Have you been waiting for a film about defenders of the environment in which the true cost of poaching – to the environment and to people – is laid bare without equivocation or embellishment? Then you really need to see this film. It is set in Tibet and is about a patrol of volunteers trying to prevent the extinction of the Tibetan Antelope. It is not a documentary but a drama. It is not your average Hollywood blockbuster, but blockbuster it is in the power of its narrative and the gut wrenching choices that are made in the course of events. And of course, the scenery is breath taking. Apart from that I don’t want to say much, because anything I say would give too much away. It’s a foreign language film, so if you’re like me and don’t generally watch them because you miss most of the action, because you spend most of your time reading the sub-titles, don’t be put off. The dialogue is very sparse and the sub-titles are very short and easy to read. The impact comes as much from the surprises – and there are a few of them – as from the storyline – which is an account of real events – so I do not recommend reading about it or researching it before watching it. But if you really must have prior information, here’s a link to its website:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mountainpatrol/
Thursday 21 February 2008
Wednesday 20 February 2008
Lightning Trip to Sydney and back February 2008
WARNING
If you are offended by sexual inuendo there is a sentence in this post that will be problematic for you.
Going down on the highwayOn Saturday (9/2/08) I drove to Sydney to collect John’s piece from the Graduate Exhibition (mentioned in last month’s Bull tin). I left at 6:00 am and arrived at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains at 6:00 pm, where I stayed at my friend Penny’s place overnight; then drove down to Gomorrah at 6:45 am on Sunday, had breakfast in Glebe and collected the art work at 10:30 am and headed back to Mullumbimby, arriving at 11:45 pm. Are you exhausted already just reading about it? Well let me tell you, I hope John has many more pieces to deliver to Sydney, (though not to collect, for the point of any further deliveries would be to sell them) because I’ll be there to do the job. You see, I just happen to love driving. I really should have been a truckie.
What I love about long distance driving is the freedom to wander in one’s mind’s body through the landscape one is traversing to the accompaniment of fine music – and on this occasion to the riveting voice of a reader “singing” Finnegan’s Wake. I say singing, even though he was reading, because the story, even though it is a work of prose, can only be described as a song – an EPIC song! More about that in another blog post. It also gave me the opportunity to do a bit of singing myself. I included among the discs I took the recording of last year’s concert, to which I sang along delighting in the fact that I could sing the whole thing from memory, without the score to keep me from straying from the tenor part. I also took a disc of Teddy Tahu Rhodes (a bass/baritone) and hummed and harred my way through that as well, realising that that there was not a single bass note on the disc that I could not reach – which gave me the bright idea of collecting a few baritone pieces for my repertoire. Not that I could ever sound like TTR, I hasten to say. At some point the hilarious thought occurred to me that a singing truckie might attract the nick-name “Bullocky”. So from now on I will answer to “Bull”, being already an accomplisher bull artist. Ah, to be Irish to be sure!!
I went down on the Pacific Highway and back on the New England Highway. Suddenly I am riveted by the thought of going down on a highway – one that I may come back to next time I write a stand up script. Anyway, it’s not as though either highway was new to me. I know them intimately, having travelled them often in my misspent youth, and less frequently in later years. What was unique about this trip was that I did them both of successive days. The phrase that springs to mind, to summarise the experience is “The Two Australias”. It’s a phrase that normally applies to the gap between the haves and the have nots. And anyone who gives it a nanosecond of thought realises that there are actually “many Australias”. Even in the (usually) socially and politically neutral topic of landscape, there are a lot more than two Australias. But in general, we readily recognise and relate to “the coast” and “the inland”. That’s what I’m getting at here. That’s the contrast that you get in no uncertain terms when you travel between two points approximately 800 kilometres apart by different highways: the Pacific Highway along the coast; and the New England Highway through the inland.
Now, before anyone gets up too big a head of steam scoffing at the notion that Tamworth, for example, really is the inland, let me say, true, it’s not Alice Springs or Jiggalong. But it is sheep country, and it is the Country Music Kapital of ze nonejuniverz. And it is in the most exquisitely subtle landscape. On the coast there is close settlement including villages every 10 minutes and big towns or small cities as you prefer, about an hour apart; and biggish rivers, especially in the Northern Rivers Region. There’s a lot of evidence of man-made landscape: orchards, cash crops, dairy farms – or once were dairy farms, with their decaying infrastructure; trees, such as figs and pines that are obviously not native, but have become so much part of our psychological landscape that it would not be Australia without them. Along the Pacific Highway, there is not a kilometre that has not been visibly shaped by human activity. And the most astounding thing about that is that it is actually quite pleasant to experience – mostly. The other important distinguishing characteristic of this landscape is that it is a coastal plain. It has its ups and downs, but in general, it offers very few long distance vistas. By contrast, the New England Highway traverses downlands whose modest ridges provide at every turn the kind of views that town dwellers pay premium prices for. There is very little human habitation to be seen between towns, very few exotic trees, very few crops, but there are, at times, large numbers of grazing animals, mainly sheep, but no where near as many as one might expect, probably because the properties are so vast, and their carrying capacity so small, that the animals are rarely near roads as they eat their way across their sparsely foddered domains. Another highly visible feature of the landscape, especially the further north you get, is granite boulders strewn ever so decorously across the paddocks. God, it seems, was, is and ever shall be, an exterior decorator – among other things. There is a modesty about the towns along the inland highway. They’ve barely left the nineteenth century. The twenty first century will very likely never venture their way – except in the form of highways between distant urban centres. What does it tell you when Macdonalds is on a bypass rather than in a town?
