Before ...

Photo by The Louse ... ASUS camera on wrong setting!!!!!

And here's a hand my trusty friend

Slipping, almost silently, out the back door
another year vanishes
to be talked about (if at all) only in the past
tense: the things we did, those other things
we never quite got round to (which we'll need
to see to soon); places that we'd been,
people seen and some we'd missed
or lost and then again
those others who'd lost us
or left us far behind as sometimes happens.
And so, for auld lang syne may be
(for more than just the habit, surely?)
we'll take a cup, we'll maybe sing
and try to make our peace with this New Year.

Sunday in the park with my mum

... and Spike too

I sat by the lotus pond in Sydney's Botanic Gardens, typing a long e.mail to my friend Pat in Edinburgh.  Spike returned from the souvenir shop with my mother who had selected four ... not one or two but four necklaces to take home as gifts.

We lingered by the lotuses, most of which were not in bloom.  Some had seed pods held aloft, perhaps ready to pop (if that's what they do).  Those pods remind me of alien species from 1950's B-movies.  Don't ask me why.  Here and there around the pond, mostly hidden among the vast leathery leaves, there was a splash of bright cerise where some flowers broke through the variegated green.  The brilliant pink of a world that my mother has come to share with us for a while: slightly exotic, often surprising and not at all like anything you would find back home.

The photo (not a little out of focus) was taken with my wonderful ASUS.  Clearly, one has much to learn.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101

Happiness is ASUS-shaped

I picked up my new toy / tool yesterday and started using it properly today. I am a very happy bunny. I love it.

I now have no excuses left.

Just do it Dougie.

Monsoon season

The sky darkened to black, the rain fell and in barely 10 minutes the junction of Selegie and Rocher roads in Little India was like a river. Some, like me, sought shelter.  Others just kept on going. In 15 minutes the storm had passed.

Reading Faulkner

I started reading William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying today.  Thirty-seven pages in and I have not yet attuned my ear to the voices speaking but I'll keep at it (not just because we have a tutorial on the text this coming Thursday).

Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature fifty-one years ago.  In his acceptance speech (10th December 1951) he set out what he saw as the writer's purpose; writing's purpose.  He said;

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

Listen to his speech here.

Two essays back today

86% for Ulysses

 87% for Sula

Let fly this wounded bird

I pressed into the willing hands of one not there
the once-forgotten hopes of one who would not dare
to dream or live as dreamers might or could;
of one who sank too far into the depths of should,
misunderstood the differences between those three
and chose not wisely nor chose well the way to be,
perhaps from fear, maybe from doubt
that could would work its own way out,
so should must therefore be the only path to take
against the gnawing fear of making some mistake
which in the grander scheme of life's events
must matter less - far less - than all that fear prevents
from living, breathing, taking off, perhaps to soar
above the clouds that stop us, always, seeing more.

 

Further thoughts on Colin Doyle

From an e.mail to my friend Yvonne Strachan ...

I’ve been trying to write something for a couple of days but it’s an odd exercise in a way.  Memories, as in hard and fast recollections of events, times and places, are less easy to set down in a meaningful way than to think of the feelings that bubbled up to the surface when I read that he’d left the world into which we’re all born.  There was immense sadness, of course.  But that immediate reaction was quickly supplemented by an echo of the fun, banter, laughter of our engagements; his sometimes mad schemes and what I think of (then and now) as Colin’s Peter Pan-like enthusiasm for virtually everything he touched: his beloved Arsenal; the rich vitality of London at its best; the potential of building membership benefits in the NUS card (of all unlikely things); his time running coaches for Galleon; wine; his apartment in The Barbican; those 1970s suits with wide lapels; laughing at someone’s outrageous stories in a bar full of overconfident bright young things who intended to re-shape the universe (some of whom may even have achieved some of those intentions); telling his own tall tales; his giant white Audi 100 car that her knew he ought not to possess but which he couldn’t resist.

Our last e.mail exchanges were filled with the unmistakable affection, pride, love, exasperation of a father for his children who clearly meant just about everything to him.  He wrote as he spoke, as I think he lived; seventeen to the dozen, never in a straight line but with exuberance and optimism forever.  I think I met him for the first time when I was a sabbatical officer at Stirling University, so that’s 77 or (more likely) 78.  We were in a bar (as almost seems inescapably likely for that period) in CC2 (as it was known).  Like the first contact with some people one meets (I have been more fortunate than others in that regard) he captured a place in my heart immediately.  I miss him and always shall, which is no bad thing.

