Monet in the park

We had a lazy start to Sunday then visited the Art Gallery of NSW to have a look at the Monet exhibition. The gallery was heaving with large numbers of people from just about all walks of life and all ages drawn to some 'great' works of art. There were indeed some lovely paintings by Monet and other impressionists: haystacks (of course) and the facade of the cathedral; images of water lilies and a Japanese bridge in the garden at Giverney (not Givenchy as I wrote in an article years ago!).

After a very late lunch in the mobbed gallery cafe we strolled through the Botanic gardens where, next to the statue of a boy removing a thorn from his foot, we assembled a forty-piece Monet jigsaw puzzle, taking more time than either of us thought we might take. Spike read to me from John Boyd's The Pollenators Of Eden - a piece of very 1970's science fiction ... but fun.
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Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliaci

Saturday night at the Sydney Opera House for 'Cav & Pag' as I believe they are known. Lovely music and some fine singing. The total effect, however, seemed somehow less than the sum of its parts. Don't know why.
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Twilight

I'm not exactly in the demographic sub-section thought of as prime audience for stories about teenage romance triumphing over the prejudices of hostile families and social mores. But I've seen worse movies by far in the recent past and the sixteen-year old girls behind us in the cinema seemed to love it.

The light of dawn

Do not to me bring sorry tales
of men who feared too much,
who saw too little in their time
to dream of more than they
might grasp in trembling hands
too scared to touch life’s chances
despite those others’ madness;

those daft old fools, dreaming
in the sleepless hours of days
not yet released from darkness
into dawn’s transforming light,
who turn like dew to greet the sun

and kissed by life's eternal fire
lift up and smile as fears expire.
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Necessary noise ... part 13

Charlie

Some years ago now, maybe ten, my good friend Charlie Angus died. He was forty-six years old, married to Kate and they were parents to two young boys.

Charlie had been diagnosed with cancer of the jawbone, which was life-threatening in its own right. After an operation and a spell in hospital, however, Charlie was given the all-clear so he went home. The surgery / drugs / trauma ... who knows what ... must have weakened Charlie so that not long after he returned home to convalesce he collapsed. An artery had burst and he bled to death. He died in Kate's arms.

The eulogy for Charlie was delivered by his friend and boss, Jeane (who is also my first, long-divorced wife). While preparing her thoughts for what was always going to be a tough speech Jeane talked to me about her difficulty in finding some idea or image of Charlie to use to frame her words about him. I thought about it for a day or so then hit upon the poem below (by Norman McCaig, who I knew a little when I was a student at Stirling University). Jeane agreed that the poem was a good fit so she used it to end her words, delivered as she stood next to Charlie's coffin.

Shortly after Jeane stopped speaking, Charlie in his coffin was lowered out of sight and into oblivion by some crematorium lift mechanism to the accompaniment of the tune The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen. We wept and smiled. As ever, Charlie came and went on his terms.

Praise of a man

He went through a company like a lamplighter -
see the dull minds, one after another,
begin to glow, to shed
a beneficent light.

He went through a company like
a knifegrinder - see the dull minds
scattering sparks of themselves,
becoming razory, becoming useful.

He went through a company
as himself. But now he's one
of the multitudinous company of the dead
where are no individuals.

The beneficent lights dim
but don't vanish. The razory edges
dull, but still cut. He's gone: but you can see
his tracks still, in the snow of the world.

I've no idea what brought all this to mind, except that I miss my friend Charlie. That (of course) but also, I guess, because I've been wondering about myself lately, although I can't claim to have reached any conclusions. Silly old fool.

And today's question is ...

just how many Bisacodyl enemas does it take to evacuate the bowel of only one paralysed man?

Correct. Too fucking many.
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