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Saturday, February 28, 2009

Salman Rushdie on movie adaptations

"What is essential? It's one of the great questions of life, and, as I've suggested, it's a question that crops up in other adaptations than artistic ones. The text is human society and the human self, in isolation or in groups, the essence to be preserved is a human essence, and the result is the pluralist, hybridised, mixed-up world in which we all now live."

Salman Rushdie writes a brilliant essay on movie adaptations of novels in today's Guardian. It contains so much more than the technical and artistic challenges of translating. Well worth a read.

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Friday, February 27, 2009

I was thirteen years old ...

I loved this song. Not quite sure why it should appeal to a spotty adolescent, barely into his teens. What would I have known about about my love "gently sighing as the evening slips away"?

Never comes the day indeed ...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Steve Bell in today's Guardian

Even though he's an old Trot, I really enjoy Steve Bell's cartoons in The Guardian (most of the time) but I hate the cynicism he displays in today's paper. It bothered me enough to post the comment below on the newspaper's web site.

Mr Angry writes from Ashfield ...

I've been a fan of Steve's for as long as I can remember. I don't always agree with the message he sends but even the stuff I hate usually makes me grin. This, however, is simply a cheap shot; misrepresenting the manner, style and content of what the man said. Barak Obama is, indeed, a mainstream politician and he may well be hauled into and fully embrace the traditional role of chief spokesperson for the hegemonic force of our age. After all, he did put up his hand and asked to be President of the USA so it's not like he's pretending to be Che. But he's not leader of the parade Steve draws him as. At worst, right now he may be more like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. At best, however, he may put an end to the worst of the Bush era madness, opening up spaces in which the rest of us might see, once again, new opportunities to shake the tree.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

So long, farewell ...

... as the Von Trapp family children (whom you know so well and love, Spike) sing. Last day at the office. End of this phase, standing on the threshold of a dream (as the Moody Blues were wont to tell us in the sixties anvd seventies). We love you and will miss you.

(They don't write them like this anymore!!)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

And today's word is ...

Grievance ...

As in that which has been lodged against me at work by a former colleague, posing as a friend, whom one might describe (at best) as fanciful.

As in what one feels at the necessity to work in the office until 11:30 p.m. responding to some genuinely barking mad claims. Truly ... barking ... mad.

Sue me if you don't like it.

Sue me.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Mirror Mask by Neil Gaiman
























Brilliant, as ever. And read aloud to me, perfectly, by one's very own Helena.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Dreamer

And if we fade
when time has done
with all the games
we've often played
through years we knew
not how to count
the meaning of
the joy we'd found

with no hopes lost
before those lives
we thought we'd bought
were sold again
for half the cost
of old mistakes
and tired friends
surrendering

will we know how
to start again,
to see anew
this how and when
and if we do
will we see through
the eyes of men
yet wondering?

Oh, let me know
how easy lives go,
show me all
those tired men know,
remain my friend
to tell me when ...
the end
will one day be

but never tell me
not to play
with who we were
when we were free
nor dim the lights
of life to come
before at last
we must succumb.


(I listened too many times to Clint Eastwood and Jamie Cullum perform their brilliant Gran Torino. This came. And now I'm off to bed. Old fool that I am.)
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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Gran Torino ... its best part



The film is so-so (although a huge box office success in the USA). The song, which plays as the credits roll, is the best part by a long, long mile. I'm not quite sure why I find it as affecting as I do ... but I do. Some of the lines are genuinely poetic (I think):

So tenderly your story is
nothing more than what you see
or what you've done or will become
standing strong do you belong
in your skin; just wondering

or

these streets are old they shine
with the things I've known
and breaks through the trees
their sparkling

your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind

Brilliant stuff Mr Eastwood, brilliant.
.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Gran Torino

Well, it was a bit disappointing really. I suppose you have to give them credit for trying to look at race and identity in what might otherwise have been a Dirty Harry Draws His Old Age Pension movie. The problem is, however, it's almost impossible to suspend disbelief.