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Colin Doyle

I received an e.mail this morning with the news of my friend Colin Doyle’s death.  That hurt quite a bit.  We were very close for a while and kept in touch sporadically over the years.  His last e.mail to me was a typically Colin account of life as a mad dash, full of commitments (to his children) and plans, hopes, ideas going off in all directions.  His writing seemed as full of the energy and the rather boyish enthusiasm he had in person.  He often played a bit of a wide boy, the Arthur Daley of NUS at times but he was always bright and intelligent and creative in his field; always committed to making things materially better for those he saw as his constituency – students when he was with NUS Marketing, pensioners when, later, he ran Galleon Coaches (I think that’s what it was called … Ellenor always referred to them as Col’s buses, which was how we came to think of them).  I recall being taken on a tour of Colin’s favourite bits of London – me and Jeane – when we first settled in the big smoke after I moved to NUS.  He toured us round the City and the east end (Aldgate and Mile End Road), past his beloved Highbury.  The river was never far away; The Thames not simply as a river but for him, I think, an artery along which beat the pulse of a great place of infinite possibility that he loved dearly.  The river was present in every sense.  At one point he took us to an old Jewish restaurant to pick up huge salt beef sandwiches to take away; bright pink, steaming-hot meat with pickled gherkins and fiercely hot mustard between enormous wedges of soft white bread with crisp, golden crusts.  It was in Bow or Poplar or somewhere in that direction.  We crossed the road to lean on an embankment wall, the Thames behind us and the Jewish community before us going about its business as it had done for decades, perhaps centuries in that part of London.  He loved it, loved life, loved showing it to us, laughed a lot and always shared his enthusiasms with anyone who was willing.  I miss my friend already.
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How much land does a man need?

According to John Gardner (The Art Of Fiction, page 122) James Joyce claimed (maybe seriously, maybe not) that 'How Much Land Does A Man Need?' by Leo Tolstoy was / is the finest short story ever written.  Judge for yourself here.  I assume Joyce was not being serious but it is a clever little fable.  (Apart from any other alternative nominee one could think of there is JJ's own 'The Dead' in Dubliners.)

Joyce

Page 269 of Ulysses.  506 pages to go.  Hard work but brilliant.

And today's number is ...

17 as in ...

17 years since I bought my red Ford Transit van for 17,000 pounds.  Today it clocked up 170,000 miles.

Doo doo, dee dee, doo doo dee dee.  Beyond the Twilight Zone eh? 

Here's to the next 170,000!!!

Born To Run

From Bruce Springsteen's web site:

Clarence Clemons photographed by Danny Glinch

It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.

Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ...

Man in a rubber suit ... 2

Rule number one of monster movies in the 21st Century: to present one monster that's obviously a man in a rubber suit may be unfortunate; two begins to look like carelessness.

Rule number two: casting Brandon Routh as the reluctant hero of a monster movie is NOT post-modern, NOT ironic, NOT witty, NOT clever.

Rule number three: zombie jokes ought to be funny... even one would have helped.

Rule number four: the twist near the end ought to be curving at least a little rather than be so straight and transparent as to be see through from the first death.  (Actually, that might be rule number one because without a decent screenplay the rest is simply nit-picking).

Rule number five: work out who your target audience is meant to be.  Fans of the comic book will hate this movie.  Word of mouth from the rest of the world will kill it deader than its poorly realised cast of characters.

Sorry but DD:DoN is dire. (A colon will do it every time!)

Aaaaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Need one say more?

Emerging Artists Exhibit

From the end of Semester show of the glass studio at Sydney College of the Arts ...

Spike

Nadine

Erica

Katie Ann

End of Semester

I submitted my final assignment of the Semester.  Hip hip hooray.  It was an essay on citizenship as part of my study of American Foundations.  The text began:

This essay considers the proposition that ideas of the citizen and citizenship originated in the American context as deliberately loosely defined concepts.  As a consequence they have been debated, revised and contested throughout the history of the United States.  The lack of precision in the founding texts of  Revolutionary America reflects the 18^th Century liberal idealism upon which myths of American nation identity were subsequently built.  But the history of contestation and revision of citizenship demonstrates the reality that for “at least two-thirds of American history, the majority of the domestic adult population was … ineligible for full citizenship” because of “latent … racial, ethnic and gender restrictions.”

