Pages

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Spartacus: Blood and Sand



It is truly bonkers but the longer the series went on the more compelling it became as television.  John Hannah tears up the screen.  Lucy Lawless pouts her way to a cliffhanger of unimaginable gore.  Despite myself I loved it and it has seen me through too many days like today, stuck in bed with a hole in my buttock.
.

Friday, July 30, 2010

The Booker Prize

Here's how bad it gets when you're confined to bed: you read everything you can find about the Man Booker prize long list (a Booker dozen is like a baker's dozen apparently).  I'm wondering if I should buy the lot to overdose on literary fiction.  With university reading lists I probably have enough to read.

I enjoyed today's podcast by Guardian Books.  The newspaper of choice introduces it thus:

Claire Armitstead hosts a discussion on the books that made the Man Booker longlist and talks to author Emma Donoghue about being longlisted before being published, and Sarah Crown meets the Forward Prize shortlisted poet Jo Shapcott.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Snakes and ladders

Maybe I mean two paces forward then one pace back (although the board game metaphor fits better with an idea Spike is considering for one of her course projects).  I'm back in bed.  It's not my abscess this time, which is present still but getting smaller.  No, it's damaged, tired, worn skin above my bottom. 

I'm sitting on a very temporary measure, a cheap, inflatable rubber ring that provides space and air exactly below the abscess site.  Something seems to be happening to an arc of skin corresponding to the rear portion of the ring.  I don't know what's caused the damage because last time (November last year) I didn't have this problem.  But the skin is in danger of breaking down so I need to be off it.  Need one say I've known more uplifting days?

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

In search of shelter

The rain persists. Remorseless winter's
downpour, it saturates not just your clothes
but seeps into your veins and soaks
old bones made cold and brittle, colder
now the work of ages and infirmity is done
so that the past, wrapped round the frame
a young man once defied his odds with,
reveals itself in aching joints, thin blood
so poorly circulating time forgot to count
and scars and scrapes just one mishap away
from festering sore and misery, infected
by the grime, the dirt, the bugs, the vile
contentions and assaults of being a bum;
a man who sleeps in doorways if he can,
who knows no more than where to hide
on rainy winter nights this world forgets.

I've been reading more of 1984 with its cold, dank Victory Mansions.  It's raining outside our window here in Sydney.  And it's cold.  As I pushed from my office block entrance to the corner of Campbell Street where my taxi waited I passed a woman, bare-footed, sitting on newspapers on the dry forecourt.  She was settling down for the night.  I've never seen here there before.  In search of something to put in my blog before heading off to my warm bed, maybe these disparate elements came together in something that may or may not be a poem.  Whatever it is, it is what it is.
.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Orwell

I've started reading for my English course (Fiction, Film and Power) with George Orwell.  We've been asked to read Chapter 1 of 1984 and Politics and the English Language.

I'm a great admirer of the former.  I read it first at school (of course) and have read it several times since.  I think I'm more impressed with it each time I read it.  The first sentence retains its power to unsettle the reader as much now as it ever did:  "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

I'm underwhelmed by PatEL.  It's praised in many quarters as a key text on style and an examination of the ways in which language is debased and deformed to serve ideological and political purposes.  Beyond Orwell's observations about sloppy and unimaginative writing (he sets up some tired, over-used metaphors as 'Aunt Sallys' to be too easily knocked over) I react against the essay's innate conservatism and elitism.  It has the feel of a Little Englander howl against the way English usage and writing are going to Hell in a handcart.  A telling phrase used by Orwell is "the defence of the English language ..." as if it were an artefact or a building, a fine old church perhaps, threatened by the ruinous consequences of both the old (Greek and Latin words get a pasting from Orwell) and the new.  His constant refrain urging the deployment of Saxon words is rather too particular for my taste.  He doesn't quite assert that it's all the fault of William, the French and 1066 but his 'defence' is too narrowly focussed to stand up in his own day, let alone now.

Besides, history has shown him to be wrong.  Of course one can identify all kinds of bad writing, lacking in clarity, meaning and purpose.  But the language thrives, renews itself and good writing is all around.

I'll give him this though.  His rules of writing have merit even if his broader argument is riddled with holes.
  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Back to university

Semester Two started today, which is both exciting and frustrating.  It's the latter because it wasn't until today that we could have access to this term's on-line course resources, including unit outlines, tutorial topics, essays, final reading lists and lecture schedules.  I'm annoyed to find out that one of the courses will not have taped lectures (contrary to pre-enrolment advice).  I'll need to alter my working hours, starting as early as I can on Tuesdays and Thursdays to compensate for early departures.  It'll work out if I commit myself to what needs to be done.  But it's bothersome.  Life would be so much easier if I could take in the lectures at home in the evening.  Circumstances are not made easier by a) my abscess and b) the absence of my van (back from Elio, the mechanic, by the end of the week I hope).

