suburb of Barnton (where I used to deliver milk every morning just before my accident). I’m with a friend, male, possibly from school days but I can’t see who it is or make out his face (or maybe it’s simply that I can’t recall who it was). We are floating in the air above the pavement at about the same height as the upper windows of the double decked buses that pass along the street. The buses are full of commuters making their way to work. My friend swims over to buses that pull up at the bus stop. He taps the windows upstairs trying to attract the attention of passengers but no one takes any notice. They are completely oblivious to us swimming in the air outside.

We swim away from the bus stop, heading west along Queensferry Road. Armies of commuters tramp along the pavement below us, heading in the opposite direction. We can swim effortlessly through the air. There is no resistance so one stroke (we’re doing the breast stroke) takes us very far. We lift up and down to various heights off the ground. A favourite trick is to swim just above the heads of pedestrians below us then ruffle their hair as if the wind was deliberately playing with their carefully combed appearances.

We reach the end of Queensferry Road at the Barnton roundabout but we’re no longer in Edinburgh. The roundabout has gone. The road curves uphill to the left. We’re blown off the road by a strong wind. We land in a rich green field with a series of undulating bumps and dips. Through the top of the bumps in the middle of the field there is a huge gouged path as if something has torn through the land with great speed and force. Whatever it was came from the sky because the gouges are shallower to the west, becoming progressively deeper the further east one looks. At the end of the gouged path there is a broken object dug deeply into the ground. I could be a meteor but it looks more like a giant baked potato that has burst open during baking.

We land to sit beside the extra-terrestrial baked potato. Sitting at its core there is a small, grey object about the same size and shape as a Cadbury’s cream egg. It has the texture of very fine sand paper but it is hard, dense. I struggle with a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, to pull the egg shaped stone out of the baked potato. We both want it and fight over it. I win. The small object is almost impossibly heavy to hold. It seems to have characters on it written in a script I do not recognise and cannot read. The script is geometric in shape, minimalist in style. I wonder what it means then walk away carrying the object in my pocket.

To paraphrase Robert Duval's character in Apocalypse Now ...

I love the smell of faulty plumbing in the morning.

NOT!

Groove armada - superstylin

Sadly the youtube code has been disabled. Fun.

Wordle

cool stuff

http://www.wordle.net

Lettie Lariot: A bohemian artist with an air of mystery about her

A young woman emerges from the throng. This is Lettie Lariot, although that may not be her real name. There is much about this Bohemian looking beauty that is not known and often guessed at incorrectly. Were it not 1912 and, therefore, still 60 year’s until Hollywood would make Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, many observers would remark on the striking resemblance Lettie bears to Kathryn Ross. But this is 1912 and neither Paul Newman nor Robert Redford has been born yet so the comparison is never made. Everyone agrees, however; Lettie has a great natural beauty.

Lettie is dressed in a pair of trousers over which a split dress sits, sparkling with colours that seem to move and dance as she walks. Her overcoat is magnificent: now magenta, now purple, now red then blue and gold and green and yellow or was it ochre and magenta together. A wide brimmed hat sits on her long, flowing dark brown hair through which a streak of silver-grey strikes like lightening. Lettie carries stars in the pockets of her great coat and around her waist is tied the belt of Orion (not a fashion accessory but the true belt of Orion for in truth, it is said, Lettie may originate from somewhere beyond Ganymede.)

Necessary noise ... part 7

Never alone with four-week old tomatoes lost under the van's rear seat

Traitor

Ho hum. It tries very hard to be complex and thoughtful (while maintaining its wish to have large explosions every ten minutes). But it’s completely see through and predictable. You can see the joins a mile away. Don Cheadle is Don Cheadle, which means he’s never bad but it is inconceivable from the first scene in which he appears that he could be anything other than a morally conflicted and doubting good guy. Guy Pearce does his not unusual, thoroughly competent, American cop guy. Quite decent music early then it become Hollywood normal.

There were three of us in the cinema. A couple up the back who looked as if they were involved in an office affair and had gone somewhere cool, quiet and dark to neck. And me. Can a cinema survive on $24 income per session?

dreams, doctor?

I walk to the driver’s seat of my Tranist van, pulling the seat belt from the rear seat across the floor then around my shoulders and tie it to the door. I’m parked in a field that might be in The Trossachs in Scotland. There’s a light wood, bracken, wet grass. Dusk is beginning to fall. As someone had warned me I reverse carefully but the van hits a low deer fence (a goat could have leapt over it never mind a deer). I hit the foot brake but the van keeps sliding backwards of the edge of a ravine … yes, yes, Dougie, no one said it would be original … I sail backwards through the air, descending in rather clichéd slow motion. Me and the van move backwards through tree tops then into empty space and I see that it’s not an inland ravine but a sea cliff. I continue downwards.

We hit the sea bed with a bump. The van is sitting on its rear end in about a foot or so of water. Gentle waves roll in to the beach and I take in my surroundings. In front of me is the cliff I’ve just come off. It's covered in Caledonian forest trees. There is a massive structure attached to the cliff face, reaching almost to the top. It might be a giant Ferris wheel, it has that appearance and those dimensions, but it’s not for amusement. It could perhaps be a working wheel, except its not connected to any mill or water way. And its organic, made of wood and growing material, almost as if it’s part of the forest … watching too much Lord Of The Rings Dougie!

Over to the left there is a beach. Behind there are two blocks of 1960 apartment buildings like those my aunts, uncles and grandmother occupied in Castlemilk, Glasgow; except these are not modern day slums. They’re pleasant. It could even be a French sea side resort. There is a road separating the two blocks of apartments. It disappears towards the horizon.