Ho hum. We hold these truths to be self-evident: term is done; no prizes this year!

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The i.tune of J Alfred Prufrock

I watched a short clip at Guardian Online Books about a new iPad app from Faber on T S Eliot's The Waste Land.  I was super-impressed.  This app, on its own, makes me want an iPad.  I added the joke below to the comments section.  Silly but I enjoyed myself.

Let us go then, you and I,
To the Apple store and buy, buy, buy
Like an addict stupefied by news`from Faber;
Let us go, like certain half - demented geeks,
Who mutter on for weeks
Through restless nights of world wide web soft sells
Of awesome Apps of which the Guardian tells:
Geeks who need no facile argument
Of insidious intent
To lead me to an overwhelming question ...
I need not ask "What is it?'
I'm hot to trot and make my visit.

forgive me TSE and poetry lovers everywhere ... overcome with pleasure.

The app looks wonderful. What a debt we owe to those excellent folk at Faber (and not for this fascinating product alone).

Must have, must have, must have said the green eyed monster.

Oh Magnificent Seven

Is it true? Do we all want to be cowboys
riding as one of the magnificent?

Seven years old and surrounded by toys
we built improbable futures, spent
too much time, too little effort
and insufficient energy on hopeless
schemes of the make-believe sort
we never thought led up life's endless
path of dreams or sped away from
one lost chance to any interrupted
opportunity to add a little to the sum
of ill-conceived imaginings, disrupted

by the world in which our real lives lurk;
dad says: bed straight after homework.

Listening to Desert Island Discs again.  Alfie Boe's third selection was the theme tune from the Magnificent Seven.  I was at least ten when I saw the movie but I have to practise my craft (I can call it poetic licence).  Clearly, a man clutching at straws will find inspiration anywhere he can.
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And today's word is ...

... essay

 

Found here

a. A short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author.

b. Something resembling such a composition: a photojournalistic essay.

2. A testing or trial of the value or nature of a thing: an essay of the students' capabilities.

3. An initial attempt or endeavor, especially a tentative attempt.

From ethnographic artifact to work of art...

Not finished yet.

Lazy Day

It's a quiet sort of do-nothing Saturday for me.  Spike has an essay to write so we're going nowhere.  I surf the web, of course, which means reading The Guardian online and listening to the Simon Mayo / Mark Kermode film review podcast on BBC Radio Five.  Steven Fry was their studio guest.  I was surprised to learn of his interest in and involvement with a re-make of The Dambusters movie along with Peter Jackson and David Frost (who owns the rights to the book).  All of which just goes to show that with the Internet one can learn more than just one something new every day.

Later, while Spike fretted about Aboriginal Art History, I lost time watching the re-make of The Karate Kid with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan.  It's a preposterous fantasy but surprisingly engaging, even moving in a couple of places.  The story is silliness on a stick but Jaden and Jackie turn in effective, engaging performances.  Their relationship works well, it has an emotional truth within the confines of the wholly implausible world of the fiction. I can think of lots of movies on which I've squandered time and good money - yesterday's Pirates 4 is a very recent example.  Who'd have thought it?  The Karate Kid.  Not as bad as you might think.  May even quite good.  Not Citizen Kane, of course, but given what it is, really not bad at all.

Pirates 4

Simply awful.  Boring beyond belief.

Please stop!

She rescues him right back ...

I do worry about myself at times....

Here I am: fifty-four, grumpy old Scottish Presbyterian guy with a brain the size of a planet, an ego the size of Brazil and an (as yet) unrealised plan to bring about the end of Captalism.  So what am I doing watching Pretty Woman on video for pity's sake?  I despair of myself at times!!  But what can I say.  It's fun.  And I'm tragic!!

Last night's poem ... new toy

The Juke Box Cafe, Eversholt Street

One note, long and low; held

as the heart beat accelerates.

The chest muscles of a young man

begin to ache, yearning for the release

of tension during an age, if not

of discovery, at least of exploration;

experimentation, which some might call
youthful exuberance.

                                    Meanwhile

a saxophone player
with whom

                                   someone’s mother
almost ran away.when she was barely seventeen
...............(which was not yesterday)

looks up from a newspaper

where he’s been checking classified ads

and searching jobs vacant columns

that seem never to have changed

and in an act of recognition,

recollection maybe, he smiles fondly

but not entirely happily. 