More positively, there's the excitement (some trepidation) of starting new courses.  I've signed up for two (and maybe Chinese for beginners in the evening).  There's ENGL1025 Fiction, Film and Power and ANHS1601 Foundations of Ancient Rome.  Both courses 'do what they say on the packet.' 

The Film / Film Adaptation course should be fun and well within my comfort zone.  I simply have to read the novels, articles and watch the movies.  We had our first lecture today.  It included a showing of Buster Keaton's Cops, which is still funny 88 years after it was made.

The Roman history course is an altogether different kettle of fish.  All those dates, dynasties, periods and the rest - challenging (to put it mildly).  It's a long, long time since I studied any form of history (not since Stirling University in the late 1970s when I took a couple of units in Modern European, British and Social history topics). 

Here I am though ... Romans at Sydney University!!  Not looked at them since second year at secondary school, which was not yesterday (nearly 40 years ago now I think on it.)

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Bedside Manner

Diffidence speaks less, perhaps,
of nurture than of nature; more
of how you did not learn enough
than of the skills they tried to teach
when you were younger, I suppose,
and called to what you called vocation:
your desire to help, perhaps to heal,
at least to hold out hope.  At least.

But time moves on regardless
through lives we give a name to
seeking purpose, or at least a role
to play, both for ourselves and others.

You are a nurse and I your patient.
You dress my wound but cannot share
your name or look me in the eye
from first hello to walking out's goodbye.

I was visited by a community nurse who came to inspect and dress the wound left by my abscess.  I've no idea who he was.  He meant well, I'm sure but he has a lot to learn about listening.
.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Fidra

It can be a funny, old place; this world of ours.  And oh how post-modern one becomes thanks to the Internet with its social networking sites like Facebook, web browsers like Firefox and even Google's calendar application (which Spike introduced me to today).

I logged into Facebook a short time ago to see who has been up to what in the virtual world of my Facebook friends (a thoroughly bizarre label to give any group of mostly real people but there we have it).  I saw a photograph tagged by my friend Jack (now Lord) McConnell.  It was a serene image of a heron standing at a weir in Crammond, Edinburgh.  I flicked through the Facebook album of the photographer; a woman called Shona MacMillan who I neither know nor have heard of.  She appears to be a published somebody.

I came across the image here of Fidra, in the Firth of Forth.  It's the island that Robert Louis Stevenson may have had in mind when he imagined Treasure Island.  Fidra sits maybe half a kilometre off Yellowcraig beach in East Lothian.  I lived five minutes from the beach, in Dirleton, for 5 years.  I have a Geoff Roper painting (the second that I bought) of Martin Currie, Alison Campbell and June Roper relaxing on that beach, a picnic spread out before them, Alison flat on her belly reading a book. 

Fidra viewed from Yellowcraig is a place of memory and imagination; an example, maybe, of pleated time and space (as in the crumpled handkerchief metaphor by Michel Serres).   It's a personal illustration (at least to me) of an idea I encountered in my Sydney University course last semester, Australian Texts: International Contexts.  In a lecture on Dreams Of Speaking by Gail Jones (one of the judges of a short story competition I entered last week) we were introduced to this proposition by Lynda Nead: "Modernity … can be imagined as pleated or crumpled time, drawing together past, present and future into constant and unexpected relations and the product of a multiplicity of historical eras."
.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

After China ... finally!

At last, I've finished my re-reading of Brian Castro's novel.  God, it's hard work (which the author intended it should be, apparently).  I mean it's hard work in a less praiseworthy or meritorious way than I imagine BC would have hoped for.  Although I've revised upwards my initial (lack of) regard for After China I'm afraid I remain mostly underwhelmed.

I get that it's metafiction.  I understand the use of metaphor and (maybe) allegory.  I see the Cartesian dualism, the structural antagonisms of Yin and Yang, the dichotomous tensions between the male and female, the Freudian self-reflection and self-deception.  I get the collapse of the building as the collapse of self (as clunky as that metaphor sadly is).  I see Ovid in the text.  I can't avoid the much too frequent, progressively more tedious invocation of Kafka.  I am prepared to go with the 'jump cut' sophistication (which is not a compliment) of fragmentation of time, place and narrative arc.  I'm bouncing along with the multiplicity of narrative voices - who is I, who is you, who is he or who is she? - which may ultimately be the same voice.  I recognise the references to Scheherazade and the storytelling / life-prolonging intention / technique of The One Thousand and One Nights and, of course we know that when the architect has run out of tales to tell the writer must die and drift away on an Chinese wedding cabinet floating in the flooded bowels of the disintegrating hotel.  I was even prepared to follow the novel's anti-hero down into the depths of the plumbing and sewage system, wade through shite with him then witness his release / re-birth as the sewage outlet washed him out to sea.