The most amazing thing about the New England Highway on this trip was the number of semi-trailers and B Doubles on it – or, rather, not on it. It used to be truckie territory until very recently when the Pacific Highway was opened up to unregulated road transport. On this trip I counted five (5) (sic, 5, five only!) big mothers. There were a slightly larger number of covered fixed tray trucks that would have to be there for local commerce, but in general, I had the road to myself most of the time. I need to say that I am in no way saying that I prefer one highway to the other. I truly appreciate what each has to offer and am grateful beyond my ability to express for the opportunity to se so much in so quickly.
Which raises the question, does one really actually see anything at all, covering so much territory in so little time. Wouldn’t it be better, for example to see the granite boulders at walking pace – as a real bullocky would? Well, it would certainly be good to see them at walking pace, but not necessarily better. And if we’re talking walking pace, we’re talking a very limited amount of landscape that can be taken in. Sure, it can be taken in greater detail, but there’s also a lot to be said for taking in the kind of bigger picture that driving two highways in two days affords.
The last four hours of the trip were a mistake I will not make again. I was at Glen Innes at 6:45 pm and should have stopped at a motel. Instead, I took the road down to Grafton. I’d done Tenterfield to Lismore several times since moving to Nirvana, and wanted to see a road I’d never been on. Well I saw less than half of it, because it was dark by 8:00 pm which meant that the best part – the descent from the big ridge – was illuminated only by headlights. I was in Grafton by 9:15 pm where I refueled and reMacdonaldsed for the final leg. It didn’t matter that it was at night. I could drive that part of the road with my eyes closed, I’ve done it so many times – never, I might add, with my eyes closed, but. Eh?
Aboriginal people would say that it is the landscape that provides one with identity. Another view of the world would say the human consciousness engages with the landscape and animates it. I’m not here to choose between the two. But I am here to say that the landscape and I sang to each other. I can’t claim to know what Aborigines mean when they talk about singing the landscape. But I know what I mean by it. It is now a week since I went to a singing night with the leader of my choir, and got up the next morning at 5:00 am to set off on what turned out to be an unbelievably intense experience. That intensity has not diminished one bit. The amazing thing is that I can now travel at the speed of thought from point to point on that journey – not in a linear succession, but through “worm holes” so that one moment I am marvelling at how beautiful Richmond is; then gasping at undulating rows of grassed hills; then counting the intersections in Sydney between key points on my exit route (printed off on Friday afternoon courtesy of the WhereiS website – whose address follows for anyone unaware of it
http://www.whereis.com/whereis/home.do;jsessionid=BE9C68770CA0B29DF0A8146BD4FEEC82.server2-1); then zooming across the Clarence River; then winding up the Bells Line of Road; then approaching the point at Hexam where there is a large yellow diamond shaped road sign with a black graphic consisting of a vertical line which branches at the top into two opposing acute angles that might be arms bent at the elbows were there a circle between them to represent a head, and in the absence of which could only, therefore, be legs bent at the knees. Maybe this was where I got the idea of going down on the highway. Just kiddin’ of course, but it was nevertheless the moment when it occurred to me that the trip would be all the more stimulating if I took the alternative route back home.
It really was an exciting moment. I had about 150 metres to decide. But, really, there was nothing to decide. The yellow diamond was its own meaning. Not merely a road sign indicating where the New England Highway digressed from the Pacific Highway, but a sign!! the like of which is not easily disregarded. As I entered the roundabout it was like approaching close enough to a heavenly body and using its gravity to effect a tangential slingshot. Rather than go right around I took the first exit and was on my way into the parallel universe, so to speak, of the inland. The trip had acquired an unexpected dimension. I knew vaguely the sequence of towns I would come to, but had no idea of the distances between them – unlike how it would have been had I returned along the Pacific Highway. I relaxed into a state of unknowing and said Let the future come. And it did – to an intoxicating cocktail of Vivaldi, performed by people I know; Teddy Tahu Rhodes, performed by Teddy Tahu Rhodes; and James Joyce, performed by who knows whom. Oh bliss the day!!