Shine on you crazy diamond

He played the part once, on stage

in a student union bar somewhere,

north of Wolverhampton.

The band was rocking.  He was

on fire

but the moment had passed.

It was all downhill

from there.



I'd been listening to Roger Waters on BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs

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Assessment time

We had a take-home exercise to complete by tomorrow to round off this semester's unit on Literature and Cinema.  The questions were released on Friday.  I didn't particularly like any of them but I chose the following (Question 4, on irony).

“Irony was a fundamental feature of ancient tragedy and the view of life it inspired, yet it may be argued that some modern literary or cinematic genres – such as the mystery or the thriller – are similarly motivated by an ironic sense.”  Discuss in terms of one cinematic and one literary text.

Oedipus the King - Sun.Ergos Company, Alberta

I chose Oedipus the King and Brazil.  I finished the essay this afternoon around five o'clock.  It came in at 1,640 odd words, less than 10% over the limit so I shouldn't be marked down for that.  I think it's a decent essay.  Here's how it ends.

Gilliam’s ending to Brazil may be read as an ironic commentary on, or rejection of, the didactic certainties of Aristotelian tragedy in general and Oedipus the King in particular.  When Sam’s escape fantasy is revealed as such, Helpmann remarks “He’s got away from us Jack” to which the torturer replies “I’m afraid you’re right ... He’s gone.”  In that moment, Sam, the hero of the melodrama that is Brazil, attains the psychological oblivion, release or escape denied to the tragic hero Oedipus.




In his valedictory address to the Chorus blind Oedipus asserts that:

… had I known a way to choke the springs
Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make
A dungeon of this miserable frame,
Cut off from sight and hearing; for 'tis bliss
to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach.

Brazil - Sam Lowry escapes

Sam Lowry’s escape into the imagined paradise of his personal Brazil reaches that blissful region free from sorrow Oedipus craves.  Both texts depend on irony to lead the audience to their different conclusions.  The tragedy by Sophocles offers catharsis and the possibility of moral improvement or learning.  Gilliam resists didactic certainties and by means of ironic questioning of the ways in which genres raise expectations he de-stabilises generic conventions to reach an ambiguous, unsettling conclusion that invites us to re-read and re-appraise both the text and ourselves.

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Nuff said ...

"If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person."

Gill Scott-Heron in the short video by Jamie Byng here.
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Gill Scott-Heron died today

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the 
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

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Not-Shakespeare

Sam Jordison of The Guardian Online wrote a clever blog in Guardian Books about how "some prose styles are so powerful they can take over your own. Whose are the most potent?"  I posted the assault upon Shakespeare's Macbeth below.  Silly but fun (at least I had fun).
 
I borrow, and I borrow, and I borrow
Treats from the very place we see you see
In the vast miracle of written works,
Where all the mysteries of gifted fools
Give way to poor pastiche. Enough already!
We’re only faking talent, bloggers blogging
We strut and fret this hour upon the page
Then we are read no more: Mine is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of quote and misquote,
Signifying nothing.

With apologies to … everyone really

(but WS most of all).

GO TO BED.  You have an essay on irony to write by Tuesday!!
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Treasure Island

I'm re-reading Treasure Island by RLS (not quite sure why but then again, why not?).  Sitting in the van outside a repair shop in Hornsby Heights, waiting for a diagnosis on my broken wheelchair lift, I came to Chapter 8, At the Sign of the Spy-glass where I met, once again, one of the most charismatic baddies in literature.  Like young Hawkins, I was captivated (all over again).

Robert Newton as the LJS I grew up with

WHEN I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. I set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in question.

It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded. There was a street on each side and an open door on both, which made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of tobacco smoke.

The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.

As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney's letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one- legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.
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Art by kids

The SIBS Art Project

26-29 May

Many children's lives are profoundly affected by living with siblings who have a disability. While the needs of children with disabilities, especially Autism Spectrum Disorders, have received considerable media and political attention, there is less awareness of the lives of their brothers and sisters.
The photographs and artworks in this exhibition will shine a light on the many young people in the Marrickville area whose siblings have disabilities. These children live with caring responsibilities, intense and ambivalent emotions, difficulties and concerns, and an awareness of diversity and difference well beyond their years.
It will provide the Marrickville community with an opportunity to learn more about the effect of disability on families and young people. The SIBS Art Project showcases the work of the many siblings involved with Pathways Early Childhood Intervention Service. It is a celebration of what it is to be a SIB.

