We drove through the quiet streets of Sydney to the airport where we met Tommy Geddes of a flight from London. He's here for the cricket. It's his first visit to Australia and the country is performing its best for him: 30 degrees here (40 degrees in Penrith), 45 degrees in South Australia with fire warnings issued at the "catastrophic" level; meanwhile, up in Queensland, there is flood area larger than the combined land mass of France and Germany. Back in the flat, having been joined by Sharon and Ken, we waited for the Bells recounting predictable tales of the very many forms of animal life here that can kill. Snakes seemed to make a particular impression on Tommy who, I realised as we talked, I first met 35 years ago. Spike was 4 months old at the time.
Earlier in the day I opened a parcel from Scotland. I expected it to be a belated Christmas gift from my mother. It turned out to be a card from Martin Currie accompanying a commemorative T-shirt for Tam White who did this year. The Gagdefather indeed!
I finished reading Toni Morrison's short novel A Mercy. It's well worth reading; challenging in some ways (not least working out whose voice we're hearing at times), lyrical in parts and affecting throughout. If it's not as fully realised as is her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved, one can hardly fault the author. Beloved is a once in a lifetime event. No author could produce two novels at that level of accomplishment.
There is, however, a direct line between A Mercy and Beloved. The unnamed mother of Florens. like Sethe's Africa-born mother, remembers the pens of her initial captivity and subsequent sale to slave-traders who transport her to Barbados where she is sold to Senhor, the two-dimensional malignant force with whom Jacob reluctantly trades. But A Mercy is not a prequel. There are no common characters or shared storyline. The more recent novel deals with an earlier period, the late-17th Century when indentured servants hailing originally from Europe lived little-better lives than African slaves; where religious intolerance amongst Christian sects replayed old European (particularly English) rivalries and where the loss of the New World paradise to the be-spoiling touch of the fallen European re-enacts the original sin and banishment of Genesis. It's probably no co-incidence that the house built by Jacob, with its serpent-headed wrought iron gates, is on the edge of a hamlet called Milton.
I think it's a good read. The New York Times called it one of the best books of 2008 and gave a glowing review here. Others were less persuaded. In an uncomfortable, rather sneering review, here in The New Yorker, John Updike damned the novel with faint praise. His thoughts on the text should not prejudice anyone. It's a decent work of fiction with something valuable to tell us. .
My skin is a bit delicate. Less than two weeks out from our flight to Scotland I've stayed off it most of the day. I borrowed Spike's Kobo e.reader (a Christmas gift from her parents) and started to read Anna Karinina. My jury is out on both (the Kobo and the Tolstoy).
Like a hobbit enjoying his second breakfast I opened my second Christmas gift, the "special edition, extended version" DVD of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring. There's nearly four hours of my life that I'll not see again but I did enjoy it ... although nothing like as much as I enjoyed my first breakfast / gift.
In one of my favourite moments Sean Bean as Boromir rolls his eyes in the mines of Moria as he says to Aragorn, "They have a cave troll." Lots of fun. The added footage does improve on the original film.
One can luxuriate at times in the romantic notion of a rural idyll. But not for long.
At first I thought it was rosy tinted Dawn (to borrow from Homer) whose light woke me this morning at five-thirty or thereabouts. But no. I lay in bed in Spike's parents' house in the Dooralong valley trying to puzzle out what machine had been started or why a giant lawn-sprinkler was operating then realised the noise was nature. Specifically it was the mating call of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions for all I know) Cicada males trying to attract females with their impressive and loud sound boxes.
The trees around the property are bursting with sound. It is constant, from dawn to dusk and truly deafening at times. I wondered at one point if it never stopped, if there might not be some let-up. I hit on this silly notion. That in the dense forest of sound there is one tree from which not a sound is made. There, I speculated, sits a solitary male with the loudest, most impressive boom box in all of Cicada land. He has a smile of satisfaction on his silent face. Around him sit a bevvy of happy Cicada females, sated by their Alpha male and oblivious of all the also- rans still banging away around them.
We've had a delightful couple of days with Spike's family. Tranquil, however, is not a word that immediately springs to mind. .
"Another year, another avalanche of remakes, dodgy 3D conversions and incomprehensible M Night Shyamalan dialogue. Here's how the studios need to mend their ways.
1 Fewer sequels and remakes
This was probably included in lists of Things We Want From Hollywood In 2010. And 2009. And 2008. And it'll be included on every list like this until the Sun implodes and swallows the Earth. It's a perennial complaint for good reason."
This was my comment posted in response.
1. Sequels, remakes and adaptations
Not necessarily bad:
Star Wars (4, 5 and 6). Toy Story 3 closes off 1 and 2; LOTR (see also commendable adaptations); forgive me, there must be at least 7 HP
Good remakes: Magnificent Seven, The Maltese Falcon, Ocean's Eleven (although 12 and 13 ... was there a 13? fail the sequel test.)