The artwork got home in several pieces, which is quite OK because it consisted of several pieces in the first place. A very slight amount of damage occurred on the way, but nothing that anyone would notice. Our cats greeted me with questions about where I’d been for the last two days. Well, they didn’t actually have to ask. I could see it in their faces. So I explained that Daddy had to do a little job for Daddy, and that I’d tell them more in the morning, after I’d emailed Penny that I’d arrived, had a shower and then a sleep. The next morning, however, it was as though nothing had happened. All they wanted was their daily portion of kangaroo meat. Cats can be so…. so….. wonder full.
Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce
...have you ever swum in Finnegan’s Wake? I’ve tried reading it, more than once, and was defeated by page ten every time – not defeated by the page numbered ten, but by the time I’d got through ten pages I was sunk. Confused? You should try reading the book. You can’t imagine confusion if you haven’t – haven’t read the book, not haven’t imagined confusion. The question is, Is it a book about a gathering after a funeral, or are the pages containing the words a vessel that leaves a line of disturbance across the otherwise calm surface of oceanic consciousness? That’s why I asked if you’d ever swum in it Finnegan’s wake.
A friend gave it to me as a talking book – four CDs in all. I left it until I had time to do nothing but listen to the whole thing straight through – something that, in retrospect, I could have done at any time, just by taking a day off, but, you know how it is when what you’re doing each day seems like it has to be done on that day, which leaves no room for things that might change your world… Well in early February, an opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it with both hands, not realising the convulsive effect the book would have on me. On my second trip to Sydney in a month (this time driving rather than flying – flying is such an effort!), I took the Wake and a number of other discs. About three hours into the twelve hour journey southward, I put the first disc on thinking that I would sample it for a while. Within minutes I was hooked, and didn’t stop listening until I had played all four discs. By then I was on the Bells Line of Road – a mere 100 kilometres from my destination – which was actually Blackheath, in case you’re wondering why I would be trying to get to Sydney on that road. But, hey! Hold that thought. What sort of experience would you be having if you were trying to get to Sydney on a road that goes through the Blue Mountains?
The first thing I noticed about the Wake, the first time I tried to read it, way back in 1973, was Joyce’s idiosyncratic use of language. Having read his other two books, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, I knew that he wrote “proper English” if I can put it that way, so I concluded that he had written the Wake in an Irish idiom, which would be “proper Irish”. But it wasn’t long before he was using words without regard for their meaning, and sometimes just making them up, and I thought, Well, he is Irish – the Irish make a lot of stuff up – and a fair few stuff ups too (unlike, say, the Americans who always tell the truth and never do wrong.) This much I could cope with. It was sort of charming, you know…. quaint. But the thing that defeated me was, what I thought at the time to be the excruciating complexity of his sentences. Not that I’ve changed my mind on that, mind you. I had encountered this to some extent in Ulysses, which is renowned for, among other things, containing the longest sentence in the English language. But in the Wake you won’t find a sentence under three hundred words. Actually, I just made that up, but my point stands – if points, which are one dimensional, can exhibit the properties of two dimensional phenomena. As if the complexity of his sentences isn’t enough to put mortal readers off, Joyce also throws in digressions, asides, culdesacs and all manner of verbal sleights of hand that, if I can put it this way, that transform what might be described, metaphorically, as the landscape into a dreamscape. Being a poor reader – I can’t read any faster than I speak – I was mightily frustrated and eventually gave the book to someone I didn’t like, saying, Here, this is right up your alley. And so it was. I heard peals of laughter coming from his room for months afterwards. I often wondered what the fruit tasted like. All the same, I knew from the enthusiasm of other people for the book, that it had to have something special going for it, so when the opportunity to listen to it, rather than read it, came my way, I was on – or in… or something – but definitely not out. Though I was about to be bowled over.
My first impression, as I listened, was that he (the voice of the book) wasn’t saying anything coherent at all. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs (you can tell I had a good primary education) tumbled out upon tumbled each other tumbled sonorously hypnotically tumbling teasing cuddling wobbling until tickled laughing heaven sent burst asunder. I kid you not. At first I wasn’t sure if it was safe to keep driving. The intoxication of apparent nonsense was intoxicating – absolutely! And that’s not a tautology or an oxymoron. Actually, I must tell you about the very first time I came across that word. I was on a ten day hike across the Three Passes Track in the Southern Alps of new Zealand, reading a book in which the word was used, and I …. oops, should I be doing this – oh what the heck…. anyway, I asked the team leader, What’s an oxymoron – team leaders, as you would expect, know things like that. He asked me if I had studied at Oxford. Not yet, I said. Well, he replied, When you do you will be. It took me a while. Now back to intoxication. The extraordinary thing about what I was hearing was that even though it made no sense at all, it was absolutely riveting. I couldn’t take my ears off it. After about half an hour the thought occurred to me that surely this could not go on for four whole discs. And if it did, surely it could not sustain my interest. But I was having too much fun to be bothered wondering sensible sensibilities sensibly. So I just splashed arrollinground diving and soarleaping gleegigglingfully at how sillythingsooth the sound of the words worth more than daffodils – or daffy dills, for that matter – were. Perhaps you get the picture. Oh, and by the way, it does go on in that vein (or simthing somilar)for four whole discs, praise be the morning and the evening and everything between in both directions.