• Opening: Thursday 26 May, 6-10pm 

I was asked by Sylvana Mahmic to give a brief address and officially open the exhibition at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown. The gallery was overflowing and jumping.  The fifteen artists, brothers and sisters of kids with disability, all aged between 6 and 15 were pumped up, noisy, excited, impatient.  After my short speech (which went down well, brought tears to some eyes I was told later) each artist came forward when I called their name to receive a certificate from the Chair of the Board of Pathways Early Childhood Intervention Association.  All of them seemed so proud, so pleased.  It was a true pleasure, a real delight.
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The Skinny Possum

I watched a skinny possum dart
between parked cars, aligned imperfectly
outside the University of Sydney's
English Department, where hordes
of undergraduate students roam
backwards and forwards every hour,
like herds of migrating Wildebeast
taking the same path, following
the same tracks, each hour; all day.

That skinny possum could move,
which surprised me almost as much
as the possum must have been
surprised itself, to find itself,
in broad daylight, cutting across
the well-worn paths of lumbering
English Lit. Majors, Honours
candidates in Early Anglo-Saxon
or Accountancy and Tort Law
specialists making up their credit
count with an Easy-A in Arts.

I barely caught a glimpse of it, to tell
the truth; four furry legs going helter-
skelter underneath a half-parked Ford
and a grey-black bushy tail vanishing
before my disbelieving gaze, unused
to possums, which I'd always thought
were fat, slow-moving and reddish
brown.  All of which just goes to show
that a prize-winning undergraduate
like me knows diddley-squat about
Australian marsupials; not how fast
they move or where they might appear
or disappear before uncertain eyes.
.

So ... this is encouraging

We were given back our essays for the Literature and Cinema at Sydney University.  I was given a High Distinction for my essay on Adaptation.  That's good (and what I'd set out to achieve).  More encouragingly, my tutor closed his remarks by writing, "But perhaps what I liked most was the lucidity and style, which I found very winning."

Very encouraging.  Now remember this ... ditch the ego; just write.

I am flabbergasted

I received a second cheque from Sydney University, last week.  This time for $500.  I thought it might be a mistake but Spike fished-out the letter that accompanied the cheque and discovered what I hadn't bothered to read (my defence is that I claim to be a big picture person ... not so good on detail, which is a euphemism for lazy).  It turns out I've won another prize at the University; this time the 2010 Walter Reid Memorial Prize.

Walter Reid was Secretary to the Bar Association of NSW.  The letter stated:

The prize shall be awarded annually without application to students currently enrolled in any undergraduate degree course in the Faculty of Arts or the Faculty of Law on the basis of academic merit in the previous year.

This Award came / comes as such a surprise.  It has set me to thinking.  My too casual attitude won't do.  I need to get properly down to academic business ... 35 years late but better late than never.
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Well ... there's another working week I'll never get back

from this week's New Yorker

Essay Number 2 finished

This time for my course, AMST2601: American Foundations.  This question was posed:

W E B Dubois

Writing in the late nineteenth century, W.E.B. Du Bois famously coined the term “double consciousness” to describe the experience of being both black and American:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (The Souls of Black Folk)

Does this concept capture African American experiences in the past? Does it still apply to the present?

And I started my answer with these words:

Drawing on predominantly personal narratives of African-American experience, this essay argues that the “peculiar sensation” of double consciousness has been and remains characteristic of Black history in the United States.  Questions of identity are central to understanding experiences as diverse as those of Harriet Jacobs in the 1800s and Barack Obama today. But, as their different personal histories illustrate, and the debates within the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate, identity politics is not sufficient as a narrative through which to read African-American circumstances in past or contemporary America.  

Ended up with just under the 1,500 word limit (excluding 500 words of quotes).  I'm less than wholly confident about the outcome but we'll see.

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Reasons to be cheerful ...

A MAN was captured on CCTV trying to board a train in Wales - with a pony in tow.

The unknown man attempted to buy two tickets - one for him and one for his four-legged friend - at Wrexham train station in North Wales, for a two-hour journey to Holyhead, the North Wales Post reported today.

Shocked staff refused to serve the man, telling him horses were not allowed on the train.

Undeterred, the man said, "I know the law" and got into an elevator with the horse, and walked it across the bridge and onto a platform.

