Sunday, September 27, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
insomniacs' reading material ...
i've been chortling a lot in the wee small hours
i share my father's crude tastes in literature and the visual arts, hard-wired in to my DNA
he recommended schweik when i was very young
but he can't have had the pleasure of reading cecil parrot's definitive 1973 translation
of course, before you read hasek's satire/comical digression, you'll need to set aside all of your sober attitudes, based on having read robert graves and/or siegfried sassoon, edward thomas and/or wilfred owen
maybe hasek's closest connections in british literary culture might be laurence sterne and/or spike milligan
what do you think ?
2013 gyama valley mine disaster ... i've been looking at satellite images of the area made for google earth since the disaster two years ago ... there's a toolbar app that enables you to compare earlier images ... they've put in a new dam and a filter bed .... further downstream, there's a brand new village and the old one has been abandoned
1. the landslip went from left to right ...
2. the mine company have recently dammed the valley at the toe end of the landslip and it looks as if they're using a new filter bed and a tailing pond to either/and/or collect salvageable mineral assets, and/or protect the river from further pollution, which was already dreadful
3. at the bottom of the valley, the small village at the confluence seems to have been deserted, and a new settlement has appeared ... but i don't know if it's for the local people or the chinese miners
a hostile account of the disaster's causes has been published which includes interesting but unsurprising theories about the tax status of the company's chinese investors
http://www.tibetnature.net/en/assessment-report-of-the-recent-landslide-event-in-the-gyama-valley/
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/polluted-08052015161804.html
2. the mine company have recently dammed the valley at the toe end of the landslip and it looks as if they're using a new filter bed and a tailing pond to either/and/or collect salvageable mineral assets, and/or protect the river from further pollution, which was already dreadful
3. at the bottom of the valley, the small village at the confluence seems to have been deserted, and a new settlement has appeared ... but i don't know if it's for the local people or the chinese miners
a hostile account of the disaster's causes has been published which includes interesting but unsurprising theories about the tax status of the company's chinese investors
http://www.tibetnature.net/en/assessment-report-of-the-recent-landslide-event-in-the-gyama-valley/
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/polluted-08052015161804.html
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Thursday, September 3, 2015
3BT ... in one minute !
I am driving the truck towards the De Vere Hotel at Betchworth, approached through narrow leafy lanes at first, and then on a winding road that leads to the old house along a low ridge. There are some fine old trees here and there, and well mown lawns fall away on either side.
ONE. A crab apple tree, well rounded, maybe twelve feet high, festooned with fruit that are pale yellow with rosy pink cheeks. As the truck appears, so there emerge about a dozen emerald green parakeets who break away in an explosion of startling and scintillating action.
TWO. A small lime tree, maybe twenty feet high, its branches stooping low, heavily speckled with pale winged fruit. Beneath it , four rosy ruddy jays who quickly fly up in a little spiral around the tree trunk and disappear in to its crown.
THREE. Across and along the curved horizon of the lawn, which is very bright green against darker distant trees, comes a green woodpecker in its fast flight of short bursts and swoops, stopping suddenly to march about rarther pompously and poke his beak deep down in search of whatever.
ONE. A crab apple tree, well rounded, maybe twelve feet high, festooned with fruit that are pale yellow with rosy pink cheeks. As the truck appears, so there emerge about a dozen emerald green parakeets who break away in an explosion of startling and scintillating action.
TWO. A small lime tree, maybe twenty feet high, its branches stooping low, heavily speckled with pale winged fruit. Beneath it , four rosy ruddy jays who quickly fly up in a little spiral around the tree trunk and disappear in to its crown.
THREE. Across and along the curved horizon of the lawn, which is very bright green against darker distant trees, comes a green woodpecker in its fast flight of short bursts and swoops, stopping suddenly to march about rarther pompously and poke his beak deep down in search of whatever.
Monday, August 31, 2015
The last Bank Holiday before Christmas ...
its four-thirty ... i've been up for more than three hours, woken by thirst and by the stiffness that creeps in to and cramps my lower back when i lay still for too long. Hoping to induce further sleep, i made a sandwich and a mug of cocoa fortified with spanish brandy ... Torres Diez. No luck, and so i cast my gaze over the sitting room bookshelf wondering if i might discover comfort in some ancient favourite. But my eye and my heart cannot agree and the shelf-scanning takes on a kind of anxiety and urgency until an expressionless little grey face looks right through me from the spine of a book which had somehow hidden itself in plain view at the very far end of a shelf. I recognized a book I'd found in the Reigate Oxfam; the fading receipt was still pressed inside the cover, 29th November, 2013, £1.50, Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. A forbidding cover, a sober sounding name, the author a dead German who had worked in England. Yet countless living writers have praised him whilst i've been avoiding our first meeting, fearful of a debilitating encounter with pain and misery. Rightly ! But beyond that, he illuminates and affirms the principle that "knowing" and "understanding" are all we have to buttress and support the assailable fortress of the "soul". Now why would i give such a four letter word the respectability of becoming a Noun as well as an abstraction ? The Soul ? Souls can only exist in my imagination, and yours, innit ? But if we have to honour the notion of souls, how much time can we afford to waste in contemplation and speculation about their substance, their improbability ? Whoa ! Here come the armies of dead writers whose only legacy is an array of fictional souls, seen through the wobbly prism of the printed alphabet and the empty spaces between their words and sentences in which we hang our own imaginings like so much laundry, etc, etc. But i digress ! ...
