Lazy Sunday afternoon

We caught a slow train to Circular Quay (it was the only train on offer) then pushed through the Botanic Gardens, the air thick and moist and debilitating, to the restaurant overlooking the lotus pond and beyond it, Sydney harbour through trees stung with resting but argumentative fruit bats suspended upside down from branches shorn of leavesfrom branches shorn of leaves, wings rapped around their fox fur bodies.

We were meeting Spike's parents and grandmother (who flies home to England tomorrow).  We dined well enough – two barramundi, a snapper, a chicken and some lamb followed by a crème brulée, a chocolate mousse, two passion fruit jellies and a plate of Australian cheeses.

Percy Jackson And The Lightening Thief

Harry Potter ... it is most definitely not.  I doubt that I'll need to see the next one.  As a young child said in a quiet moment after the fight scene with the Hydra ... that's a good sculpture.  It was about as much praise as the movie deserves.  Maybe it's a good kids movie.  I can't say for sure.

Quiet City

Mature-aged and part-time ...

So we sat - two hundred of us - in the tiered ranks of red upholsterd chairs with fold-away writing tables being welcomed to student life at Sydney University.  We were overwhelmingly female, predominantly white, almost entirely able-bodied and at the younger end of the mature-aged range.  I was nearer the other end of the spectrum than most but I was not the most mature-aged by a good fifteen to maybe twenty years.  I don't think there was any essential piece of information imparted during the two-hour session but I felt like a student sitting there; a new student.

The presentations - by a sweet but earnest student counsellor, a couple of engaging second-year mature-aged undergraduates, the rather ditsy President of the SRC who presumed we would all be as fascinated by campaigns as the SRC, an SRC case worker with a perfected aura of authentic proleteriansim one no longer sees in the 21st Century, a polished promo by the President of the Union (a man who is clearly fond of himself), a run through the learning centre's services and Aanswers to questions from a librarian who could have been Roy Orbison's younger (and fatter) brother - left me with a strong sense that I need to take this student business seriously.  That in itself made the evening worthwhile.  It's good, I think, that I came away with a hint of nervous tension.
.

King Pellinore

I finished Book I of Mallory (the Caxton text, which does not always trip lightly off the tongue).  Seven more to go.  Met this character.  It may say something about the power of television and film that as I read the text I pictured something much more like a slavering hound or, maybe, Yeats's rough beast, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

horses, stones, Wrecked cars, love stories

I finished this delightful collection of short stories today.  It's a lovely set of stories: clever, funny, poignant, lacking any sentimentality but full of heart.  There are more dogs and farmers than I usually spend time with but they're worth it.

The author, Donald MacArthur Ker, worked at the Garvald Centre in Edinburgh.  We often used its meeting room as a venue for disability awareness training courses and public meetings on disability rights.  It's better known, of course, for the excellence of its bakery and a splendid wholefoods cafe.

The last song of summer

The high-pitched rattle of cicadas,
excited by possibilities inherent
to this muggy, too-hot Sunday
late in summer; the last weekend
for cautious, air-conditioned folk
lounging with the ease of idle men
in oblivion with chilled aperitifs
nearby; soporific, nodding
heads that droop then, startled,
snap back up in search of poise,
mildly shocked to be so caught:
unconscious of the vital music
rising to one hundred decibels
and more from tree to tree;
so many voices making so much
noise their timbal choir outdoes
the sound of Snow Patrol,
and half-imagined, distant roar
as your long-haul, northbound jet
accelerates down runway three
to reach the point of no return,
and, climbing, heads for home.
.

The sun beats down on Coogee Beach

Surf rolls and crashes, pulverises
the rock-hard, golden sand beyond
the reach and expectation of timid men
who, drawing on their lip-ledged cigarettes
or sipping lukewarm cappucino, seated
on hotly-contested, shaded benches
on the concrete promenade still chalked
with a giant, line-drawn dragon (green)
and passable attempts at Disney mice
and Pixar toys and monster to amuse
the kids now gone, digging for treasure
in the softer sand beneath the wary eyes
of mothers, sisters, grandmas, aunts;
all taking turns to clamber up the steps
in groups of two or three, waddling in suits
reminiscent of younger, carefree days
and making their arthritic, knee-torn ways
to the salt-water pool for women only
where they will exercise for half an hour
or huddled together, chatting in the shallows
although never entirely at ease but always
on the look-out for blue-ringed octupuses
sent tumbling over the sea wall regardless
of the well-intentioned plans we make
to keep all safe on summer days at Coogee.
.

And today's word is ...

... timetable.
.

Help!

Wasting time, waiting for Spike to come home, I took the Proust Questionnaire at Vanity Fair's web site.  Apparently the famous people's answers that co-incide with mine most are ... wait for it ... Joan Collins (98.74%) and ... redeeming myself a bit ... Johnny Cash (75.18%).  I think I need to be worried.
.

