You learn something new every day

Such as ...

Turquoise is the mineral, not necessarily the colour. I found out this small fact earlier today when Spike and I visited Mayagems in Avalon.

Old School

An empty room: bare and harsh
with yellow, buckled floorboards
worn by years of aimless use
by boys and girls no longer there;
ghosts in the afternoon
of this half-remembered day
who present yet (in one sense)
will not be brought again to stand in line.

The walls are yellow too: pale,
constructed of the cheapest chipboard
scuffed by careless, long-gone hands,
pockmarked by pins and tacks; a nail
which, once upon a time, held up
a version of this world arranged
in subtle pink upon whose power
the sun was meant to never set.

A four-square window frame: aged,
white paint, cracked and peeling;
flakes curled in the summer's sun
like rose petals at a birth or death.

Light fills the vacant space: brilliant,
a stark illumination that serves less
the fondest memories of old men fading
than sears into the brain all that they've lost.
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An idea ... much less than half-formed

wThe Twelve Labours of Hercules (Greek: Δωδεκαθλος, dodekathlos) are a series of archaic episodes connected by a later continuous narrative, concerning a penance carried out by the greatest of the Greek heroes, Heracles, romanised as Hercules. The establishment of a fixed cycle of twelve labours was attributed by the Greeks to an epic poem, now lost, written by Peisander, dated about 600 BC (Burkert).

This may go to New York, New York or into a galaxy far, far away and a long time ago ...

... or nowhere.









(Hercules Fights the Nemean Lion. From a Roman Sarcophagus of the 2nd-3rd Century A.D.)

Happy birthday Lauri

State Of Play

I'll see worse movies this year. Russell Crowe is engaging. Ben Afleck is okay, almost believable. Helen Mirren is criminally under-used and Rachel McAdams is sweet. Although there are a few large holes in the plot there's also some tension. Not a bad way to fill two movie-going hours.

Later than you think

I had hoped for more than this:
perhaps not insight,
perhaps not even self-reflection late at night
upon the edge of what some purple prose might call abyss
but some call less than this
or that (which has, perhaps, too much
hyperbole; the desperate man's despairing crutch
upon which leans a barely conscious reminisce
of half-invented halcyon days of youth
or nothing that far back if one is here to tell the truth)
to persuade the tired mind that nothing is amiss
or that the great pretense that life's a bed of roses
or that performances, posturing and striking poses
compensate - in some way - for a dreamer's avarice.
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Too much Eliot can be too much

Waiting For Godot

I re-read WFG for the first time in 15 years as preparation for next Monday's class. It's just as brilliant as it always has been. Difficult? Not if you simply let it was over you. Try this. What's difficult?

The Journey Of The Magi

We spent our second week on T S Eliot at this evening's class. The more one studies the poet the more impressed you have to be. Prufrock and the other poems in that first collection of iconoclastic brilliance still have the power to overwhelm the senses, particularly when taken together; as the whole they seem to be:

Lines two and three of Prufrock are famously, When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table.

The second of the Preludes begins ... The morning comes to consciousness / Of faint stale smells of beer.

Different poems. Same world. The poems connect not just in content and subject matter and voice but in the way the lines and images relate to one another.

Fiona Morrison (our tutor) ended the class with a reading and discussion of The Journey Of The Magi. Andrew Calder's critical essay cites the poem as an indication that Eliot had begun his descent. Fiona suggested it marks the high-water mark of a mature poet, on his game so to speak. I'm inclined to agree with her, which means my opinion of the poem has changed.

Fiona asked us to speculate on what made the Magi particularly appealing to her. We tried to guess but none of us hit the answer. It was this section, she said:

...................................... but set down
This set down
This:...

I see her point. It is confident. We are persuaded by / of the poetic voice. We suspend disbelief. We're sitting with an old, wise man; a real man rather than some religious icon or signifier. He's telling us his story. He wants us to be sure we write down the crucial, epoch-turning truth he recalls from an earlier time. He is insistent that we get his point; that we get the point. It is, I agree, mightily impressive craftmanship.

I looked for images, settling on this one. It has a realism about it that contrasts strongly with other 'Adoration' paintings of the time. Worth a look.

Jacopo Bassano

(b Bassano del Grappa, c. 1510; d Bassano del Grappa, 13 Feb 1592).