I know it's a fable of sorts; it's not a documentary but there are huge credibility gaps. The set-up of his racism, emerging out of an ageing white America paradigm, isn't convincing. The stereotyping banter between Micks and Polacks and Wops seems forced to the point of breaking. Walt's transformation when his experience clashes with his prejudice and, because he's not a stupid ma.n experience teaches him the lessons he needs to learn is predictable and cliched.

It feels like a stage play at times. Funnily enough, however, the final five minutes of this too earnest melodrama are quite affecting. And the song that plays as the credits roll is truly lovely.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Funny old business

Life can be a funny old business, by which I mean odd or surprising rather than comical. And it’s remorseless, by which I mean it just keeps coming at you until one day, I suppose, it will simply stop; life, that is. By that time it will be too late to care. You’ll be done.

Today set off that ‘funny old business’ thought. It seems like quite a day to me but there weren’t hundreds of people dieing in bush fires rampaging through sleepy hollows. The remains of my five-year old son were not found by X-Ray examination inside the gut of a 3-metre crocodile. (I don’t have a son, by the way. Just in case anyone is wondering.) No planes fell out of the sky. Nevertheless, it seemed like quite a day to me.

It began in bed, as most (but not all) days begin. After ten days of thick, dark clouds and never-ending rain there was a clear blue sky. My girlfriend and I lay naked on the bed, the room bathed in sunshine; sleep clouding our eyes, the intermittent trill of the alarm on the phone insisting that we make a move. But it wasn’t simply the unparalleled delight of that situation which made me want to loiter in my adolescent’s idyll.

The world into which I was required to enter once again seemed like an alien place, a potentially hostile environment where I might come under attack, where I would feel it necessary to defend myself. I can fight (if I must). And when I feel that I have no option but to fight, I fight to win. But fighting ... even when the need is forced upon you, even when you win the fight and believe yourself to have been justified in fighting to defend yourself ... takes away a little part of what it is that makes you good. It diminishes you.

So, my day started by being vaguely aware of an alarm in the far-distant background. I became less vaguely aware of my girlfriend’s hand around mine then caressing my arm. That felt good. I felt good.

Almost immediately, however, my consciousness let in the recollection of the papers I’d received at my office at the end of yesterday. A disgruntled … I think disturbed … staff member, departing to another agency, had lodged a formal grievance against me with the Department’s Ethics & Professional Standards Unit. My Director General had written to me with a copy of the claims. I know they’re the bullshit products of a woman who has created her own, imaginary world of grievances against everyone (or mostly everyone) she works alongside. She's boxed herself into a tight corner and I think she believes / hopes no one will see what she has done to herself if she throws a lot of shit over someone else. I’m the biggest target in her ridiculous sights. Shoot the boss. He doesn’t matter because bosses never do.

The whole tedious affair had already sucked out the morale and lightness of our small office world. It's had the effect of mustard gas in no man’s land. I can’t recall an occasion on which I felt more demoralised. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, safe. But that’s never possible; not even desirable really. The world we live in simply doesn’t work like that. So I hauled myself into engagement with the day and with my girlfriend’s support and encouragement got on with the funny old business.

The day took (for me at least) a slightly surreal turn after lunch. We had a robbery at work last week. A staff member (not the woman who has complained about me) is implicated. I’ve been reporting to and taking advice from the manager of our Ethics & Professional Standards Unit. She’s been reporting my actions to our Director General. Naturally, she’s not mentioned a word to me that for the past two weeks she’s been receiving the complaint against me and preparing the paper work for the DG to sign. That’s the paper work I received yesterday, recollection of which nearly ruined my start to today.