Drive on

Beyond all sorrow’s futile gestures;

tears that well-up, 
misting your eyes as you sit patiently

waiting for the red light to change

at an inter-section not too far

from the end of the road

that leads to an old man’s resting place 

or the parched throat, 
too dry to swallow, too sore to cough 
and clear away the ache that sticks there

irritating your Adam’s apple,

leaving you unable to say the words

you never found the time to say

(too late to say in any case)

there is the tiny hope

like a tremor, deep underground,

so deep there is no point in measuring it,

which makes you smile despite yourself.

When the lights change

you take your foot off the brake again

and, foot-down on the accelerator,

indicate to others then change lanes.

.

Simply the best

Lazy Friday night

Too hot and sticky to go anywhere or do anything, we settled down to LA after a home-delivered meal from the excellent Hotel Saravana Bhavan, Croydon Park (9747 8779): vegetable biriyani, aloo palak, dal makhini, pindi choley and garlic nan; if you must know.

tragic choice of movie of course but it's like chocolate; sometimes you just can't help yourself.
.

The Odyssey

I finished The Odyssey today (E V Rieu's prose version).  First thoughts?

For an ancient text it has a complex structure.  There's certainly a beginning, middle and end but not necessarily in that order, which puts the claims of postmodernists somewhat to shame.  There is a movie-like structure - open in Olympus - cut to Ithica to follow Telemachus for 4 books - cut to Calypso's island and follow Odysseus as he leaves, battles Poseidon then strikes land to meet Naussica - long flashback as he tells the tale of his troubled return from Troy and the loss of all his men - then follow his meandering return to Ithica where he loiters in disguise, testing everyone, before the gothic horror of the slaughter of the suitors and the happy ever after with Penelope and Laertes.

That and Odysseus is definitely not a modern hero.  He's not all that likeable really (Telemachus may be the only decent principal character in the whole tale).  Odysseus is devious, cunning, vain, egotistical, arrogant, quite often staggering obtuse, verbose, irritating and a bully who behaves very badly at times (but only if you assess him through modern eyes).  The way he sets up the slaughter of the Suitors then executes his plan is murderous rather than heroic ... in modern terms.  But he's not a modern hero and his story is not a modern story. It's not even a story about the relationships between human actors (mostly showing interest in the affairs of men).  It's a classical Greek morality tale about what constitutes the proper and improper relationship between men and the immortal gods.  So the slaughter in the banquet hall is righteous vengence and divine retribution for the folly and immorality of the Suitors and the twelve unfaithful maid-servants.  There were quite a few times while I was reading of Odysseus' exploits that I had to step back to remind myself he is heroic in an entirely different way to the cotemporary world's heroic ideal or archetype.  But even now, having finished the text and sitting here writing this I still react against his decision to string the great bow then shoot an arrow through the neck of a man lifting a two-handled goblet of wine to his lips in a room whose doors have been secretly locked by the bloke with the big bow and arrow.

I read the verse version next month. Maybe the poetic structure will create the distance I need between me and my 21st Century tendency to judge in humanist terms.
.

The worl is full of surprises and truth

The excellent Robert Duvall in today's Observer.  Full article here.

The most interesting guy I ever met was the ex-soccer player Jimmy Johnstone, from Celtic. What a character: the voices, the rhythms, the speech patterns… and he'd sing to me like Neil Diamond. He'd drink and come on to women. I named a dog after him.

and

Soccer is boring for some people, but I love it. When Scotland play Brazil, one team think they're the best in the world, the other one know they're the best in the world.
.

The Book Of The Dead

Like the breath of an ancient story whispered
down through the ages of men who wonder
at the mystery of a life lived unfulfilled,
the sound of your heart beating in its chamber
reminds us of the half-clasped hope, held
once with certainty but now less surely so;
loosened by too many doubts and questions
left unanswered by misadventure's twists
and turns taken on this rumbustious journey
we never sought to set out on, though it persists
as we did once, despite the odds, against all
logic, common sense and evidence before us.
But we can do no more or less because we are
still frail and foolish men called ever from afar.
.

Old tales re-told

Reality Check

Would I move mountains
if I could,

build empires
on the rock on which I stood

defy the pull of gravity
as men of iron - heros - would?

Not I.
Not this weak man,

bereft of strength
enough to say I can

and having said so
complete what I began.


Is that my curse?
To know that once

I could;
to know that once

I would;
to know that once

I should have been
like any man

who says I can
and acts as his words mean.
.

I was 14 ... went to see it 10 times

Suicide is Painless - Johnny Mandel - Watch the top videos of the week here

To Calypso

What have we, if not the will,

if not the optimistic thought

we call a dream and strive to fill

with hope?  Well, we have nought

if, somehow, we have lost

life’s vital spark, ignited

by our willingness to bear the cost

of circumstances uninvited

by some, more tranquil mind:

life’s vicissitudes, embraced

as neither kind nor unkind

but shocks of nature faced

when we do dare to wander far,

exploring unfamiliar lands

beneath the constant, guiding star

our nature yearns for and demands. .    . 

(Calypso ₃ and Odysseus. 0421: Odysseus and Calypso. Hendrik van Balen, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Joos de Momper the Elder. Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildende Künste, Wien.)

  .   . . .