Son of Francesco Bassano il vecchio. He was apprenticed to his father, with whom he collaborated on the Nativity (1528; Valstagna, Vicenza, parish church). In the first half of the 1530s Jacopo trained in Venice with Bonifazio de’ Pitati, whose influence, with echoes of Titian, is evident in the Flight into Egypt (1534; Bassano del Grappa, Mus. Civ.). He continued to work in the family shop until his father’s death in 1539. His paintings from those years were mainly altarpieces for local churches; many show signs of collaboration. He also worked on public commissions, such as the three canvases on biblical subjects (1535–6; Bassano del Grappa, Mus. Civ.) for the Palazzo Communale, Bassano del Grappa, in which the narrative schemes learnt from Bonifazio are combined with a new naturalism. From 1535 he concentrated on fresco painting, executing, for example, the interior and exterior decoration (1536–7) of S Lucia di Tezze, Vicenza, which demonstrates the maturity of his technique.

A poem from this week's New Yorker

Don’t Do That

It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything

hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red

along with some resentment I’d held in

for a few weeks, which was not helped

by the sight of little nameless things

pierced with toothpicks on the tables,

or by talk that promised to be nothing

if not small. But I’d consented to come,

and I knew what part of the house

their animals would be sequestered,

whose company I loved. What else can I say,

except that old retainer of slights and wrongs,

that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown—

I’d brought him along, too. I was out

to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me,

but did not ask about my soul, which was when

I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red

to find the right kind of glass, and pour.

I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall,

then walked past a group of women

dressed to be seen, undressing them

one by one, and went up the stairs to where

the Rottweilers were, Rosie and Tom,

and got down with them on all fours.

They licked the face I offered them,

and I proceeded to slick back my hair

with their saliva, and before long

I felt like a wild thing, ready to mess up

the party, scarf the hors d’oeuvres.

But the dogs said, No, don’t do that,

calm down, after a while they open the door

and let you out, they pet your head, and everything

you might have held against them is gone,

and you’re good friends again. Stay, they said.

By Stephen Dunn

The New Yorker

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Where does the time go?

The Land Of The Lost

Very, very silly. But I giggled.

Prufrock and the women?

When asked by my English tutor, on Monday night, to interpret the Michaelangelo couplet in Prufrock I dropped the ball. Some of the group felt the women are prostitutes. You can see how that reading is possible; the women appearing, as they do, after the grimy first fragment. Our tutor favours an inside / outside reading. Prufrock is in the "half-deserted streets". The women come and go in a room beyond a window.

The tutor turned to me then said ... you like this poem Dougie, what would you say? To which I answered both readings are possible, although nothing else in the poem supports the prostitute reading.

Poor response Douglas, is what I thought then and now.

Answering the question has been bugging me all week. This much I now know. The famous couplet,

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michaelangelo

is lifted, almost directly, from something written by the French 'symboliste' Jules Larforge. The original reads,

Dans la piece les femmes vont et viennent
En parlant des maitres de Sienne.

That, of course, shows us something of Eliot's brilliance. And (for reasons I can't quite pin down) argues further against the prostitute reading.

I am being driven nuts, however, in my attempts to source the original. I find reference to it in many Googled places but no citation of the source. That's very, very annoying.
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Death by procedure

Into the void of some pointless task
the thankless public servant falls,
alienated
from even the idea of civil service
and set apart from any public.

He fills his days with Kafka's
purposeless activity;
his virtual pen pushing to create
page upon page of policy
and well-regulated rules
destined to be designated

red tape by no less nameless, faceless
bureaucrats who may also wonder why
and ask as much in triplicate.
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Accessible Arts NSW

Attended a board meeting this evening. I become more impressed with the work of AArts with each contact I have. They are decent people doing a good job with a degree of style. There are far worse ways to go through life.

Accessible Arts NSW
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Prufrock

We started on the 20th Century Modernists at tonight's literature class. And with what other than The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock could one begin?

I stumbled over this rendition of what might be the most important single poem of the Twentieth Century. Not a bad reading, at all. Persuasive interpretation. Quite a character reciting it too.

Driven to greatness

The path to artistic greatness led us and the Transit van today via Parker's art suppliers at The Rocks (door closed); the Museum of Contemporary Art (both front and rear doors open); Custom House at Circular Quay (door open); the State Library (doors open, scalding hot Greek pie and less ferocious Portuguese tart); St Mary's Cathedral (rear door and accessible entry locked, front doors open but being built on for a stage); the Art Gallery of NSW (door open) and the Botanic Gardens (Woolloomooloo gate open). It's a long and hilly route over which to push your quadriplegic photographer. The artist needed a good, long sleep when we got home.

See Spikeabelle's Ramble for the photographic record.
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Lighting up the Opera House

Spike nabbed a spot at the railings adjacent to Campbell Cove for us to watch the second of three nightly re-enactments of the destruction by fire of a pestilent convict ship. It was a less than explosive sight but fun to watch nevertheless.



