It's cleverly constructed.  I'll concede it's better written than I first asserted; in parts it's rather beautifully written and lyrical.  Ultimately though, it's simply not rewarding enough; not worth the effort.  It lacks heart and soul and more than once teeters on the edge of narcissistic cliche before collapsing into preposterous and self-serving introspection.  By that, I mean it truly is wanky in places.

Not my favourite read ever.  But I am pleased I've read it twice now.  I know more than I did at the outset and that can't be bad.
.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Risky business

Spike helped me out of a hole by typing up some of the content of the "Council package" for next week's meeting of my committee.  Dictation is not one of my more accomplished skills so I'm glad to have made it safely to the end of the task.  There may have been more than one or two occasions when Ms Deane felt like stabbing me with a sharp stick.  I might not have blamed her.  But it's done and I'm hoping to return to work next week.  My GP visited in the afternoon.  Linda is both surprised and pleased with the progress my buttock is making.  If she's happy so am I.

This is from Nabucco (Abigaille stabbing Ismaele) but you get the drift.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Vampires and pizza

Up for a while.  I really needed to pay some bills before a variety of utilities companies got pissed off.  It's not that I care much about upsetting telephone, electricity and water conglomerates but it is such a hassle getting re-connected.

We ordered pizza from Crust.  The choice of Veggie Moussaka was not one of our best!

Chewing away on the dough and cheese we watched Van Helsing.  Now there is a movie that definitely does not improve with a second viewing.  I think the word is dire or maybe travesty.  Neither Hugh Jackman in a Dryzabone or Kate Beckinsale in a corset and boots could do anything to resuscitate this corpse of a movie.
.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

My second short story in 6 weeks

I read in the NSW Writers' Centre weekly bulletin that the Adelaide Review has a short story competition that closes next week.  The judges are Brian Castro, J M Coetzee and Gail Jones.  So how much is that beyond the twilight zone?  I started to write this morning and was more or less finished by the end of the day.  The word limit is 2,500.  I just squeezed under it.  The story is called Windows.  I'll let it sit for a couple of days, edit it and submit the final version next week.  Here's how it starts:

Every morning, about three minutes past eight, one of those double-decked, super-sized Airbus jets passes before my eyes for a few seconds.  Climbing from right to left across the bedroom window, it reminds me of the world beyond.  There are people.  One is not alone.  I am not Legend.
.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Bastille Day

There has never been anyone more French than Yves Montand, son of an Italian Communist father and staunch Roman Catholic mother.  Go figure.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Livable Design

As I suspected would happen I missed the launch of the Livable Design strategy.  Eight months work and I'm in bed with an arse boasting one more hole than nature intended.

This is the crappy (temporary) FaCSHIA web site.  It's enough to make one weep but hopefully we'll have something decent soon.
.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Coming to the boil (so to speak)

'Bruce' exploded today.  It was a lot less artistic than Explosion by Salvador Dali (right).  

Spike said it made her think of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Dr Linda Mann visited in the evening and expressed her view that the eruption was definitely the best outcome we could have wished for.  Nature takes its course.

Enough said!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Results in

ENGL 1002 Narratives of Romance and Adventure; ENGL 1002 Australian Texts: International Contexts. High Distinction for both courses. Pleased. Relieved. My exams must have gone well.
.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Called in the doctor ...

Not even I could ignore the evidence of my own eyes looking at the giant abscess in a mirror held up to my arse.  I called my GP.  Linda was not on duty but another doctor, Uma, called in on her way home, which was good of her and reassuring.  She looked, prescribed drugs and we agreed, I have a giant abscess on my arse but it's unlikely to kill me.
.

Friday, July 09, 2010

Penelope Awakes

I made a mistake today.  I thought my abscess was reducing.  I thought I could get up (sitting on the rubber ring).  So I did.  Not my brightest idea.