Are you still with me? It was about half way through the second disc that the penny dropped - or was it an apple – and if an apple, the apple that Eve gave Adam, or Isaac Newton’s proof of gravity – or even the Surly Pom of Avignon – that what I was listening to was actually a SONG!! Let’s put it to the test. Toast and marmalade for tea Sailing ships upon the sea aren't lovelier than you All the games I see you play... Get my point? Only there’s a bit more to James Joyce than Tin Tin (you can tell I don’t like post-modernism). I mean, it did hold my attention for nine hours. Which led me to the conclusion that this is not just a song, but an EPIC song. You know, Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Man from Snowy River. I kid you now. Another way of putting it might be that it is a cathedral rose window – perhaps in the style Miro or Dali rather than the medieval masters. In other words, it is not comprehended merely be reading or even hearing the words on the page.
There is a tradition called Bloom’s Day(16 June). Devotees gather in a pub in the very early hours, long before it is opened to the general public, and they begin reading Joyce’s Ulysses, taking turns and quaffing stout in between and almost certainly during; and they don’t stop until they have finished, long after the pub has closed. Change the venue. Change the Book. Change the epoch. And what have you got? The Hebrews gathered in a tent or the temple reading, nay, solemnly singing, Deuteronomy. This, I believe, is the way to attend Finnegan’s Wake. But not, surely, with the pious grimness of a reading of the Pentateuch. Indeed.
Go jollily. That’s what I always say – or would if I always said anything. It’s the meaning of life. And it’s what the Wake is about – I think. Just ask the laughing Buddha, or the man who “turned water into wine” – now there’s a story untold because told badly. As tribes gather to sing their continuity, or to contemplate the rose window of their cathedral, so gathers the tribe of Jolly to roll in the aisles, split their sides, laugh their heads off, die laughing, or, to put it simply, to express amusement by smiling and emitting loud inarticulate sounds. Well, compared with the figures of speech that preceded it, the dictionary definition of cachinnate is putting it simply. But I digress. The truly awesome thing about the Wake is that it gets as close as possible to being inarticulate sounds without actually being inarticulate at all, in any way, or anything like it – to put not too fine a point on it, if you get what I mean, or not. The words, most of them, are know to everyone. They have meanings. But the complexity of the sentences requires heroic concentration to retain the point that is being made, a task made nearly impossible by attention the components – words, phrases clauses – draw to themselves because they are so amusing. While the result is not incoherence, it is might as well be, because the thrust of what is being said is deliberately concealed by unrelenting mirth – not unlike the way a dream presents familiar sights that don’t make any sense at all – especially if remembered awake. A wake!? Oh, awake!
Like a liturgy, recited repeatedly for a whole lifetime, gradually letting participants into mystery, the Wake may be the book we should be reading on Blooms Day. We should probably expect that even a heroic effort to grasp the point of each sentence will not be enough. For, in the end, even a complete grasp of what every sentence says may actually conceal what the Wake has to offer. I suspect this because after listening to the whole thing twice, I began a third listening, shutting out the amusement at the surface, concentrating on the flow in order to grasp whole sentences. And I succeeded for several minutes, only to notice the fractal properties of the Wake. The mirth that is immediately seen in the components of sentences reappears when the sense of what is being said in several sentences taken together is grasped. If this is so, I think that there is little point in heroic effort, for even if one grasped the whole book as a single wave form, the shape would be as it is at the surface. The point would seem to be, therefore, just to enjoy, but enjoy in company – as in a wake. And let the enjoyment carry you into what words alone cannot express. Deeper, deeper as you go, and when you reach the end start again, and again. I wonder…
A friend gave it to me as a talking book – four CDs in all. I left it until I had time to do nothing but listen to the whole thing straight through – something that, in retrospect, I could have done at any time, just by taking a day off, but, you know how it is when what you’re doing each day seems like it has to be done on that day, which leaves no room for things that might change your world… Well in early February, an opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it with both hands, not realising the convulsive effect the book would have on me. On my second trip to Sydney in a month (this time driving rather than flying – flying is such an effort!), I took the Wake and a number of other discs. About three hours into the twelve hour journey southward, I put the first disc on thinking that I would sample it for a while. Within minutes I was hooked, and didn’t stop listening until I had played all four discs. By then I was on the Bells Line of Road – a mere 100 kilometres from my destination – which was actually Blackheath, in case you’re wondering why I would be trying to get to Sydney on that road. But, hey! Hold that thought. What sort of experience would you be having if you were trying to get to Sydney on a road that goes through the Blue Mountains?