Brian Eno's lava-lamp illuminations of the Opera House were the highlight of the Sydney event called Vivid. Photos by Jon Reid.


















We took the late night tour with Jon and Rosie, beginning at the top of Observatory Hill, which was mobbed.

Not quite the lively debate we were looking for but decent art

We attended the third late-opening event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, timed to coincide with the city's festival of light, known as Vivid. Staying open late on at least one week night is a good idea. The MCA should do it regularly although I doubt that the gallery could afford to do so until its new space is built and open to the public. Only then, I think, will the MCA have the non-exhibition space and facilities (cafe, bar and performance areas) to pull in punters who might not find the art as accessible as the paintings ansd sculptures in the Art Gallery of NSW, where the Art After Hours on a Wednesday evening is hugely successful.

This evening's debate on the meeting of technology and art was a good idea realised less well than it might have been. Boring is another way of describing it. The organisers meant well I'm sure but the ideas on display were mostly pedestrian and presented by at least a couple of the men who spoke in condescending, barely cohrerent, self-serving and vaccuuous terms. The references to Brian Eno's illumination of the Opera House sails were quite interesting but the simple fact is that work speaks for itself and there was little that its spokesperson could give us in the five minutes he had. The others, to be honest, were forgettable even as they spoke.

But the idea is a good one; drawing people into the art space outsdide of usual business hours. And the gallery spaces were busy. Rick Maynard's photographs in the exhibition Portrait of a distant land drew good numbers of people who spent time in front of excellent but challenging images of poor, black contermporary Australia (predominantly male images, as they were). The space on the mezzanine floor showing photographs by some of Rick Maynard's inspirational predecessers was worth visiting: Ansel Adams came as a bit of a surprise because he's primarily a landscape photographer but who wouldn't be inspired by his precision and intensity? Dorothea Lange and Paul Strand weare less surprising.

A mixed bag of a day

Porridge for breakfast, which is a sign of some significant change in the way I chart my course through life. Porridge? It came with jam ... so I remain a wuss, lest anyone think I'm wholly transformed.

Porridge came with salt when I was a child eating at my grandmother's kitchen table in Rockbank Street, Bridgeton. I loved my grandmother when I was a wee boy. I even suffered her daily dose of cod liver oil with something approaching forebearance but salty porridge is a taste one has never acquired.

After Spike had left to travel to work at the Multicultural Disability Advocacy Association I settled down with a pot of tea to finish reading Angus Calder's 1987 introduction to the work of T S Eliot, which is one of The Harvester Press "New Readings" series. It is a decent introduction, well worth reading although it draws a rather condescending conclusion with this observation:

"I suppose that I have in the past pushed [Eliot's oeuvre's] claims largely because it seemed to rebuke the timerity and insularity of much recent British verse; now that poets neither timid nor insular such as Geoffrey Hill, Norman McCaig and Charles Tomlinson have produced notable post-Modernist oeuvres of their own, Eliot's is no longer so needful for that purpose. He is not yet 'folded into one party' with such adversaries as the Georgians but I no longer feel so inclined to fight on his behalf, in a battle for 'Modernism' against easy-oozy English continmuity."

Frankly my dear Angus, who gives a damn? The end apart, however, it's a decent, even informative read.

After my taking of tea and deconstruction of Thomas, I ventured out into a day of domestic chores; buying stamps at the post office, shopping for milk, fruit juices and tissues at the supermarket, picking-up Spike after work. We took a chance on finding late-night-shopping parking at the Westfield Mall in Parramatta. There, we bought essentials: a new iron, a four-slice toaster and some emergency hosiery. Who could have guessed that all three would be put to use so quickly or so memorably?

I posted a copy of Kaboom to Johnny Geller at Curtis Brown in London. So maybe it was a day of domesticity; maybe a day with a touch of ectasy; maybe a day that the label 'writer' came a little closer. Maybe it was a day including all three, although the latter is still open to question.
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One wonders

One wonders, sometimes, if there is a point to the public service. How does anything ever get achieved? Slowly, would seem to be the answer.

After lunch (with Sharon and Liana) I returned to my desk, wondering how the rest of my day might be filled as we all tread water waiting for the outcome of the disciplinary investigation (now in it's eleventh week ... hard to believe, I know). So, the manager acting up for my temporary manager, who is on leave, approaches my desk with some documents I completed two weeks ago. I've taken these home with me four or five times, she tells me. The unspoken part of that sentence continues ... and not read them until this morning. I've suggested some changes and there seems to be something a bit odd about one of the documents, she goes on to say. I'm underwhelmed. The changes require me to alter "EO" to "Executive Officer" and "RD" to Regional Director". The oddness about the second document is that the type face is Century Gothic rather than Ariel, so I change the font. It took two weeks for those key matters to be brought to my attention. Only now, it seems, can the submission go up the line through an Executive Director and maybe a Deputy Director General to the DG. Dare one say that one feels less than highly valued at work?

