not so much a blog as a static site about a new magazine. hmm, maybe. no payment, one assumes. no details of who actually puts it out, where it will be distributed, etc, etc.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
it seems writing is being made to fit into available time again instead of me finding time to write; not the way it's supposed to be.
and yes, I'm tired and not that well and have a small baby. but there have been excuses and wrong priorities all my life.
and yes, I'm tired and not that well and have a small baby. but there have been excuses and wrong priorities all my life.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
papyrus publishing have a comp I might enter
Italiano parlante
It has to be said, Mr Fred Simpson shocked his circle when he announced he’d decided to live in Italy.
“But you’re so settled here,” Miss Williams protested over bridge.
“Do you even speak the language?” his doctor asked as he inspected the backs of Mr Simpson’s hands with a magnifying glass.
“Dad, it’s so far away. And what if you get sick?” Vanessa asked on the phone that night.
“You won’t like it. Messy, disorganised place. Not your kind of thing,” his former secretary advised over tea the next day.
“We’ll miss you,” was all the woman from Meals on Wheels said at lunchtime. He could never remember her name.
But he stood firm. The wife and the cat were both in their graves; if there was ever a time to make a break, this was it.
“I’ve never been away from here, not once, not properly,” he told Miss Williams.
He said to the doctor’s shiny pate: “No, but I can learn.”
“I’ll get good insurance, and you can visit any time you like,” he promised his daughter.
He told his secretary it couldn’t possibly be that bad. “After all, Marion, they did invent the aqueduct. And those Roman roads! So straight! Besides, I’m sure things have improved since you were there. It’s the 21st century now. They’ll have modernised.”
He bought a bunch of violets for the Meals on Wheels woman but she was off sick on the last Friday he got the service, so he stuck them in his wife’s favourite crystal vase instead. No point wasting them on a ring-in; especially one who gave him sloppy grey chicken for the third time that week.
After lunch, he sat down and wrote a list of his reasons:
Warmer Weather
Italian Food (esp. osso bucco)
Art
Change of Scenery
Sophia Loren
Improving my Painting
The Challenge
Meeting new People
Satisfied he really was doing the right thing, Mr Simpson leaned back in his wife’s wing-backed brocade armchair and gazed at the afternoon light scattering in pieces from the sharp edges of the crystal vase. The scent of violets filled his head and he smiled.
He stayed in touch, of course. Vanessa received regular postcards showing masterpieces by Italian artists and idyllic country scenes. Sometimes the cards were home-made, photographs Mr Simpson had taken himself of the morning mist over yellowing rows of ancient grapevines, or particularly interesting and colourful mosaics he found on his walks around local streets.
He wrote that he was comfortable; had set himself up with a nice aspect and had thrown away all but one of his jumpers “for the impossibility of a chilly evening.” The house had been shabby, but he’d given it a coating of orange stucco (“sounds tacky, but it’s right for the light here”), the garden faced the sun, and he was doing well.
“I’m cultivating olives,” he wrote “and you should taste my minestrone. The Italians only eat it in winter – to use up all the dried beans and pasta.”
In summer he wrote of eating overripe tomatoes dressed with basil fresh from the herb garden, and of seeing Caravaggio’s Judith beheading Holofernes for the first time: “Vanessa, I had to sit down, it was so magnificent.” He began ending his notes with a cheery “Ciao!” and in their infrequent phone calls – no less often than before the move, though – she noticed odd grammatical slips, as though her Dad was forgetting his English. She hoped it was only that, at least.
What he didn’t mention to his daughter was his new companion, Maria. Vanessa didn’t need to know that her old Dad had taken up with a nut-coloured, chocolate-eyed, well-cushioned widow only ten years older than his daughter. It was Maria who showed him how to roll a perfect ball of gnocchi between the palms of his hands, to bite the tip off a strand of spaghetti to check if it was cooked (oh, those white teeth!). Maria would waddle down to the baker and the store each morning and come home with fresh crusty bread and a bottle of vino while Mr Simpson brewed the strong dark coffee Maria loved to drink all day.
Sometimes they’d dine out at the local restaurant, where Mr Simpson ordered calves’ liver and rabbit stews in his limited but ever-improving Italian, and Maria indulged in tiramisu and a glass of marsala.