The first thing I noticed about the Wake, the first time I tried to read it, way back in 1973, was Joyce’s idiosyncratic use of language. Having read his other two books, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, I knew that he wrote “proper English” if I can put it that way, so I concluded that he had written the Wake in an Irish idiom, which would be “proper Irish”. But it wasn’t long before he was using words without regard for their meaning, and sometimes just making them up, and I thought, Well, he is Irish – the Irish make a lot of stuff up – and a fair few stuff ups too (unlike, say, the Americans who always tell the truth and never do wrong.) This much I could cope with. It was sort of charming, you know…. quaint. But the thing that defeated me was, what I thought at the time to be the excruciating complexity of his sentences. Not that I’ve changed my mind on that, mind you. I had encountered this to some extent in Ulysses, which is renowned for, among other things, containing the longest sentence in the English language. But in the Wake you won’t find a sentence under three hundred words. Actually, I just made that up, but my point stands – if points, which are one dimensional, can exhibit the properties of two dimensional phenomena. As if the complexity of his sentences isn’t enough to put mortal readers off, Joyce also throws in digressions, asides, culdesacs and all manner of verbal sleights of hand that, if I can put it this way, that transform what might be described, metaphorically, as the landscape into a dreamscape. Being a poor reader – I can’t read any faster than I speak – I was mightily frustrated and eventually gave the book to someone I didn’t like, saying, Here, this is right up your alley. And so it was. I heard peals of laughter coming from his room for months afterwards. I often wondered what the fruit tasted like. All the same, I knew from the enthusiasm of other people for the book, that it had to have something special going for it, so when the opportunity to listen to it, rather than read it, came my way, I was on – or in… or something – but definitely not out. Though I was about to be bowled over.
My first impression, as I listened, was that he (the voice of the book) wasn’t saying anything coherent at all. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs (you can tell I had a good primary education) tumbled out upon tumbled each other tumbled sonorously hypnotically tumbling teasing cuddling wobbling until tickled laughing heaven sent burst asunder. I kid you not. At first I wasn’t sure if it was safe to keep driving. The intoxication of apparent nonsense was intoxicating – absolutely! And that’s not a tautology or an oxymoron. Actually, I must tell you about the very first time I came across that word. I was on a ten day hike across the Three Passes Track in the Southern Alps of new Zealand, reading a book in which the word was used, and I …. oops, should I be doing this – oh what the heck…. anyway, I asked the team leader, What’s an oxymoron – team leaders, as you would expect, know things like that. He asked me if I had studied at Oxford. Not yet, I said. Well, he replied, When you do you will be. It took me a while. Now back to intoxication. The extraordinary thing about what I was hearing was that even though it made no sense at all, it was absolutely riveting. I couldn’t take my ears off it. After about half an hour the thought occurred to me that surely this could not go on for four whole discs. And if it did, surely it could not sustain my interest. But I was having too much fun to be bothered wondering sensible sensibilities sensibly. So I just splashed arrollinground diving and soarleaping gleegigglingfully at how sillythingsooth the sound of the words worth more than daffodils – or daffy dills, for that matter – were. Perhaps you get the picture. Oh, and by the way, it does go on in that vein (or simthing somilar)for four whole discs, praise be the morning and the evening and everything between in both directions.
Are you still with me? It was about half way through the second disc that the penny dropped - or was it an apple – and if an apple, the apple that Eve gave Adam, or Isaac Newton’s proof of gravity – or even the Surly Pom of Avignon – that what I was listening to was actually a SONG!! Let’s put it to the test. Toast and marmalade for tea Sailing ships upon the sea aren't lovelier than you All the games I see you play... Get my point? Only there’s a bit more to James Joyce than Tin Tin (you can tell I don’t like post-modernism). I mean, it did hold my attention for nine hours. Which led me to the conclusion that this is not just a song, but an EPIC song. You know, Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Man from Snowy River. I kid you now. Another way of putting it might be that it is a cathedral rose window – perhaps in the style Miro or Dali rather than the medieval masters. In other words, it is not comprehended merely be reading or even hearing the words on the page.
There is a tradition called Bloom’s Day(16 June). Devotees gather in a pub in the very early hours, long before it is opened to the general public, and they begin reading Joyce’s Ulysses, taking turns and quaffing stout in between and almost certainly during; and they don’t stop until they have finished, long after the pub has closed. Change the venue. Change the Book. Change the epoch. And what have you got? The Hebrews gathered in a tent or the temple reading, nay, solemnly singing, Deuteronomy. This, I believe, is the way to attend Finnegan’s Wake. But not, surely, with the pious grimness of a reading of the Pentateuch. Indeed.