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
joseph cornell at the Royal Academy ...
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/joseph-cornell
i loved it
if you do get a chance to see it, be sure to take your most powerful reading glasses
then you can get as up close and personal with the material as the artist must have been
other people's aesthetics .... i find myself gobsmacked pretty often by the sophistication of objects whose meaning is hidden from me .... here are some mayan heiroglyphics
https://decipherment.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/the-nomenclature-of-la-corona-sculpture/
its part of what was once a heiroglyphic stairway in guatemala, sadly looted and dispersed
http://www.mesoweb.com/LaCorona/LaCoronaNotes03.pdf
https://decipherment.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/preliminary-notes-on-two-recently-discovered-inscriptions-from-la-corona-guatemala/
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Saturday, August 8, 2015
up before dawn and have just read the first chapters, and am hooked ...
... then i went back to a really deep sleep for an hour and i dreamed one of those dreams that wakes you up because you know it has a "meaning" and a "message", and it reflects some deeply buried and unfinished business from long ago ... oh. well ! you can't hope to resolve the whole of your past into neat rows of brightly coloured picture book stories with happy endings ... can you ?
postscript .... the novel narrates a series of truly horrid and gruesome events as experienced by a mixed bunch of heroin addicts whose lives intersect in bombay ... at the same time it examines the purpose and tenacity of people's so-called free will in a modern city ... the writing is transparent and i am very pleased to have encountered it ... three hurrahs !
Sunday, August 2, 2015
miguel and magdalena by the old main road at lagartera
thirty years ago, just after semana santa
they lived in the middle of spain but they had seasonal jobs on the coast
they were waiting for a bus that would take them back to ? lloret de mar ? overnight
they didn't want to go, and tears had begun to fill their eyes
Sunday, July 19, 2015
imtiaz dharker ... how did i not know this lady's work ?
Imtiaz Dharker
1977 (I am quite sure of this)
Some Glaswegians still speak of the Silver Jubilee
and the Queen's cavalcade sailing off
from George Square on a sea of Union Jacks.
Others recall that around the same time
the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen
was black-listed by the BBC
and the Queen's cavalcade sailing off
from George Square on a sea of Union Jacks.
Others recall that around the same time
the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen
was black-listed by the BBC
but what I remember is
that one night I danced in spangled
hotpants, with a boy in polyester
flares (I am quite sure of this),
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back.
that one night I danced in spangled
hotpants, with a boy in polyester
flares (I am quite sure of this),
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back.
Time is easily tangled. It falls over its own feet.
That year peeled itself as perfectly
as the rings around Uranus.
Smallpox was eradicated, miles of fibre optics
laid, personal computers offered to the masses.
People said it had never been so good
That year peeled itself as perfectly
as the rings around Uranus.
Smallpox was eradicated, miles of fibre optics
laid, personal computers offered to the masses.
People said it had never been so good
and what I remember is
the popcorn mix at Regal Cinema,
salt over sweet, the triumph of good
over evil, light-sabres slashing the air
in synchronised time, on track,
one step forward, one step back.
the popcorn mix at Regal Cinema,
salt over sweet, the triumph of good
over evil, light-sabres slashing the air
in synchronised time, on track,
one step forward, one step back.
People said it had never been so bad,
Bengal hit by a cyclone, snow in Miami,
New York plunged into darkness.
and out of the sky a fireball fell on Innisfree.
People said it was a sign. And that was the year
Steve Biko died.
Bengal hit by a cyclone, snow in Miami,
New York plunged into darkness.
and out of the sky a fireball fell on Innisfree.
People said it was a sign. And that was the year
Steve Biko died.
Other people died in other years, but that year
Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin died.
Jacques Prevert and Robert Lowell died.
In Memphis, Elvis died. Still,
someone called Roy Sullivan was struck
by lightning for the seventh time
and survived
Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin died.
Jacques Prevert and Robert Lowell died.
In Memphis, Elvis died. Still,
someone called Roy Sullivan was struck
by lightning for the seventh time
and survived
but because of the odd way time unfolds,
what I remember is the last few seconds,
the countdown under a glitterball
(I am quite sure of this),
light flashing in your eyes
and your hair as you moved
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back,
what I remember is the last few seconds,
the countdown under a glitterball
(I am quite sure of this),
light flashing in your eyes
and your hair as you moved
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back,
and ah, ah, ah, ah,
staying alive. Staying alive.
staying alive. Staying alive.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
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