Adaptations: How bad are Shane, Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, LOTR, HP i to vii.i, 2001 A Space Odyssey?
We should (of course) resist badly made sequels, remakes and adaptations ... you've seen the trailer - don't spend money on the fockers.
2. 3D - fair point but Avatar was truly wonderful to look at in parts (shame about story, script and acting)
3. Batman casting rumours ... no contest.
4. POTC 4 - doesn't it fall foul of the sequel rule? Tragically, no matter how bad the trailer looks I'll be sucked in. it's like nicotine. I know it's bad for me ... but.
5. Social Network ... the Winklevai seem dedicated to building the potential for sequels ... keep suing guys.
6. M Night etc ... no sequels, no remakes and few adaptations in HIS oeuvre but THAT doesn't stop him making some of the biggest crap of the 21st Century. So does that make MNS the exception that proves your rule number 1?
7. Vampires ... blood-sucking right!! give me dodgy accents, fake blood and Ingrid Pitt any day of the week.
8. Pixar ... I don't think you can lament the mainstream's lack of originality, dominance of re-makes and propensity for sequels at the same time as damn Pixar for originality, excellence and maturity. Up is what Up is ... brilliant.
9. Nicholas Sparks ... never seen one cos I've seen the trailers. You only have yourself to blame. Sorry, not true ... saw Notebook on DVD. I only have myself to blame. I'd seen the trailer.
10. Jen ... can't we agree to stop having a go? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Sadly, the inherent sexism of Hollywood will soon deem her too old for leading roles and extract its surplus value from some younger version. One day I'll read a Guardian piece about the way women get dumped when they reach 40 with Ms Aniston presented as a case in point. That's entirely wrong of course. Let's leave her alone, hoping that one day she discovers the movie equivalent of her TV mojo cos she does seem to have talent. .
And yet, be sure of this: though I am nothing,
and cannot move a step, yet I will punish
her who has done this deed. Let her but come: she will discover and proclaim that I
in death, as in my life, destroyed the wicked.
This is where it starts (maybe): a story that might become a book called A Penance (or something drawn from that idea)
But before Amphitryon reached Thebes, Zeus came by night and prolonging the one night threefold he assumed the likeness of Amphitryon and beddedwith Alcmena1 and related what had happened concerning the Teleboans. But when Amphitryon arrived and saw that he was not welcomed by his wife, he inquired the cause; and when she told him that he had come the night before and slept with her, he learned from Tiresias how Zeus had enjoyed her. And Alcmena bore two sons, to wit, Hercules, whom she had by Zeus and who was the elder by one night, and Iphicles, whom she had by Amphitryon. When the child was eight months old, Hera desired the destruction of the babe and sent two huge serpents to the bed. Alcmena called Amphitryon to her help, but Hercules arose and killed the serpents by strangling them with both his hands.2 However, Pherecydes says that it was Amphitryon who put the serpents in the bed, because he would know which of the two children was his, and that when Iphicles fled, and Hercules stood his ground, he knew that Iphicles was begotten of his body.
Making my way across this wide, open space
(behind me ... much the same as seems to lie ahead)
its emptiness, its barren neverendingness
sucks out the marrow from dry bones that tumble
from the knapsack slung across one shoulder
drooping beneath the weight of expectation
accumulated in the course of life's dry river bed
meandering more as a memory of what it was
that might have been
than the possibility of what it is
that might yet be.
I find myself still looking up
from time to time, scanning the near distance
and the far horizon, for foolishly, against all evidence,
I still believe that there may be a tree; growing,
unexpectedly perhaps (against the odds for sure)
where once, some years before perhaps,
a seed slipped from the beak of some wandering bird
on the very day that rain fell on this parched land. .
The Independent has an article today about the box office allure (or otherwise) of sex scenes in mainstream movies. If you like movies it's worth a read here.
The article is built around the question posed in this extract:
"A comedy-drama based on the true-ish story of a Viagra salesman who falls for a beautiful Parkinson's sufferer, the film's US reviews were middling-to-decent, and made much of its sexual content. And yet, Love and Other Drugs failed to break even the $10m mark in its opening weekend at the US box office. On movie blogs and in studio boardrooms, its underwhelming performance has prompted a once-unthinkable question: if even Anne and Jake naked can't put bums on seats, then does sex still sell?"