Go jollily. That’s what I always say – or would if I always said anything. It’s the meaning of life. And it’s what the Wake is about – I think. Just ask the laughing Buddha, or the man who “turned water into wine” – now there’s a story untold because told badly. As tribes gather to sing their continuity, or to contemplate the rose window of their cathedral, so gathers the tribe of Jolly to roll in the aisles, split their sides, laugh their heads off, die laughing, or, to put it simply, to express amusement by smiling and emitting loud inarticulate sounds. Well, compared with the figures of speech that preceded it, the dictionary definition of cachinnate is putting it simply. But I digress. The truly awesome thing about the Wake is that it gets as close as possible to being inarticulate sounds without actually being inarticulate at all, in any way, or anything like it – to put not too fine a point on it, if you get what I mean, or not. The words, most of them, are know to everyone. They have meanings. But the complexity of the sentences requires heroic concentration to retain the point that is being made, a task made nearly impossible by attention the components – words, phrases clauses – draw to themselves because they are so amusing. While the result is not incoherence, it is might as well be, because the thrust of what is being said is deliberately concealed by unrelenting mirth – not unlike the way a dream presents familiar sights that don’t make any sense at all – especially if remembered awake. A wake!? Oh, awake!
Like a liturgy, recited repeatedly for a whole lifetime, gradually letting participants into mystery, the Wake may be the book we should be reading on Blooms Day. We should probably expect that even a heroic effort to grasp the point of each sentence will not be enough. For, in the end, even a complete grasp of what every sentence says may actually conceal what the Wake has to offer. I suspect this because after listening to the whole thing twice, I began a third listening, shutting out the amusement at the surface, concentrating on the flow in order to grasp whole sentences. And I succeeded for several minutes, only to notice the fractal properties of the Wake. The mirth that is immediately seen in the components of sentences reappears when the sense of what is being said in several sentences taken together is grasped. If this is so, I think that there is little point in heroic effort, for even if one grasped the whole book as a single wave form, the shape would be as it is at the surface. The point would seem to be, therefore, just to enjoy, but enjoy in company – as in a wake. And let the enjoyment carry you into what words alone cannot express. Deeper, deeper as you go, and when you reach the end start again, and again. I wonder…
2008 February Bulletin
Greetings. We wish you interesting times – as …..
Chinese New Year approaches, and our Christmas is finally over. We have had a continuous stream of visitors since Boxing Day (which I am reliably informed is the day on which the first Christian martyr – St Stephen – got stoned. Stoned!??????? Oh, Stooooned – not, you know… stoned? Amazing what interesting bits of useless information find their way into these bulletins.)
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. I have not included my account of it here because it’s over 1000 words. If you want to read about it, See the bolg post below.
You may not believe this, but I ventured recently into the murky business of sports commentary. I was so incensed by the stupidity of the secret monkey business that I had to have my say. See the blog if you are interested. It’s called Coming cricket or not and is about how India won the toss. It’s three posts after the Sydney trip.
There’s a new book out by the sociologist John Carroll called The Existential Jesus. So? Well, I know most people would think they are not interested, but once you know what it’s about I think you might be curious, at least. Here’s the link to the transcript of the program on which the book was discussed.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2120659.htm#transcript
The choir has most of its material for Concert 2008. It’s quite different this year – no more church music. We’re doing a number of Opera Choruses, during which there will be slides to illustrate contemporary issues. For those who know about Opera, we are doing choruses from Dido and Aeneas, Nabucco, Carmen, Orpheus, and a piece in which the choir master has put music to a scene in Beckett’s Murder in the Cathedral. All very heavy stuff – even the Carmen piece (the Habanera) which is about playing with fire.
Finally, there’s pictures of the Sydney trip on Flickr. Don’t get excited, we didn’t do a systematic record of the trip. It was random shots here and there of this and that, some of which I photoshopped into… you know… um, art. Here’s the link if you want to look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
By the way, photos of our Wooli holiday will be up soon. So much to do, so few lives to do it in.
John is returning to TAFE this year to do the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. Did I mention that he got a credit in his diploma? All the rest were distinctions. Thought I’d mention it again, just in case … you know …
Happy year of the Rat!
Bliss the day!!
Chinese New Year approaches, and our Christmas is finally over. We have had a continuous stream of visitors since Boxing Day (which I am reliably informed is the day on which the first Christian martyr – St Stephen – got stoned. Stoned!??????? Oh, Stooooned – not, you know… stoned? Amazing what interesting bits of useless information find their way into these bulletins.)
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. I have not included my account of it here because it’s over 1000 words. If you want to read about it, See the bolg post below.
You may not believe this, but I ventured recently into the murky business of sports commentary. I was so incensed by the stupidity of the secret monkey business that I had to have my say. See the blog if you are interested. It’s called Coming cricket or not and is about how India won the toss. It’s three posts after the Sydney trip.
There’s a new book out by the sociologist John Carroll called The Existential Jesus. So? Well, I know most people would think they are not interested, but once you know what it’s about I think you might be curious, at least. Here’s the link to the transcript of the program on which the book was discussed.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2120659.htm#transcript
The choir has most of its material for Concert 2008. It’s quite different this year – no more church music. We’re doing a number of Opera Choruses, during which there will be slides to illustrate contemporary issues. For those who know about Opera, we are doing choruses from Dido and Aeneas, Nabucco, Carmen, Orpheus, and a piece in which the choir master has put music to a scene in Beckett’s Murder in the Cathedral. All very heavy stuff – even the Carmen piece (the Habanera) which is about playing with fire.