She had a temper, his Italian lover, but he could almost enjoy her sudden rages and hot-blooded flounces and pouts; such a change after 40 years of Elizabeth’s cool, composed, near-invisible company.
In the evenings they’d play scratchy Mario Lanza, Vivaldi, Verdi and Puccini on the record player that had come with the house, sit on the terrace under the grapevines he’d planted the day he’d moved to Italy and savour the evening breeze as the Southern Cross twinkled overhead.
“Maria?”
“Si, Federico?”
“What do you think about moving to France next year? I hear the gallery’s having the Monets, and I’ve always wanted to learn to bake a soufflé. We could go truffle hunting in the woods together, drink Dom Perignon every night, feast on cheeses and learn the language of lovers. Will you come with me?”
“Oui, mon cherie.”
It has to be said, Mr Fred Simpson shocked his circle when he announced he’d decided to live in Italy.
“But you’re so settled here,” Miss Williams protested over bridge.
“Do you even speak the language?” his doctor asked as he inspected the backs of Mr Simpson’s hands with a magnifying glass.
“Dad, it’s so far away. And what if you get sick?” Vanessa asked on the phone that night.
“You won’t like it. Messy, disorganised place. Not your kind of thing,” his former secretary advised over tea the next day.
“We’ll miss you,” was all the woman from Meals on Wheels said at lunchtime. He could never remember her name.
But he stood firm. The wife and the cat were both in their graves; if there was ever a time to make a break, this was it.
“I’ve never been away from here, not once, not properly,” he told Miss Williams.
He said to the doctor’s shiny pate: “No, but I can learn.”
“I’ll get good insurance, and you can visit any time you like,” he promised his daughter.
He told his secretary it couldn’t possibly be that bad. “After all, Marion, they did invent the aqueduct. And those Roman roads! So straight! Besides, I’m sure things have improved since you were there. It’s the 21st century now. They’ll have modernised.”
He bought a bunch of violets for the Meals on Wheels woman but she was off sick on the last Friday he got the service, so he stuck them in his wife’s favourite crystal vase instead. No point wasting them on a ring-in; especially one who gave him sloppy grey chicken for the third time that week.
After lunch, he sat down and wrote a list of his reasons:
Warmer Weather
Italian Food (esp. osso bucco)
Art
Change of Scenery
Sophia Loren
Improving my Painting
The Challenge
Meeting new People
Satisfied he really was doing the right thing, Mr Simpson leaned back in his wife’s wing-backed brocade armchair and gazed at the afternoon light scattering in pieces from the sharp edges of the crystal vase. The scent of violets filled his head and he smiled.
He stayed in touch, of course. Vanessa received regular postcards showing masterpieces by Italian artists and idyllic country scenes. Sometimes the cards were home-made, photographs Mr Simpson had taken himself of the morning mist over yellowing rows of ancient grapevines, or particularly interesting and colourful mosaics he found on his walks around local streets.
He wrote that he was comfortable; had set himself up with a nice aspect and had thrown away all but one of his jumpers “for the impossibility of a chilly evening.” The house had been shabby, but he’d given it a coating of orange stucco (“sounds tacky, but it’s right for the light here”), the garden faced the sun, and he was doing well.
“I’m cultivating olives,” he wrote “and you should taste my minestrone. The Italians only eat it in winter – to use up all the dried beans and pasta.”
In summer he wrote of eating overripe tomatoes dressed with basil fresh from the herb garden, and of seeing Caravaggio’s Judith beheading Holofernes for the first time: “Vanessa, I had to sit down, it was so magnificent.” He began ending his notes with a cheery “Ciao!” and in their infrequent phone calls – no less often than before the move, though – she noticed odd grammatical slips, as though her Dad was forgetting his English. She hoped it was only that, at least.
What he didn’t mention to his daughter was his new companion, Maria. Vanessa didn’t need to know that her old Dad had taken up with a nut-coloured, chocolate-eyed, well-cushioned widow only ten years older than his daughter. It was Maria who showed him how to roll a perfect ball of gnocchi between the palms of his hands, to bite the tip off a strand of spaghetti to check if it was cooked (oh, those white teeth!). Maria would waddle down to the baker and the store each morning and come home with fresh crusty bread and a bottle of vino while Mr Simpson brewed the strong dark coffee Maria loved to drink all day.
