Easter bunny

New Yorker magazine
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Highlight of the day?

Shopping for groceries with Spike.



New Yorker magazine
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Helena cancelled lunch 'cos she's unwell

So the day's recordable event is a two-hour class on ... oooo ... The Scottish Play. My teacher admires the Polanski version but thinks it's dated. I remember it as a defining moment in my cultural development. Even though I was only 14, I knew it was the real deal.

Student life

So today we're both working on assignments.

Spike has her 1,000 words on reading critics of Dale Chuhuliy.

I've got to set out the framework for an essay on MacBeth (I think the butler did it).

Théodore Chassériau (September 20, 1819 – October 8, 1856) was a French romantic painter noted for his portraits, historical and religious paintings, allegorical murals, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria.
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My mission ...

... is to support the artist until the word count of 1,000 has been reached. Tea, every now and then; Californian Cookies (which come from somewhere in New South Wales) and a pear are my best offerings.

If I don't she'll stab me to death with a 30,000 year old sacrificial knife hewn from obsidian. I believe the technical term is knapped.












(objet d'art and photo by Spike Deane)

Slumdog

Finally caught the Oscar winner in a cinema, which makes it my second viewing but this time with a decent screen, sound and sub-titles one could read. It's a charming bittersweet morality tale I suppose with a bit of boy meets girl thrown in. It certainly stood up to a second viewing. I love the scene where the boys steal chapattis from the train carriage. The child actors run away with movie but it was fun throughout. I can see Salman Rushdie's point about the white man's view of India but it's done with such affection and heart that I think we can forgive them.

Swimming towards sunset ... part 2

I took Swimming towards sunset to the poetry group this evening. Generally, everyone liked it. There was a debate about the final two lines. Half the group thought they worked very well. The other half thought they were too much. I'm not sure. I'll let it stew a bit.

The water’s surface shimmers
late this summer afternoon.
Cicadas irritate the atmosphere
as if it were not quite sufficient
to sit beneath the sun, awaiting
dusk then nightfall and the rest.

Not quite a mill pond, the bay
entices you to swim without a suit,
abandoning your dress and bag
to my safe-keeping on the shore
where two or three or maybe more
old regulars take time to talk;
to share the daily news perhaps
of who did what to whom and when
- and maybe even make a stab
at why - between their showers
and callisthenics in the park
where dogs, unleashed, chase tails.

I sit and watch your head cut through
the silvered skin of Watson’s Bay,
that youthful grin upon your face,
as if this place and time with me
were more than you had hoped for,
were maybe all you wanted on this day.
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