On the other hand I worked on a group of poems (nine in total ... four of them haiku for goodness sake) to be submitted as an entry for the Val Vallis poetry competition.  I called the group Penelope Awakes.  It's a set of poems that draw on aspects of and characters in The Odyssey.  Odysseus, Laertes, the dead crew of Odysseus, the Suitors and finally Penelope express themselves, each in their own poem.  Odysseus justifies his wanderlust.  Laertes struggles to come to terms with old age.  The dead crew lament their loss of life.  The Suitors anticipate the moment Penelope chooses (which never comes, of course, because Odysseus kills them all).  Penelope rejects the role of passive wife on the basis that if Odysseus can exercise free will so too may she.  (I concede I've made that bit up.) Immortals respond in haiku to each of the first four voices (Calypso to Odysseus, Zeus to Laertes, Circe to the dead crewmen and Athene to the Suitors).  None of the Gods know how to respond to Penelope's free will so the group of poems ends with her assertion of freedom.

I'm writing.  I'm trying out different poetic forms.  I'm trying to work with ideas as well as images and emotions.  And I'm submitting work to external assessment.  I may not win (the judgements of others are beyond my control).  The point is that I'm writing.
.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

What an arse I am!!

LLet this be a reminder to you Douglas!

'Bruce' is getting angry and I'm going nowhere in a hurry.  Spike set up the office laptop computer on the bed, prepared a sandwich lunch for me and filled a water bottle then left for the day to attend to her raven sculptures, which have to be ready for the kiln very soon.

At least I can work (albeit slowly) via the remote link to my office.  I doubt very much that I'll be attending any more of the State Government's Stronger Together 2 consultations.  I'm pretty sure, too, that I'll miss next week's launch of the 'livable design' strategy and marketing campaign.

So it's not just a reminder Dougie ... it's a lesson and a warning.  Dumkopf!!

(photo by Spike ... which may be above and beyond the call of duty.)
.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ...

Joy, oh joy, oh joy unconstrained ... 'Bruce' the abscess is back.  It began to emerge after an early evening shower.  Who knows where it has been lurking since last November?  Who cares why it has returned?  All one can say with any damn certainty is that I'll not be going anywhere for a while.  It's back to bed Dougie.  Lets hope for not too long (that may be wishful thinking).

'Bruce' (by the way) was named by my friend Amelia.  You do have to wonder about what they teach occupational therapists these days!!

.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Not quite The Odyssey

So ... the Coffs Harbour trip. One of my triumphs, I think. The final 3 hours of the drive north was completed in the dark, no heater, sandwiched between 2 semis going at faster than light speed on the nation's one-lane 'Route One.' The official designation of the temperature was somewhere between 'colder than a witch's tit' (apologies to any witches reading this) and 'fuck me it's cold'.

At the hotel we were upgraded to largest but coldest hotel room in the universe. Suffer the ignominy of having to phone desk for instructions on heater operation. "Push the button on the remote" was received with something approaching a state of grace. Don't even think about asking about the room-service lasagne. It originated in some far-flung quadrant of the space/time continuum.

Day 2: almost a fight at conference (recalled happy NUS days). Discovered a flat tyre on Transit van only after trying to waddle out of the car park. A porter called Robert gave immaculate performance of the customer is always right during the 45 minutes he lay under the van. Oh yes, and the pasta at lunch may have been the most ghastly meal I've ever encountered ... made me think of the primordial soup from before the Big Bang.

Day 3: we'll skip over the paralysed bowel problem. Is there an entry in The Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of enemas deployed in the service of one human being?
Day 3 (part 2): after fixing the tyre in town we found a hospital with an on-duty physio to see if we could fix my trapezius (BIG muscle that covers your shoulder blade and among other things holds your head on). Kris, the physio, managed not to laugh when I said I'd be driving to Sydney next day. Missed the conference, which means (thank God) I escaped its pasta.

Day 4: tried to drive south. Got as far as the Big Banana, stopping twice because of pain. That'll be twice in 700 metres. The 525 kilometres to Sydney certainly seemed like a big ask at that moment. By the way, I don't do pain very well. You know those black and white Movies where plucky Brits only give name, rank and serial number? Not me. I'd give them the plans, the home addresses of the plotters, my grandmother and my children if I had any.

Day 4 (part 2): phoned fellow-delegate Alison who was about to board Rex plane - elastic band and Biggles at the controls. So instead of enjoying tiny little packet of un-openable cashew nuts and an early morning G&T, she got to drive me for 500k shouting "serial number? Take my first born!"

Days 5, 6 and 7: off work, in bed, unable to transfer, can't drive, can't push my chair. I can, however, whistle Dixie. Neitzche famously observed "that which does not destroy us makes us strong" The trouble is he was a mad German masochist (apologies to any mad German masochists reading this.). 

There, better now. Got THAT off my chest.