Five former prawns at Thai Number One (since 1992)

Dinner on my own because Spike was working late in the studio, polishing glass (or was it the wooden base?)  Polishing for sure.  I dined at a local cheap n cheerful Thai restaurant for the first time.  It's funny how events or circumstances lead you to new experiences - even if it's only a plate of chilli basil noodles with prawns prepared for my table in about two minutes.  My van's electrics are broken so I took the train home from work.  Spike's working late so I'm fending for myself (and had a quick curry in mind from the shop between the station and Liverpool Road).  But the lift to the Liverpool Road side, which was out of order yesterday but back in order this morning, was back out of order this evening so I descended to ground level on the opposite side of the tracks.  And there I saw Thai Number One restaurant ("since 1992" the legend boldly proclaims.  So Thai it was.  No complaints here.

Show of the year ... so far.

Kirra Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne

Happy re-cycler

ME OF PANDA

To Rozelle and the bicycle shop to fit a new inner tube for my wheelchair then the car park at SCA to drop off a library book then the car park at Bunnings, Ashfield, (which is always a joy) then the car park at JayCar, Parramatta road, Croydon then the car park at the Addison Road Community Centre, Marrickville.  At least I got out the van there to negotiate the narrow paths of Reverse Garbage in search of "..ME OF PANDA".  Who knew?  At least one shopper seems to have found a bargain.

As I Lay Dying

I finished my essay on Addie's monologue from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  It was only a short assignment (my piece comes in at 922 words, including the direct quotes ... so there's maybe 800 of my own words).  Nevertheless I couldn't find my way in for days and if I can't see the way in I have no chance of getting out again.  So it's a day late, which means two points lost before anyone starts to count.  I had no choice though.  Yesterday I had nothing but fragments.

Here's how I finished:

"My mother is a fish"

Addie’s passage is, therefore, pivotal to many ways of reading Faulkner’s novel: as an, at times, horrific re-working of Homer’s epic tale of the return home, suffused with absurd and darkly improbable humour; as an exploration of the tensions within and contradictions between public and private constructions of identity illustrated through variations of voice, tone, register and syntax among characters inhabiting the same, precisely delineated fictional world; as a cautionary fable concerned with the destructive and alienating effects of Modernity; as a recognition of ways in which the unmodern – in particular, death – persists (if not triumphs) in life; and as a writing experiment to demonstrate the author’s Modernist concern with the limits of language as a vehicle to express or explain meaning and truth.  

We'll see.






Illustration by Nate Olsen at NATEOMEDIA 

And today's number is ...

92.

Received my essay on Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) for my postmodernism course.  Happy camper.

Master of all he surveys

So I'm here.  I'm ready to start.  Master of the universe that I am I sit alone at the head of the table around which members of the Advisory Council of the NSW Lifetime Care and Support Authority will gather.  In two minutes?  May as well enjoy my tea and Tim Tam.  What else can the all-powerful Chair do?

In search of 750 words

William Faulkner and his typewriter in Hollywood

Working on my Faulkner essay, due on Friday.  Still not sure what I may write about Addie's monologue but I'll get there, with luck, by the submission deadline.

It's been observed in many places that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks without altering a word.  That may or may not be true but it's essentially beyond the point.  It's a brilliant work of what my tutor calls American Regional Modernism; a frontier tall tale of humour and horror; the point of meeting between myths of agrarian folk culture and cosmopolitan modernism; Homer meets Mark Twain meets Virginia Woolf.  It's hard not to be impressed; difficult not to feel daunted by such authorial power.