When the train arrived he boarded the service and tried to pull the pony on with him until a conductor intervened.

After a brief argument the man retreated and left the station with his pony.

A spokeswoman for Arriva Trains Wales said the company did not allow livestock to board trains.

"We do allow small animals, such as dogs and guide dogs, onboard but not large animals that could pose a risk to the general public," she said.

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Quantification

If this is what it boils down to,
the residue of hopes no longer
triumphant over expectation
how might one measure that?
Does one weigh it in a balance
between all that seemed unlikely
and every thought that never flew
or pour it out into the glass to say
half full, or maybe not; half empty?
We dare not say or have no view
for knowing this, that fools rush
in where angels fear to tread,
the more or less we think we know
such thoughts hang by bare thread.
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Now Voyager?

Barely floating, like an ancient, leaky boat
from some lost age, with creaking joints
placed under too much constant pressure
but resistant yet; still together - just -
beneath the cracked and flaking skin,
once bright, once clear but fading now;
half-submerged in water on which once
it sat upright and maybe even perky,
defiant in those former days, those days
of bygone glory when (once upon a time)
no farthest shore seemed yet too distant,
no feint horizon failed to stir the impulse
to head out, to set out on a journey
over seas with neither map nor compass.
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How good is writing like this?

	Painter or Illustrator: Lynch, James Henry (d. 1868)    (Work signed) Writer: Abot, Eugene Michel Joseph (1836-1894) This leaflet is part of a series: Balzac, Pere Goriot, Sc life by., Calmann-Levy, Quantin, 1885 (Cash / No 0 / 10) Dating:  1885 Source text: Balzac, Le Pere Goriot (1834)

Painter or Illustrator:
Lynch, James Henry (d. 1868)    (Work signed)

Writer: Abot, Eugene Michel Joseph (1836-1894)

This leaflet is part of a series:
Balzac, Pere Goriot, Sc life by., Calmann-Levy, Quantin, 1885
(Cash / No 0 / 10)

Dating:  1885

Source text:
Balzac, Le Pere Goriot (1834)

M. Poiret was a sort of automaton. He might be seen any day sailing like a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a throat like a turkey gobbler's; altogether, his appearance set people wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature? What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been part of the machinery of justice, a clerk in the office to which the executioner sends in his accounts,—so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed, the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark that, "After all, we cannot do without them."

From Farther Goriot by Honore de Balzac
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Reading for dummies (like me)

I am procrastinating; avoiding the work that I really ought to do.  I can't be bothered because (five weeks into my new job) I'd sooner leave it than get stuck in.  I have formed an escape committee with Mrs Spiers.

Anyway, I took to thinking about how ill-read I feel.  I'm not illiterate.  I know that much.  But I was struck, not so very long ago, with how few books I had read from The Guardian list of the top 100 books of all time.  (It turns out, apparently, that the list was merely re-printed by The Guardian, from the original constructed by The Norwegian Book Clubs, of all the improbable points of origin one might think of.)  Over 50 of the texts can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg, here.

Last year, again while procrastinating, I was likewise struck by how few novels on a list compiled by Time Magazine I had read.  It was described as the ALL-TIME list of the world's best 100 novels.  To be deemed eligible for consideration a novel had to have been written between Time's first publication in 1923 and 2010.

I combined the two lists, which contain 187 texts.  There are 9 texts on both lists.  I've read 32 of the texts (including 4 of the 9).  That's a paltry 17 per cent.  Time to get reading.

I've started with Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac, written in 1835.  In the first chapter I came upon the term "car of Juggernaut".  That struck me as a modern term for an early 19th Century author, which shows you how much I know.  Jagganatha, the Hindu deity translated as Lord of the World, is worshiped in temples that date from as far back as the 12th Century (in Puri, Orissa; North East India).  The picture is one of the Madrass car of Jagganatha.

Harriet Jacobs

I finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl today.  It's a remarkable text; an almost unbelievable tale (although its truth shines through ... and for any deniers or sceptics out there .... has been independently verified).  The full text can be read here.  How could we do these things to one another?

What a woman.  How much we owe her.

From the Harriet Jacobs web site:

"I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations." 

After nearly seven years hiding in a tiny garret above her grandmother’s home, Harriet Ann Jacobs took a step other slaves dared to dream in 1842; she secretly boarded a boat in Edenton, N.C., bound for Philadelphia, New York and, eventually, freedom. The young slave woman’s flight, and the events leading up to it, are documented in heart-wrenching detail in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, self-published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent.