I added my twopence worth in the comments section:
Sadly, one is no longer a "young male" so I may not be in the 'sex sells movies' demographic anymore. I do think, however, the answer to the question is quite simple. No amount of sex in a movie puts (fully dressed) bums on seats if the movie is obviously crap and word gets out. If the trailer of of Love & Other Drugs is representative of the whole then its no surprise it has faltered at the box office. Naked crap is still crap. And Swordfish? I vaguely remember making the mistake of paying money to see what I was told was an action / thriller. Crap is what it was ... so bad I can't even remember if Halle Berry got her kit off and I don't care. As for Eyes Wide Shut, well it was hugely disappointing not because the sex was naff (which it was) but because a giant of movie making served up a risible film that his younger self would never have made or released.
Mention sex in commercial movies and I think (a bit predictably) of Don't Look Now, The Thomas Crown Affair, almost any Hammer horror, Brokeback Mountain (I could be mistaken there cos I lack expertise in male tent sex but it seemed compelling enough within the context of the story), Blade Runner (although that has a different kind of question mark) or Shakespeare In Love. Good God, even When Harry Met Sally had good sex ... albeit deliberately simulated to lead-up to a half-decent joke.
Bad movies suck and if that's all they have to offer it's no surprise bad sex doesn't sell. .
I have read and watched reports of your comments today regarding Mr Assange and what you imply are illegal acts by him and / or his organisation.Even if it was your role to publicly assert criminality on the part of an Australian citizen who has been charged with no offence in relation to publishing the content of cables received by Wikileaks (which is clearly not your role) you seemed unable today to cite any Australian Law that may have been broken.
Given that The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and Le Monde (to name but five reputable publishers overseas) have published exactly the same material as Wikileaks would you say that their actions are illegal?And given that here in Australia The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the ABC have quoted directly from the leaked material would you wish to claim that those news outlets have acted illegally too?
I am sorry to write Prime Minister that your public assertions today are repugnant to me.I believe you have abrogated your responsibility to defend the rightful separation of the Executive from the justice system.Your quite unjustifiable conflation of claims of sexual assault (Mr Assange has never even been charged with any offence in Sweden far less convicted) with the leaking of cables re-printed in the national newspapers of several countries with a free press was reprehensible, deceitful and outrageous.
I respectfully request that you change your stance on these matters and would refer you to the letter published today and signed by 200 prominent Australians and others.I support its approach and urge you strongly to adopt it.
I read Christos Tsiolkas's short story Rococcoin the September 2010 Edition of Overland. It's a brilliant piece of writing but for the life of me I can't even begin to work out what's going on inside the author's head. Well worth a read, the story starts in this way (and maintains the conceit throughout)
"The auction of the painting A Lady Escorted into the Garden by the minor eighteenth-century Portuguese artist Alfonso Rigas de la Guerra created a significant stir in art circles when it was recently sold for €3.2 million (see ‘Unknown Work Sets Art World’s Hearts Racing’, Guardian, 17 May 2006). Though the price itself was relatively insignificant when compared to the astronomical sums fetched by more famous works, it nevertheless was an astonishing sum for a painting that has little, if any, international profile. It is not my intention here to comment on the workings of the international art industry. But I do believe it is necessary to make the one following observation before I begin: since the 1980s, any belief in the ‘revolutionary’ potential imbued in the traditional high arts can no longer be a tenable critical position, if for no other reason than the more democratic digital media technologies allow for a dispersal of message and image that would have been unimaginable to an artist of even a half-century before. But it is not only the internet that has exposed the elitism of art practice. Artists are neither a ‘proletariat’ nor a ‘vanguard’, and they do not make successful ‘revolutionaries’. If they have been, it has only been for a moment before the firing squad or the gulag or the concentration camp has seen to their ignoble demise." .
Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing (1767)
Yinka Shonibare MBE, The Swing (2004)
I googled Rococo (when in doubt Wiki will do). One of the images presented as an example is Fragonard's The Swing painted in 1767, six or seven years after the invented painting of the short story. Fragonard's painting was the inspiration for a sculpture by the British artist Yinka Shonibare MBE, which we saw when his exhibition filled the Museum of Contemporary Art last year.
Shonibare, like the fictional de la Guerra, is interested in racism, identity, colonialism (and much more no doubt). Christos Tsiolkas might be too. He's certainly an intelligent writer who can make you think even as he so spectacularly pulls the wool over your eyes.
We saw the Facebook movie this evening. It's very good (as any David Fincher film would be) and terrifically well-written (naturally) but it delivered less than I had hoped. The acting is impressive (it's not fair to pick out any individual but Jessie Eisenberg, who I liked in The Squid And The Whale, is wonderful). The dialogue is stunning at times. But the Zuckerberg journey (from one fictional female telling him he's an asshole to another fictional female telling him he's not really an asshole, only trying too hard to be one) felt too contrived, a little too twee. But I'm nit-picking. Good movie.