I'm taking the next couple of days off. At least that way I won't embarrass them by being there with nothing to do but wait for them to read documents prepared weeks before.
..

and today's word is ...

bothered ...

as in ... i just could not be bothered, so I didn't. Instead, I spent a lovely day with Spike who now has a dreadful cold, which is definitely at the snotty stage. Is that too much information? Probably.

Spike wasn't well enough for us to attend the inspired reading at the MCA, which is a little frustrating because we turned up for the event last Tuesday, a week early. Not to worry. Worse things happen at sea.
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Happy Birthday Your Majesty ...

It's The Queen's Birthday public holiday in New South Wales. What a ridiculously colonial notion. At the moment though, I'll take any public holiday they give me.

Three cheers for Her Majesty: hip, hip, hooray ...

Spike was a bit under the weather, although to be honest I have no idea what that phrase actually means. So we lounged at home, Spike wrapped in a blanket on the sofa; me putting things away in places things are meant to be put away. We had a late breakfast / early lunch of apple pancakes. Later we supped on Spike's home-made parsnip, pea and potato soup. We nibbled on German rye bread with butter and smoked salmon then gingerly fingered baked pears. We past the time by listening to CDs 7 and 8 of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys read absatively brilliantly by Lenny Henry.

There are much worse ways to spend a Monday.
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Stardust

We watched the DVD of the movie. Much better than I feared it would be. Claire Danes wasn't too bad at all, although I have no idea what Robert De Niro was up to.

Later Spike introduced me to Dexter Fletcher as Spike in Press Gang, neither of which were known to me (not even after discovering he had played Baby Face in Bugsy).

Ashfield Library

Took a stroll in the afternoon sun with Spike. We were too late for the cobblers so Spike will continue to have boots that let in water. We made our way to the library where I signed-up to become a borrower. I found a couple of decent books of literary criticism for my university preparation course as well as taking out 1001 painting to see before you die. There are a few more Australian works in its pages than one might have predicted but I suppose you can forgive the nation's broadcaster for a mildly parochial tendency. Spike nabbed some graphic novels, including quite a few by Neil Gaiman.

It's easy to forget what a good idea a municipal library is ... until you remember.

Ashfield Library

Terminator Salvation

The robot doesn't know how lucky it is being shot in the head only a few minutes into possibly THE MOST BORING MOVIE OF THE 21ST CENTURY.

Did someone mention the word derivative?

Well ... there's the motorbike from The Dark Knight as well as the motorbike leap from The Great Escape. There's any amount of Mad Max rip-offs. There's the spaceship being chased along the canyon from Independence Day. There appears to be a transformer that's strayed into the wrong movie. There are prison camps from Schindler's List and Escape From New York. There are several Blade Runner towers or maybe it's Minority Report borrowing.

And testosterone?

Well ... John Connor shouts a lot and is very moody and Sam Worthington shouts a lot and is very angsty.

And the Terminators are stupider than kettles.

It's crap; cynical, money-making, piss-poor movie-making crap. The day you find yourself stealing ideas from a Michael Bay movie is the day you know you're in trouble McG. What kind of name is McG anyway?
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The Monkey's Mask

We turned up at the Museum of Contemporary Art for this month's book reading talk ... The Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter. Even as a backcloth to one of the exhibits in the Vivid festival of light, the MCA looked strangely dark. That was because it was closed. We had turned up a week early.

Still ... the book is a decent (if quick) read. It's a private investigator tale told in blank verse. The author loses the plot half way through, takes a less than interesting excursion to Brisbane for no discernible story reason and never truly finds her way back. It's not wholly surprising, therefore, that the verse novel peters out rather unsatisfactorily. It simply stops, unresolved; nobody paying any price for the murders (except the dead folk, of course) so that's a bit annoying, even if it is in keeping with some of Chandler's finest. But the poetry stands up throughout, which makes the work worth reading for that reason alone.

Macbeth

So ... I got my essay back this evening: 16 1/2 out of 20 or 8 2.5%, which is 1/2 a mark or 2.5 percentage points below a "high distinction". I assume that's deliberate, intended to make me try harder next time (with the Jane Austen question). Dr Morrison is probably right. An egotistical man rises to the challenge. Lay on Macduff indeed!!

Dickhead!

(Me rather than Fiona Morrison)
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