So … we have our Council meeting today. The whole staff team is present (except my accuser, who is on very convenient sick leave until her secondment comes through … no need to face the consequence of your own maliciousness when you’re ‘sick’.) Shortly before the Director General arrives for his once in eighteen months meeting with our Council, the staff member who’s implicated in the robbery is called out to be taken away by the police to be interviewed then charged. I’ll have to report that fact to the Ethics manager who will report it to the DG who has just come through the door 18 hours after I received his letter about the allegations against me, including the paper work prepared by the Ethics manager I’ll update on progress with the robbery inquiry when our meeting closes after the DG finishes his spiel. By the time I get to speak to the Ethics manager she’s discussed with the DG, who has just returned to his office from our meeting, what she expects to be told by me. When we speak, me and the Ethics manager agree that our circumstances are somewhat different from ordinary.

And now I’m at home, alone at the end of this bizarre day. (There’s been more to the day to add complexity but they’re just details so why waste effort recalling them?)

I’ve spoken on the phone with my girlfriend, which always lifts my spirits. She’s back at her parents’ place in the country. Among other topics, we talked about the stars that she could see above her: Orion, the Southern Cross, the millions in the Milky Way. I’m listening to one of her CDs – Ya! by Felpeyu. And I’m writing …writing no more than this inconsequential tale (of no interest to almost everybody except me). But I’m writing, so that’s constructive.

My day ends well enough. It started brilliantly with the lightest of touches registering in my sleepy head. Everything in between is what it is: the funny old business called life.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Singing with Gerry in the dead of night

And still the music makes you
believe all men can change,
live out their dreams, perhaps,
achieve their hearts' desire.

The real world, we can see,
insistent on its own way,
charts its course persistently
against all dreamers may,

until a saxophone lifts up;
nothing seems beyond us
although, for sure, not easy,
- perhaps not even likely.

Yet still we reach for hope
he’ll - give up booze and
one night stands - to walk
with us down Baker Street.
.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Thirty years ago ...



... and still the music makes you think that a man can change, live out his dreams; realise his ambitions. The reality may be different, of course. You know, Gerry Rafferty still earns $120,000 a year in royalties from Baker Street but he seems not to have escaped his demons and the bottle. Let's hope he does. But our dreams don't die. That saxophone cries out to us still. Anything is possible it seems to tell us; not easy, maybe not even likely but always possible so ... give up the booze and the one-night stands ... and keep at it.
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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Rain ... from one's youth

On your tin roof in Dooralong and the undertaker's car park next to my flat in Ashfield, the rain falls as we speak on the phone and the distance between us seems somehow less. Happy Valentine's Day.

Friday, February 13, 2009

So, has it come to this ...

I am, it seems, a man who sits alone at home on a Friday night, surfing the Internet; a hot red wheat bag on his sore left shoulder. Three minutes in a microwave oven, apparently, and relief can be yours. Silly old fool.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Dis poetry

Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep
Preaching follow me
Like yu is blind sheep,
Dis poetry is not Party Political
Not designed fe dose who are critical.
Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed
It gets into me dreadlocks
It lingers around me head
Dis poetry goes wid me as I pedal me bike
I've tried Shakespeare, respect due dere
But did is de stuff I like.

Dis poetry is not afraid of going ina book
Still dis poetry need ears fe hear an eyes fe hav a look
Dis poetry is Verbal Riddim, no big words involved
An if I hav a problem de riddim gets it solved,
I've tried to be more romantic, it does nu good for me
So I tek a Reggae Riddim an build me poetry,
I could try be more personal
But you've heard it all before,
Pages of written words not needed
Brain has many words in store,
Yu could call dis poetry Dub Ranting
De tongue plays a beat
De body starts skanking,
Dis poetry is quick an childish
Dis poetry is fe de wise an foolish,
Anybody can do it fe free,
Dis poetry is fe yu an me,
Don't stretch yu imagination
Dis poetry is fe de good of de Nation,
Chant,
In de morning
I chant
In de night
I chant
In de darkness
An under de spotlight,
I pass thru University
I pass thru Sociology
An den I got a dread degree
In Dreadfull Ghettology.