A significant personal history by an African American woman, Harriet Jacobs’ story is as remarkable as the writer who tells it. During a time when it was unusual for slaves to read and write, self-publishing a first-hand account of slavery’s atrocities was extraordinary. That it was written by a woman, unprecedented.

From the Harriet Jacobs Wikipedia site:

Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813 - March 7, 1897) was an American writer, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs' single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym "Linda Brent", was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured.
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Scrambled on Enmore Road

My breakfast at Scrambled, Enmore Road.  Spike made the better choice ... something Mexican ... but I seem to have deleted it from my phone.  The food was so-so; nothing to get excited about but decent enough to convince you that you'd eaten a hearty breakfast ... even at one o'clock or thereabouts.  We'd had a busy morning.

The cafe is worth visiting.  Friendly folk, mixed clientele, plenty to watch go bye on Enmore Road.  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the smokers on the pavement tables just beyond the open shop-front.  If it's true that barely 17 per cent of adults smoke, I begin to think we've reached the point where smoking should not be permitted wherever food is served.  That's a Jack sentence, which one tries to avoid as much as possible.  Here's a simpler version: smoking ought not to be permissible wherever food is served.  Full stop.
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2,164 words later ...

... my essay is finished, after a 12 hour stint. Here's my penultimate paragraph:

Stam states that Genette’s architextuality, “has to do with an artist's willingness or reluctance to characterize a text generically in its title.” Based (as the credits state) on Orlean’s book, the title of Adaptation sets out its different terrain. It is not the film of the book that character Kaufman insists he must write. It is a knowing parody of self-conscious works of art organised in paradoxical and transtextual dialogue with itself, other works and readers.

Did I really say that? I'm happy enough with the essay. We'll see how I do later.
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Happy Birthday

Arabesk in a pub

And that's only lemon, lime and bitters

Some danced all night.  Not me.  But it was enjoyable to have some time in the pub with Simon, Dilys, Jon, Rosie, Amelia, Spike and my favourite Sydney band.

2,000 words by Monday

It's essay time for my Literature and Cinema course.  I'm answering a question on Charlie Kaufman's brilliant  script for the Spike Jones movie Adaptation.  The question is:

Explore the ways in which Adaptation addresses questions of origin and originality,creation and creativity.

So, lots of room to explore some ideas.  Too much room?  We'll see by Monday.  Right now I'm lost in the swamp of too many texts.  But I'll follow these paths (at least).

In Film adaptation and its discontents: from Gone with the wind to The passion of The Christ, David Leitch has written that;

“ … adaptation study has drastically limited its horizons by its insistence on treating source texts as canonical authoritative discourse or readerly works rather than internally persuasive discourse or writerly texts … [leading to] the primary lesson of film adaptation: that texts remain alive only to the extent that they can be re-written and that to experience a text in all its power requires each reader to rewrite it.'

and 

“ … we need to re-frame the assumption that … source texts cannot be rewritten … as a new assumption: source texts must be rewritten; we cannot help rewriting them.” 

There's a worked example given by Brett Westbrook in his essay Being Adaptation: The Resistance to Theory 

Take, for example, the 1964 film My Fair Ladydirected by George Cukor.  This film musical was based on the stage musical with lyrics and music by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe, based on a straight (i.e. non-musical) play by George Bernard Shaw, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, based on a Greek legend.  Out of all of these ‘texts” which is the pre-cursor text for the screenplay writer [credited as Lerner], for the director, for the performers, for the audience?

I tried the same for Adaptation.  Here's what I came up with:

The 2004 Film Adaptation directed by Spike Jones, written by Charles [and Donald] Kaufman based on the non-fiction book, The Orchid Thief written by Susan Orlean; developed from her New Yorker articles inspired by an article by [unknown] journalist working for the Miami Herald reporting a real event in 1994.  Add in Jonathan Demme and Edward Braxton, producers who gave the screenplay writing task to Charlie Kaufman.

Both Kaufman and Orlean cite / quote from The Origin Of The Species by Charles Darwin, published in 1858 – 4 years after Alfred Russell Wallace’s tentative paper got there first.

It's hard to pinpoint 'the original'.  Maybe we waste time by attempting to do so in this inter-textual world of ours.

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