Finally, there’s pictures of the Sydney trip on Flickr. Don’t get excited, we didn’t do a systematic record of the trip. It was random shots here and there of this and that, some of which I photoshopped into… you know… um, art. Here’s the link if you want to look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
By the way, photos of our Wooli holiday will be up soon. So much to do, so few lives to do it in.
John is returning to TAFE this year to do the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. Did I mention that he got a credit in his diploma? All the rest were distinctions. Thought I’d mention it again, just in case … you know …
Happy year of the Rat!
Bliss the day!!
Thursday 7 February 2008
Sydney Visit January 2008
We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. He was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE in a state wide exhibition of graduating ceramics diplomats. We visited our friend Elfriede in an aged care hostel as soon as we arrived. As on previous occasions, she did not look like she was enjoying the tele when we arrived, but her look of thunderous denial transformed into sheer delight and utter surprise when she recognised us. We took her to lunch at the local soccer club. Her appetite for Chinese has not diminished one bit. She offered to carry our bags for the rest of our trip, and back to Mullumbimby as well, but we, regrettably, had to decline her offer. We left her at the hostel and headed to the Blue Mountains, where we stayed with Steve, a potter friend of John’s (Trish was off rowing in Tamworth.) Dinner was grilled snapper and mango salsa. Yuuum. Next morning it was back down to Gomorrah. I remember thinking as we trained past some of the ugliest urban clutter imaginable (well, in this country, anyway) that the people who live there must think they have no choice. And I thought of our friend in the hostel (who really does not have a choice) yet who keeps herself looking like she’s ready to meet that new man who will sweep her up in his arms and…. and I realised that she does not live without hope. Next stop was the hotel we booked on the internet the night before we left. The picture was of one of those grand old palaces on Broadway. When we got there, the hotel was actually in the building next door. You can guess the rest, but at least the room was clean. John thinks it is probably a brothel. We did a lot of walking in Sydney – in the RAIN!! Did someone say drought a few months ago? Gosh, if only we had one day to dry the washing! Anyway, after taking the train to Bondi Junction we found ourselves in my old stamping ground – where I lived in my misspent youth, before I went soldiering. I really could not recognise the place, but the food we had in the Oxford Street Market was really nice. From there we walked to a gallery at Charing Cross (hey, we’re still in Sydney at this point – not London!) where John made a new best friend who sooooooo wants his work. Actually, I saw some work there (2D) that I really liked, but I remembered just in time that we don’t have any spare wall space. Back to the hotel and on to the Clay Workers Gallery in Glebe for the opening, on the way to which I was startled to find myself walking along William Henry Street, another place of misspent youthfulness (as distinct from youth) which is mentioned in one of last year’s blog entries. The opening went like a Harley… (remember this one from last time I used it?)... better than a Triumph. John’s work was right in the centre of the very small room with the work of six other graduates from across NSW. I liked the work of two of the others; the remaining four were clearly competent and probably very good – they had to be to be there – but did not grab me. One of them in particular, stuff about mermaids, made me homesick for Byron Bay. Um, actually that would be more sick than home, and I don’t mean sick the way a twenty-something would. The artiste arrived fashionably late and before she got through the door John said “Here comes the mermaid.” Yep, it were her. We were joined at the opening by Steve and Suzie, another potter friend, also from the mountains, with her husband and son who is starting this year at East Sydney Tech – now the National Art School – where I spent three weeks in that misspent youth alluded to earlier. We all adjourned to one of the plethora of restaurants in Glebe for a post show knees up. Good food, goof fun, good night… well, not so fast, because afterwards we walked back to our hotel through the most astounding variety of night life. I thought about the bleak back yards we looked into on the train and realised that what I was seeing in Glebe-by-night was probably what people who live in the Grimlands see themselves as being part of. To some extent they would be right. Living in Mullumbimby means that we could only ever be tourists in the fleshpots of Gomorrah. Frankly, we have the better deal, but I could handle living nearby in the mountains – back to which we headed the next morning, to stay with Suzie and Don, who, being political animals, were still partying post-election. We were joined for dinner by my friend Penny, who on account of John Howard’s inflation rate, is now probably Tuppence or maybe Threepence or even Sixpence. We dined on a delicious beef ragout followed by melt-in-the-mouth meringues. Yahoo!! Mountain Due!!! Next day it was back down the mountain and off to the Art Gallery of NSW. We deposited our bags in a locker at a backpackers joint – Central railway station no longer has lockers as a precaution against terrorism – and went to China Town for Yum Cha – um, that should be Yum Yum Cha. We took the train to St James and walked through one of the many underground walkways in which we had encountered buskers, some of them really good – one of them astonishing – and from there across Hyde Park, past the Archibald fountain and St Mary’s Cathedral, both places I frequented in that aforementioned youth, to the Domain, where a lone soap box haranguer lectured himself on some obscure issue; and, finally, we arrived at the Gallery, guarded by heroic horsemen of romantic antiquity, where we took in the Sidney Nolan Retrospective. Wow!! And other shows, during which I realised that merely being a tourist in Gomorrah has its drawbacks. The taxi driver who took us the very long way to the airport to catch our return flight lives in Ocean Shores half the year and Sydney the other half. The conversation was a revelation. I can’t remember what about, but it was. Our plane was delayed by a storm, and when we did finally get on board, we were delayed a further 90 minutes because they couldn’t get fuel – the depot had been struck by lightning: so they said, anyway – I didn’t believe them – I reckon it was because all departures had to be rescheduled. We arrived at the Gold Coast with not enough time for the plane to return to Sydney before the curfew. You may have heard that the same thing happened again in Sydney a couple of weeks later and the passengers, instead of being accommodated in a hotel were turfed out onto the street for the night. Jet Staaaaaaaaar!! Oh and Macquarie Baaaaaaank – who own Sydney airport!! Ah, capitalism.