Dis poetry stays wid me when I run or walk
An when I am talking to meself in poetry I talk,
Dis poetry is wid me,
Below me an above,
Dis poetry's from inside me
It goes to yu
WID LUV.

Benjamin Zephaniah


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Ouch

My shoulder aches. It has been sore for about a week now. I must have strained or pulled a muscle but I don't know how or where or when.

Spike bought a hot water bottle today and a jar of tiger balm, some of which she massaged into my skin this afternoon. I felt much better afterwards, although I may have smelled like the armpit of a sumo wrestler. That's a small price to pay if the pain eases.

Iffy shoulders are pretty close the the last problem a C5/6 quad needs to encounter.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Drowned World

This month's read for the Sydney MCA 'Inspired Reading' book club was J G Ballard's first novel from 1962. It was tied to an exhibition by Simryn Gill.

So ... getting the problems out of the way first of all: it's dated; misanthropic; misogynist; has frankly unacceptable portrayals of the one female and all the black characters; its world view is, to say the least, gloomy and its psychology is a bit too Freudian for my tastes. And the story, to be honest, is a bit naff ... almost superfluous (which the author might not see as a huge problem).

Nevertheless, it is quite a compelling read. The imagery is captivating, striking at times. Surrealist painting clearly informs much of the writing and the text, only 175 pages long, is worth dipping into just for that imagery (absurd at times but, you know, it's surrealism ... which I can take or leave in many of its manifestations).

The Drowned World is sort of The Day Of The Triffids meets Heart Of Darkness meets Dante's Inferno meets Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and a Belgian painter, Pierre Delvaux, I've never heard of. I first read it when I was 14 or 15 years old; re-read it for the book club tonight and didn't think I'd wasted my time. I don't share the author's nihilistic world view but I did enjoy the rich texture of his writing. One could almost touch the mad jungle, smell the lagoon and feel the heat of that sun on your skin.

I really enjoyed the evening, joined as I was by Spike. The gallery folk are lovely, full of enthusiasm for their art and literature / cheese and wine evening and very bright.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Fires Appeal by our work's DG

Memo from the Director-General – DG 2009/009

Australia has witnessed one of its worst natural disasters as the official death toll caused by the Victorian bushfires stands at 130 people. The death toll exceeds those of Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983. There are 31 fires still burning across Victoria. At least 750 homes have been destroyed – 550 of those in Kinglake, north of Melbourne, and in surrounding areas.

A number of DADHC staff have indicated they would like to make a donation to help those affected. As DADHC’s Workplace Giving donation facility is currently under construction, details on how you can donate are listed below:

Visit www.redcross.org.au
Phone 1800 811 700
Go to any NAB, ANZ, Westpac or Commonwealth Bank branch
Donate at any Bunnings store
Direct deposit to the Victorian Bushfire Relief Fund - BSB 082-001, Account number 860-046-797
Give blood - The Australian Red Cross Blood service is encouraging people to donate blood. For your nearest donor centre visit www.donateblood.com.au or call 13 14 95 to make an appointment.

I hope that we can all contribute to assisting those in need at this devastating time.

Brendan O’Reilly
Director-General

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Slighly more than wood-fired ...

Mine came from Woolworth's (I borrowed this image from someone called Kim, here). If anything, mine was darker ... charcoal might be a more accurate description. I suppose the apple and plum I ate instead are better for me.

My dark pizza just goes to prove that this man, at least, is not crash hot at multi-tasking ... watch the oven do its baking thing Douglas or catch up on work e.mails. Don't try both at once because that's obviously way too much for a simple man like you to handle!

Friday, February 06, 2009

Sorry ... what was the question?

How could a man count up
his losses as if they were sheep
called up to ease the terrors
of an unimaginative insomniac,
one with a wool fetish, perhaps,
and too much time to fritter away
on idle thoughts and figments;
possibilities that might have been
but never were and never could be?

Do you weigh them in a cosmic balance,
totting up the gains against the losses
as if there might be a single answer:
forty-two, rosebud, pi, the square
of the hypotenuse or Tom Doniphon?