I am being driven nuts by my ignorance and incompetence. Most of yesterday's oppressive November day ... one of those when you can feel the edge of the hot air pushing into the flat from outside as if a new wall had been placed inside the flat .. most of it has been frittered away in front of the computer. I listened to Mark Kermode's movie review programme on BBC Radio Five. It was no less witty, intelligent and brilliant than usual. I do enjoy it.
I read British newspapers on the web, including a highly personal appreciation of the poetry of Mick Imlah by Alan Hollinghurst in The Guardian then watched the results come in from the Victoria election. One does despair of the Australian Labor Party.
Just as the critical results were beginning to be confirmed, though, the damn Internet dropped out. I tried everything I could think of to restore the signal (still working on the lap top in the dining room). I re-booted, uninstalled and re-installed software, used a variety of system restore points, tried to re-calibrate the router, lost Mozilla Firefox at one point only to be told that the connection (sort of re-established) would mean the 8 MB exe file required to re-load my preferred browser would take a full day to download. After losing six hours of my life for no clear benefit I gave up and went to bed at about three o'clock on Sunday morning. When I rose to prepare to drive to Windsor to have brunch with spike's friends Sarah, Derren and their three-month-old son, Harry, there was still no signal.
Some hours later we drove home from Windsor. This thought came to me as I drove back through the rain. What if the router cannot send a strong enough through a breeze block partition, the dishwasher in the kitchen, the oven opposite and the wall separating the lounge room from our work room where the computer sits. When we got into the flat I asked Spike to loft the router off the floor and put it on the partition ledge. Bingo.
We attended a fund-raising art show held to support the work of the Sydney Heritage Fleet of which organisation my good friend Jon Simpson is CEO. There was an additional connection because the Fleet's current artist-in-residence isCol Henrywho runs a weekly workshop / place for sculptors to gather in the valley next to Dooralong. Spike's mother attends.
The idea of having artists in residence is highly commendable .. you can hear the but coming, can't you? I'm afraid I just couldn't warm to Mr Henry's work at all; couldn't even work up hostility and surely the indifference I felt to the works is the least desirable of all reactions. I tried but not even the obligations one feels to my 35 year friendship with Jon could inspire any interest in the sculptures. Sorry.
'Port Brisbane' by Don Braben
It would be impossible to feel indifferent to the paintings on display. With one, two (or at a real push) three exceptions the displayed output of members of the Australian Society of Maritime Artists was breathtakingly banal. Is not 'Art' meant to inspire, to be transformative, to reach into the heart of the matter, to find the underlying truth? Seldom have I seen such an array of (mostly) technically competent superficiality. Nothing could have drawn a purchase out of me. And when we spent $10 on three raffle tickets (because one must support a friend's cause to at least that degree) I prayed we would not win the first prize, three boats at a wharf rendered in water colours by a member of the Society. Thank God we lost.
Still, there was a good turn out so there will have been at least a couple of thousand dollars generated by the admission price as well as the same again (or maybe a bit less) from raffle ticket sales plus whatever was raised from the sale of art works. I did see red spots on several labels. Some people have more money than taste but, if it helps my mate, so be it. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. .
Thanks for your patience during the judging process for the 2011 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. We are pleased to announce this year’s longlist:
Sally Bothroyd, ‘A Cocoa Jackson Mystery’ (NT)
Courtney Collins, ‘The Burial’ (NSW)
Richard Gosling, ‘Bear’ (NSW)
John Hughes, ‘The Remnants’ (NSW)
Lesley Jørgensen, ‘Cat and Fiddle’ (SA)
Jack Ramsay, ‘Brogan’s Crossing’ (Qld)
Dorothy Simmons, ‘Living Like a Kelly’ (Vic.)
These manuscripts will now be read by this year’s judges: Blanche Clark, Books Editor at the Herald Sun; Mark Rubbo, CEO of Readings bookstores; and Aviva Tuffield, Fiction Acquisitions Editor at Scribe. We plan to announce a shortlist in the new year, and the winner in February.
The depth of this year’s entries was very impressive, and we would like to thank you again for letting us consider your work. We wish you all the very best with your writing.
Heading away from Canberra this morning, we drove north through the southern highlands. On a warm (hot even) sunny day like today, some weeks after the ten-year drought has broken in spectacularly wet fashion, the trip was a joy. Everything that was previously brown and sparse is green (in a riot of shades) and lush. Lake George had water in its south-eastern corner, which is the first time in twenty-two years I’ve seen that.
Most of the ‘lake’, however, was covered by a thick, luscious carpet of long grass. Small herds of cattle gathered at water holes just inside the fence that runs along route 23. Dotted around the centre of the vast area that can be (and has been) a giant expanse of water there were small flocks of sheep, huddled together as the moved like one organism across the fertile plain, nibbling their way from east to west or north to south. From the summit of the pass that carries the road between Canberra and Goulburn then Sydney, the far-distant, oatmeal-coloured animals made me think of maggots.