2008 January Bulletin
Ra-a-aaaain!
Raaaain comin’ down on the caaaane,
And the roooooves of the town!!
That’s from a song…
Ummm, Hello there…
about … well, rain; written on a farm near Innisfail, the wettest town in Australia – and possibly the world if you live there – in the late seventies, by the members of a theatre troupe making a big splash in North Queensland at the time. I wonder what happened to them – and to the rain that was so ubiquitous, all along the east coast in those days, yet has been so sporadic of late that the most recent rain event seemed almost apocalyptic. Indeed, it did bring flooding to many places all around us, but we were not directly affected by it. In fact, we had the luxury of actually enjoying it – waking up at night, hearing the drone of heaven on the roof and slipping back into sleep with a smile, remembering childhood; bringing out warmer clothing than we would normally wear at this time of the year and thanking the heavens, literally, that it wasn’t the usual 40 degrees for Christmas; and occasionally during the day… did I say day... it went on for daze… just sitting and listening to it, and at other times just sitting listening to the silence when it wasn’t there; and listening to the frogs and crickets; and remembering again and again that this is how it used to be; and wondering… dreaming of cyclones. (see The celebration of Cyclone Dreaming No 2. 10 May 2007)
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye. I won’t regale you with the details here, but if you can believe that there would be anything worth saying about I spy and another game called Buzz, see my blog.
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
A number of people have told me there’s nothing on the disc of the concert. Trust me, there is. The problem is incompatible technologies. It happened to us once on a CD player that we bought in the mid nineties – old !!??!! technology – but I had forgotten about it, because we no longer use a CD player to play CDs. We use a DVD player. When we went to replace our old player we were advised to buy a DVD player instead – much cheaper than the “genuine part” if I can put it that way. So if you have a DVD player, pop the disc in as though you are going to watch a movie on your TV. The disc will play through your TV speakers. The disc will probably also work in your car player, though that may also depend on how old the car (or player) is.
Hope your year is better than any previous.
Bliss the day!!
Raaaain comin’ down on the caaaane,
And the roooooves of the town!!
That’s from a song…
Ummm, Hello there…
about … well, rain; written on a farm near Innisfail, the wettest town in Australia – and possibly the world if you live there – in the late seventies, by the members of a theatre troupe making a big splash in North Queensland at the time. I wonder what happened to them – and to the rain that was so ubiquitous, all along the east coast in those days, yet has been so sporadic of late that the most recent rain event seemed almost apocalyptic. Indeed, it did bring flooding to many places all around us, but we were not directly affected by it. In fact, we had the luxury of actually enjoying it – waking up at night, hearing the drone of heaven on the roof and slipping back into sleep with a smile, remembering childhood; bringing out warmer clothing than we would normally wear at this time of the year and thanking the heavens, literally, that it wasn’t the usual 40 degrees for Christmas; and occasionally during the day… did I say day... it went on for daze… just sitting and listening to it, and at other times just sitting listening to the silence when it wasn’t there; and listening to the frogs and crickets; and remembering again and again that this is how it used to be; and wondering… dreaming of cyclones. (see The celebration of Cyclone Dreaming No 2. 10 May 2007)
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye. I won’t regale you with the details here, but if you can believe that there would be anything worth saying about I spy and another game called Buzz, see my blog.
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
A number of people have told me there’s nothing on the disc of the concert. Trust me, there is. The problem is incompatible technologies. It happened to us once on a CD player that we bought in the mid nineties – old !!??!! technology – but I had forgotten about it, because we no longer use a CD player to play CDs. We use a DVD player. When we went to replace our old player we were advised to buy a DVD player instead – much cheaper than the “genuine part” if I can put it that way. So if you have a DVD player, pop the disc in as though you are going to watch a movie on your TV. The disc will play through your TV speakers. The disc will probably also work in your car player, though that may also depend on how old the car (or player) is.
Hope your year is better than any previous.
Bliss the day!!
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