The trouble is you have to know
the question you need or want to ask
and then be brave enough to listen
while the unimagniable universe talks,
wholly indifferent at the best of times
to hollow men with less time left than
they realise ... and egos bigger by far
than the national debt of Mexico.

Even then, all you might discover is
who it was that shot Liberty Valance.
.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

I may be going insane ...

So, the office was burgled in the dead of night. Is there some burglar school in this day and age where the Professor of Thieving forgets to mention CCTV in secure buildings? If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. Can a human being truly be quite that stupid? Seems so ...

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

It's ours

there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.

Charles Bukowski


.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Lewisham Park ...

London's Lewisham rather than Sydney's. Today.

Picture by Cassie Herschel-Shorland (friend of Amelia Starr).

Monday, February 02, 2009

An non-believer's prayer

(for Matt Laffan)

If, as must be clear, I have forgotten how to pray,
................................................Oh Lord,
forgive me that these words, which here I say,
seem crude to you and sound so awkward
in their presentation of this late display.

An invocation: my entreaty for your word,
your act, your deed; some chance to stay
the paltry moment when the flesh, in discord
with the spirit’s longing now to set out on its way
- perhaps back home like some enchanted bird
no longer tied to nature’s willful disarray -

cries out for more: the sunrise of a bright new day,

cries out for more: the chance to be still heard,
cries out for more: the end, for now, deferred.
.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

looking for signs that you're stupid ...

I have no dout that Yarramalong, inland of Wyong on the NSW Central Coast, is a lovely little village. I might even choose to visit the sleepy little hamlet one day ... in daylight.

The first sign that I can be as stupid as all the coots of Centennial Park's ponds standing in a single column of stupid coots, each coot balancing on the shoulders of the coot beneath it (if coots have shoulders) came when I passed the sign for Yarramalong Public School, established in 1870 (see pretty picture).

I'm sure that if I'd actually known what I was doing at two-thirty a.m., as I drove the Transit van farther and farther along the Yarramalong Road towards the dead ends at Cedar Bush Creek and Ravensdale (both north-west of my initial point of departure ... Spike's parents' place in Dooralong) I would have seen SOME SIGN that I was travelling 18.4 KMS IN THE WRONG DIRECTION for a man who was trying to head south-east in search of the freeway to Sydney. Dickhead. That'll be a 40 kms round trip in the dark and misty conditions of a winding, undulating country road, which are simply THE BEST CONDITIONS imaginable for a quad with hand controls to drive his clapped-out, 14 year old, petrol powered automatic Ford panel van. So there's an hour of my life I'll never see again.

My defence is that I think there's a sign missing at the junction of Yarramalong Road and Old Maitland Road, when you're heading south. Travelling north along OMR you reach the T-junction at YR. A giant green sign points to Yarramalong. Another giant greet sign points to Dooralong. These signs confirm the easy to follow instruction's I'd received by SMS to guide my first visit to Spike's parents' place ... take the Wyong turn-off then it's LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT. That makes the return trip easy peasy ... RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT.

Aha ...

Heading south there is no sign announcing FREEWAY THIS WAY - YOU DIP STICK. No green sign at all. There's a little blue and white sign, which reads Old Maitland Road (like that helps anyone without Google maps in their 1984 Transit van with 156,000 miles on the clock). And there's a BIG GREEN SIGN announcing FREEWAY JUNCTION 2KMS but that sign appears half a kilometre AFTER the turn-off ... so that's slightly less than wholly helpful to a man who was looking for the turn-off BEFORE he reached it in case, in his tiredness, inexperience, the dark, the mist and late-night / early morning uncertainty of the drive he missed the turn-off.

Got home at 4:30 a.m. In bed by the time dawn had broken and the birds were singing. Still, nothing could detract from a wonderful Saturday afternoon and evening with Spike at the Leonard Cohen concert in Pokolbin; nothing.
.