As I drove along I took a notion to keep going, to keep driving around the country (with Spike, one hopes, as a willing companion); seeing more of its variety and diversity, meeting people who live in and belong to communities still connected to the immensity of Australia, taking time to find out more about this place I came to live in eleven years ago after 42 years in my Scottish home.
Is it the country and its people that draws me to the idea of keeping going, my boyish desire to see what’s round the bend or complete disillusionment with the job I’ve now been doing for six years? Maybe it’s a bit of all the above (and more). Mostly, though, I need / want it to be the first of those. I do not want to lose my sense of wonder and excitement at all the simple elements of a good life. I hope never to become tired and cynical. That way only leads to madness and despair. Neither of those belongs to me.
There was widespread acknowledgement among Inquiry participants that increased
expenditure, particularly through Stronger Together, has improved the availability of services
for people with disability in recent years. For example, Mr Douglas Herd, Executive Officer,
Disability Council of NSW, observed that Stronger Together funding had made a significant
difference to people with disability:
It is true to say, without wishing to be seen to be using hyperbole, that the atmosphere
before the Stronger Together policy was put in place in the sector, as it likes to
describe itself – the relationship between people with disability and the department,
between people with disability and government, between non-government advocacy
organisations and government and sometimes with non-government service providers
– was hostile and difficult at times. My personal opinion that that was because gross
levels of unmet need meant that people with disability were not getting access to
services and that family members were doing enormously difficult jobs under huge
stresses to look after and care for both themselves and family members who ought to
have been receiving services. The $1.4 billion that we subsequently got [through
Stronger Together] …has made a very significant difference. There is no doubt about
that at all.
Not my most eloquent contribution to debate but one of several quotes in the report. Job done. More to do. It's what I'm paid to do and I do it well enough. I'd rather be writing stories.
Ditch the ego Dougie. Just write. (But don't give up the day job just yet!!) .
(The bird arrived around six. It sounded as if it was inside the apartment. I thought there might be a poem somewhere in it. Not sure there is but I’ve been writing for an hour or so in search of one.)
It ought to be as simple as this: one word leading to another, one word following the word before it. But it’s not that simple and very far from easy.
Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
I read an article today that puts my angst, uncertainty and lack of progress into proper perspective. The Guardian interviewed Nadine Gordimer here. She’s 87 years old, has written (perhaps I mean has been published) for close to 60 years. The New Yorker first published one of her short stories in 1951. That’s six years before I was born.
Nadine Gordimer writes for four hours every morning. Maybe there’s a lesson there Douglas. It’s the same as always: ditch the ego; just write. Make sure you do it every day
I know this, of course. I’ve known it since I can’t remember when. But I lack the discipline required. I’ve never acquired it. I’m too lazy to dig myself out the hole into which I plunged a very long time ago.
So here’s another beginning, another re-commitment. Don’t I get tired of them? Well yes, of course I do. So what is it makes me keep coming back I wonder? I may be delusional. Vanity certainly has a part to play. And an ego the size of Belgium; there’s always that.
I have been re-enrolled at Sydney University (now that my abscess has gone and I'm about to start driving again - I hope). I've selected my two units for semester one next year (still a part time student unless I win the lottery). I'll take American Foundations and Literature & Cinema. I've started reading for the first unit by taking down from my shelf a copy of Hugh Brogan's History of the United States of America, which I've owned for more than twenty years and carried around with wherever I've lived. Did I know it would come in handy one day? No. But there you are. I've reached 1775. I wonder what happens next?
I read the latest article by A L Kennedy in her series of monthly pieces in The Guardian. My smart arse comment is below. (I didn't know until I checked that Tennyson gave us "Nature, red in tooth an claw". It's in his poem In Memoriam A H H)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson has a lot to answer for. In this instance it's his reference to "Nature, red in tooth and claw". That should scare the Bijesus out of any reclusive or patronised worker with imagination such as ALK.
I would encourage you to relax about those nocturnal noises. They are probably indications of possums caught (or catchable if one insists) in flagrante delicto.
Nature's dangers are real but over-stated. I live in a country with more than 150,000 saltwater crocodiles, the largest of which can grow to 7 metres in length. Visiting a Queensland croc pen once, a croc keeper pointed out that more people in Australia are killed each year by vending machines than crocodiles. So, Ms K, unless there's a cigarette or a coke dispenser in your neck of the woods I think you can sleep safely in your idyllic-sounding bed and, more importantly for us readers, write.
Caught one of Spike's favourites, Waiting for Guinness, at Herman's Bar in (what I was surprised to see was) an almost deserted University of Sydney campus. There wasn't a huge crowd, which means there was plenty of room for dancers to express themselves. They did.