There are quite a few people around. An old couple; children playing. Some folk out for a walk, some of them with dogs. I call frantically for assistance but no one seems too bothered. They look up and across at me. No one says anything but one or two smile, as if to suggest, ach it’s only Dougie horsing around as usual.

I rock backwards and forwards in my driver’s seat until the van rights itself. There’s some hissing and steam as the engine hits the water. I get out the van by the side door from which the hoist is usually deployed. I walk around the back of the van to inspect for damage. There doesn’t seem to be any. I return to the driver’s window, reach in through it to turn the ignition key and the van starts first time. I drive towards the beach but park just before it. Now I deploy the hoist. I’m standing on it, maybe sitting, when two police officers walk through the shallow water towards me. One says, good evening Dougie then they pass on out to sea. The other one simply smiles on seeing me, as if they’ve just been sharing a joke about me.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Fuck knows what that’s all about

Miriam Makeba

Necessary noise ... part 6

is this all it comes to in the end?

"I will be coming to the flat about 10. I can assume you wont be there then, can't i?"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
you get what you deserve Douglas.

Can you, on a clear day, see forever?

Looking north. Candy floss clouds
suspended in a Michaelangelo blue sky.

John Martyn on the CD player
singing of Nick whatsit's solid air.

The green outside is dappled
with the lavender of jacaranda

here and there. Is that you
I can just see on the far horizon?

The chickens seem to be
distracting your attention

but I caught your wave
and saw you smiling.

Necessary noise ... part 5

Who knew?

There are so many things we’re never told by adults
when we’re young, inquisitive and oh so eager yet
to learn about the world and what it’s really like.

Instead, they offer facts and figures, dates, dynastic
lines and books of logarithmic tables, which help you
calculate some things that only Math guys understand.

The lucky ones, peut-etre, learn a little French and, maybe,
join the school exchange to visit some quaint towns
where no one understands a word you say but smile.

And when you’re seventeen, still spotty but so keen
to shave (although it looks a painful way to start each day)
they make you sit exams to test just what you know.

That’s very well and good, don’t get me wrong. I do not
mean to knock good education or insult the French
(nothing can persuade me of the need for cosines).

But does an adult warn you of the way a sunset falls
upon the heart, with blue and pink and gold; magenta
marbled clouds that fade to black against the sky?

Who warns of nights when trains roll down the track
like half-remembered words that thunder spoke
of how we dare not live without our dreams and hopes?

The answer is, of course, that not one adult speaks
a word of lessons still to learn when we have cast off
Maths, forgotten French and grown our first full beard.

never heard of them before ... said the old man

The Rest Of Your Life

Day one of the rest of your life
is not without its ups and downs
both of which you might expect.

The house begins to get tidier
(maybe that’s a consequence
of diversionary therapy
or displacement theory
operating on your psyche).

You clean up the messes that you can clean up,
which means the kitchen table is cleared
of a broken modem and unopened envelopes
mostly bills, of course,
and copies of The New Yorker
you never had the heart to read
because … well basically because
The New Yorker is way too optimistic
for a man who leaves his telephone bill
unpaid, his energy direct debit unopened
and his superannuation account
unexamined, although you could
attribute that reluctance to the collapse
of early-period 21^st Century Capitalism
at the fag end of the Bush years:

Yes we can! Yes we can!
It’s just that in some areas, we don’t.

You install software that’s been lying
close to your computer for quite a while
and you configure the programme
in ways you normally don’t bother
(reading the manual with attention to detail).

Some e.mails go unanswered.
Others, you put on a bright face,
learning how to use smileys on Skype,
which is a skill you never imagined
you’d acquire. And much to your surprise,
you learn about gravatars but don’t pick one.

Phone calls can be dodgy, if you take them.
You thinks it’s day one of the rest of your life.
Everyone else thinks it’s nothing more
than Saturday morning. So you have to put them right,
which can come as a bit of a shock (to them
because they’re in something like mild shock
but not wholly surprised;
while you’re aware you have to go over it again
and again and again.) But that’s life
on day one of the rest of your life.

Day two promises to be interesting
But we’ll get round to that tomorrow.

and today's word is ...

fuckitfuckitfuckitfuckitfuckitfuckitfuckit

Ninety-one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two

The number of words in my third draft of my unpublished novel, finished today. It's called Kaboom.

those three words ... forever

intense ... wonderful ... perfect ...

Necessary noise ... part 4

Lost in space

There are no ways
a man may save himself
from the laws
of physics and of love
or stop the world
spinning
off its axis
in this universe
with planets (aligned
as they must be)
stars in constellations
(in which some have claimed
to read all things that pass)
where meteors collide:

they crash and burn
along inexorable paths,
they fall perhaps
into a black hole
where all known matter
disappears,
vanishes
without a trace,
not leaving
even the core of life’s
perpetual pulsar
which too succumbs
to forces that outweigh
and overwhelm

a solitary shooting star
in the dawn’s new day.

the key turns in the door

And if I must recall
the ways love spoke to me
I think that no one,
not a living soul,
would understand
that it is in
the ordinary,

the way
love dances
(if you're lucky)
with a supermarket trolley
or carries home
a mop
or puts another pot
of breakfast tea
upon a kitchen table,
strewn
with debris
from a life
inconsequential,
or reads aloud
the novels of Neil Gaiman
and John Wyndham
(in which a field mouse
yearns to bite
the nut of wisdom
and three-legged plants,
carnivorous
and deadly,
race to the edges of imagination)

love lives forever on
beyond
mere hope
where anything ...
where everything ...
is possible.

Jubilee Park

four views

West Head lovers?

Necessary noise ... part 3