We took buses there and back. Hassle free, on time (even the 00.26 back home, more or less) and quick. Hip, hip, hooray for wheelchair accessible public transport.
I'm not quite sure why but I've taken to the idea of reading the entire two volume set of the Norton Anthology. I've had the sixth edition for maybe thirty years (since my first year at Stirling University). I've dipped into it from time to time, as required by course reading lists.
So I started today with the introductions and the Venerable Bede (of whose work I've had to read before). The Norton begins with Bede's account of the Caedmon Hymn. There is something fascinating about the idea of me, sitting in our modern apartment block in Sydney, reading the account written more than 1,300 years ago of the only surviving work one of only 12 Anglo-Saxon poet's identifiable by name, Caedmon. It's the earliest work of Anglo-Saxon poetry known to us.
Part of what fascinates me is this. There is an historical figure, Bede. He was probably 63 when he died. He may have been Christened Bede because his wealthy, possibly aristocratic, family intended from Bede's birth that he should enter the service of The Church. This is a real man, speaking to us down through history, of another real man, Caedmon, who started life as a herdsman and ended it as the English language's earliest recorded poet. Thirteen hundred years ago.
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur, sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci dryctin, or astelidæ.
He aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe, haleg scepen.
Tha middungeard moncynnæs uard,
eci dryctin, æfter tiadæ
firum foldu, frea allmectig.
Now we must praise the Protector of the heavenly kingdom,
the might of the Measurer and His mind's purpose,
the work of the Father of Glory, as He for each of the wonders,
Thank you for submitting your manuscript to the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize 2011. Your entry is complete: we have processed your $40 entry fee and look forward to reading your work.
Another email will be sent to all entrants when the longlist is announced, which will probably be in December. Please let us know if your contact details change in the meantime.
It's the day of my Council's monthly meeting so I enjoyed breakfast (as usual) with Lauri Grovenor (Council member) and Sharon Smith (wicked witch and maker of potions ... the most recent of which, to aid my skin allegedly, looks like a worm farm sitting on our kitchen shelf ... and taste's a bit worm-farm too). Spike wasn't free to join us this month.
Our meeting took place at the offices of Accessible Arts NSW. We found a decent (dare one say, trendy?) cafe at the Sydney Dance Company. I failed to notice when ordering that my veggie breakfast was bereft of eggs. So much for brain the size of a planet but it was a pleasant enough meal. Shazza is feeling delicate and re-introducing solids to her diet after an unfortunate few days. Her choice of savoury muffin with spinach and cheese was, how can I put it on the basis of tasting one mouthful ... interesting. Lauri, wise woman that she is, choose bacon and eggs. Not much but excellence there. .
I submitted my manuscript today to the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize 2010. The first prize if $15,000 (half of which is an advance on the book deal the publisher signs with the winner). I spent last night and all of today revising the text yet again. I've no idea if it's a prize-winning novel. That's for the judges to decide. I don't even know if it's a publishable story. But I read it again as I fine-tuned the draft. It stands up. It's a decent first work of 91,300 words. Here's how it now starts:
To tell you the truth I have no idea where a man in my condition should start. But I know this much. It’s no surprise to wake up here; no surprise at all. In fact it’s something of a consolation. A long time ago I was warned that I would end up here, in a place like this. I was told that I would come to no good, which is exactly what I’ve come to. Mind you, there’s a perverse pleasure in having confirmed through experience something my elders and betters foretold would be mine if I did not mend my wasteful ways. I hate to disappoint people. So here I am, as predicted.
Progress. There's no hole in my right buttock any more. This evening's visit by a nurse is (I hope) the last one. I tried to sit on my cushion afterwards but the sweating returned almost immediately. Progress then but not as fast as I'd like. I try to look at it this way: no hole is better than the alternative. .
... and in less than eighteen months. It would be hard to imagine a less inspiring or trustworthy politician than Wayne Swan, the antithesis of everything the Left is supposed to be about. Seldom has so much principle been trashed for such little gain.
They 'triangulate' as if it were clever and seem incapable of learning the lessons of the British Labour Party's decline. It's ghastly to witness; entirely without hope or promise. What is the point of being in power if you have no idea of why you want to use it?
After the cinema we took a train down to Circular Quay for a late night cabaret at the Studio of the Opera House. I had been invited by the management to attend the ‘opening’ of its newly installed lift, which is part of a $38 Million refurbishment. (That’s small beer, surprisingly. The Opera House wants $800 Million to fully re-fit the building. If they get the money the Opera House will be shut for two years while its insides are ripped out, altered then replaced … a bit like the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.) But the first phase is more or less finished and I was invited to be there last night.
I’m not quite sure how one opens a lift but we were there, using it to descend to the club-like ground floor where we enjoyed a decent enough mix of acts: a small jazz band, ‘street wise’ Aboriginal lads in a hip-hoppy dance group, purportedly dangerous, politically incorrect American stand up (do midgets freeze to death more quickly than ordinary folk? They certainly thaw out quicker … you can fit them in a microwave), comic singer, Latin combo and one piece of genuine brilliance … Miss Lark: beehive, large breasts pushing out against her bodice, played a tune on the saw then did sexually ambiguous and provocative bird impressions. Truly nutty. Oh yes, and a dancer channelling Thunderbirds puppetry to a mournful aria on tape. That was quite affecting to be honest. .
Was he dreaming at the end? Was it reality? Dom Cobb didn't look at the spinning top at the end, so if he doesn't care which state he's in why should I? Cracking movie. Intelligent. Possessed of ideas. Tense. Exciting. Brilliant editing. I like it a great deal.
With our stir fried vegetables and tofu (scrumptious) on our laps we watched another "Supersizers Go ..." courtesy of whoever uploads the ten-minute sections to Youtube. This time Giles Coren and Sue Perkins subjected themselves to a week of 1970's eating. I grew up eating that food. The show was hilarious in parts: Smash re-hydrated potato mix and boil in the bag fish ... no joke in my teenage home.
I can't quite recall why I ended up here. Ah ... yes I do. Laurence (a Facebook friend from Sydney University) posted some line from T H White's Once And Future King. I posted a link to Richard Harris singing the words at the end of Camelot, the 1968 movie version of the stage musical in which he also played King Arthur. That started one of those hypertext link journeys through Youtube.
I came across Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb's song (except Richard Harris insisted on the possessive form). It was 1968. He had an enormous hit with a single more than twice the length of standard hit singles. I was eleven years old. I loved it although I had no idea what it was about. I wasn't alone in that regard. I remember discussion about drug-related symbolism; maybe it was an acid trip. That reading seems so quaint now. Lost love people. How could anyone have thought otherwise?
Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
(BRIDGE)
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.
I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no! .
I watched a bit of Andrew Marr’s interview with Tony Blair (broadcast on the BBC). And there he was, flashing that Tony Blair smile, looking like a decent bloke who means well but saying this:
“How can you not feel sorry about people who have died? You would be inhuman if you didn’t think that. But when I’m asked whether I regret the decision … you know, I have to say I take responsibility for it but I can’t regret the decision. And that’s because if I were to say that to you, I mean, I wouldn’t be saying what I think. And .. you see … the thing about this issue is it’s still going on today. There is not a single part of the Middle East that is not touched by exactly the same problem we have in Iraq and in Afghanistan today. And my view is that the West has got to understand that this is a generation-long struggle. And we’ve got to be in it!”
As he talks, smiling Tony disappears. His features distort, a glint of something appears in his eyes. As the tempo of his speech quickens and he pulls himself upright in his chair while his finger starts stabbing the air you think … fuck me, Tony Blair really was abducted by aliens and his body really has been taken over by whatever the fuck it was took possession of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
First we had the suicidal strategy of politically assassinating the elected Prime Minister in the full view of television cameras, leaving his body to stalk the halls of Parliament like Banquo's ghost. Then there's the retreat from key policy areas ... one described as "the great moral challenge of our time." You simply walk away? Then comes "real Julia".
Had no one ever heard of the smart arse observation that when you're a hole the first act in getting yourself out is to stop digging? Obviously not.
So, on election night, when the scale of the defeat is becoming clear; the majority is gone; the first-preference votes are mounting up for the conservative grouping and you're fighting (poorly) for your political survival how could anyone think it's safe to step up to the microphone and on live television and say (as Julia Gillard said) ... “It now appears clear that Labor has won the two-party vote. That means the majority of Australians who voted yesterday prefer a Labor government. I think this is a critical fact to weigh in the coming days.”?
Isn't there a basic rule? Don't pose a question unless you're certain of the answer. Don't assert any "critical fact" unless you're surer than "it now appears ..." Appearances can be deceptive Julia. And what do you do or say now that your hostage to fortune comes back to haunt you?
From today's Australian ...
THE Coalition has now leapt forward in the two-party-preferred vote, taking over from Labor with a lead of 1531 votes on the Australian Electoral Commission’s latest count.
Behind in the seat count. Behind in the first preference vote count. And now (maybe) behind on the two-party preferred count. Where do you go now ALP?
Nothing spares us -
not the fiction of contentment
in these 'middle' years (too near
the end we dare not call the winter
of our discontentment)
nor the lightly held delusion
there is time enough, still waiting
in the finite but unknowable
days, months, years, decades
ahead (we hope) the time beyond.
Beyond what, I wonder?
The silences speak volumes.
The absences become companionship,
familiar like old friends
who need not say one word
to make their meaning crystal clear.
This is the future, as foretold
by the Beatle who broke up the band
or, as Spock once said, it's life Jim but not as we know it. .
We spent a large chunk of our Saturday at the annual open day at Sydney College of the Arts. Spike had roles to play ... guiding prospective students around the glass studio giving helpful talk, lamp working exhibition beneath Mark Eliot's animated film showing on a continuous loop, assisting a little in the hot shop. I spent most of my time perched on the edge of the hot shop watching staff and students blow various pieces. It's a fascinating process. Each piece begins with a single lump of molten glass gathered from a pool in a furnace on a pole. From that point onwards I am lost. Usually working as the creative driver in a team of two the glass artist blows, turns, adds more glass, clips, pulls, spins and swings the molten material. Somewhere between forty minutes and an hour and a half later the initial idea inside the artist's head appears in as near its final form as it will ever be. No two pieces are the same. The process has a hypnotic quality. You wouldn't want to leave until you've satisfied yourself of how it all comes out.
The vegetarian lasagne for lunch left quite a lot to be desired. Heat was one of them.
I didn't win. I don't know who did but the announcement was made this evening at the opening of the Queensland Poetry Festival. I wasn't invited to attend so I think we can assume that Penelope Awakes did not come first.
But still the dominant feature of one's life!! I can't transfer, can't drive, can't dress or undress. Patience may be a virtue but I am over this, truly had enough of it and it's no consolation that this is the first such incident in 26 years of being in the 'chair. .
I finished the prize-winning collection of short stories by Nam Le. My jury is still out. There's no doubting the technical skill of the writer. So why do I feel a nagging doubt emotionally? Have I written before that the collection brings to mind the quote I like of words by Charles Rennie McIntosh? "There is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist."
Too many of the stories are devoid of an emotional core. They feel (to me) like expertly crafted writer's workshop projects; hollow, technical examinations of prose style using ideas generated (borrowed from) some other, more authentic source. So, Cartagena takes its inspiration from the movie City of God and it just never feels like the voice of a young, Colombian gang member (but it is well written). Meeting Elise (the weakest story in the collection) feels like a second tier Mirimax movie from the 1990s; one that never lived up to its Oscar-material aspirations. You can see the joins in Hiroshima: the flash of the camera then the flash of the bomb. Tehran Calling simply disintegrates in the final two pages and I'm not really sure that I buy the idea of the American woman visiting her former best friend but it is an ambitious attempt to occupy an entirely other persona. Halflead Bay works well, although its premise is slight. But perhaps, like Raymond Carver's stories, it's the ordinariness of a tale occupied by almost real people that gives the story legs.
The opening piece, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," is described as "magnificent" on The Boat web site. Sorry, it's not. I need to get over my instinctual reaction against metafiction because I was deeply suspicious of the story the first time I read it. Save me (I thought) from a writer's workshop project about a writer's workshop participant struggling to find authenticity in his writing whilst working out his relationship with his father and to his past. But if you can get beyond those limitations (which are real barriers, suppressing more interesting and potentially engaging writing on similar themes) the story bears a second reading. Beyond the metafiction there is an authentic voice, I think.
The final story, The Boat, works best for me. The fate of the boy is discernible from the outset but that's not a problem. There is an emotional risk at the centre of the story for its characters. It's the way we're taken to the heart of that risk, see it exposed and witness the truth of its consequences that makes such an impression. It seems to me that there's no flashy posing in this story. It is what it is, told expertly and with an internal consistency and force that far outstrips the other stories.
I may be too harsh with these criticisms. For any writer's first collection of published short stories The Boat is an impressive, highly readable group. It augers well for the future. If this is what Nam Le can give us first time out, we can look forward (I hope) to some remarkable work in the future when he's acquired the confidence to abandon the showy front and simply tell us authentic tales of his own imagining. .
Alfred, Lord Tennyson has a lot to answer for. In this instance it's his reference to "Nature, red in tooth and claw". That should scare the Bijesus out of any reclusive or patronised worker with imagination such as ALK.
I would encourage you to relax about those nocturnal noises. They are probably indications of possums caught (or catchable if one insists) in flagrante delicto.
Nature's dangers are real but over-stated. I live in a country with more than 150,000 saltwater crocodiles, the largest of which can grow to 7 metres in length. Visiting a Queensland croc pen once, a croc keeper pointed out that more people in Australia are killed each year by vending machines than crocodiles. So, Ms K, unless there's a cigarette or a coke dispenser in your neck of the woods I think you can sleep safely in your idyllic-sounding bed and, more importantly for us readers, write.