Sometimes they’d dine out at the local restaurant, where Mr Simpson ordered calves’ liver and rabbit stews in his limited but ever-improving Italian, and Maria indulged in tiramisu and a glass of marsala.
She had a temper, his Italian lover, but he could almost enjoy her sudden rages and hot-blooded flounces and pouts; such a change after 40 years of Elizabeth’s cool, composed, near-invisible company.
In the evenings they’d play scratchy Mario Lanza, Vivaldi, Verdi and Puccini on the record player that had come with the house, sit on the terrace under the grapevines he’d planted the day he’d moved to Italy and savour the evening breeze as the Southern Cross twinkled overhead.
“Maria?”
“Si, Federico?”
“What do you think about moving to France next year? I hear the gallery’s having the Monets, and I’ve always wanted to learn to bake a soufflé. We could go truffle hunting in the woods together, drink Dom Perignon every night, feast on cheeses and learn the language of lovers. Will you come with me?”
“Oui, mon cherie.”
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
the desktop is fine. the server "backup" wiped my entire writing file. everything. my records. soft copies of everything I ever thought worth typing into a computer. the whole last three months' work. changes and refinements to stuff I do have in hard copy. additions to stuff I drafted in hard copy, typed in and kept going. thousands and thousands of words. dh cannot tell me (he's at work) whether there is any chance of getting it back. have I mentioned I'm ill? and have a small child? and do not have time, in each day or in total, to redo what I've already done. am I allowed to go insane now?
Sunday, March 06, 2005
rabbit
“That stuff about the road less traveled? What does it mean, anyway? Ever think there might be a reason one path wasn’t very popular?”
His nose twitched and he crossed his forepaws. “I’m just saying that maybe you’ve been overextending yourself a bit.” His head disappeared into the sleeping box and came out with a scrap of torn newspaper.
“Might be something of interest here for you. Got any more carrots?”
And that was the last X heard from him. He was a good listener though, the rabbit; something in the way he twitched and shook his great pendants of ears suggested to X that his problems were being taken seriously.
Every night from then on, X took Alby’s carrots out at sunset. He told the rabbit he’d applied for the design job he’d found on the yellowed newspaper, and when he was given an interview.
The night before the interview…
“That stuff about the road less traveled? What does it mean, anyway? Ever think there might be a reason one path wasn’t very popular?”
His nose twitched and he crossed his forepaws. “I’m just saying that maybe you’ve been overextending yourself a bit.” His head disappeared into the sleeping box and came out with a scrap of torn newspaper.
“Might be something of interest here for you. Got any more carrots?”
And that was the last X heard from him. He was a good listener though, the rabbit; something in the way he twitched and shook his great pendants of ears suggested to X that his problems were being taken seriously.
Every night from then on, X took Alby’s carrots out at sunset. He told the rabbit he’d applied for the design job he’d found on the yellowed newspaper, and when he was given an interview.
The night before the interview…
Regarding bamboo
each glass-shard leaf
redefines green
set at no other angle
than the right one.
The stabbing points echo bamboo spears.
I keep it confined,
pot-bound.
I’ve seen how it invades;
takes over whole backyards
even makes it inside
onto wallpaper
the pattern of the drapes,
insinuates itself as furniture,
picture frames,
handles for handbags.
(copies of which are sold for a tenth the price
in the markets of Hong Kong.)
Bamboo, in China, is serious business.
It grows to a height of 200 metres
or more
in elaborate criss-cross frameworks
inhabited by agile building workers,
covered up with cloth.
And when their work is done,
the bamboo falls away,
clattering to the street,
revealing itself
a womb
a cocoon
for a 21st century skyscraper
Pandas chow down
on rare and unusual varieties
as if there were no tomorrow
and there probably isn’t
for them.
It grow to a fractal blueprint
pointing leaf-arrows
east and west
at delicate angles
I can’t follow.
One hot day on Hong Kong island
I climbed down a narrow path
to the temple on the cliff.
Breathed incense;
bowed to foreign gods.
Water burbled from the spring
filled a bamboo tipper
and every 30 seconds
it chimed
struck wood on stone
emptied to the sea
and filled again.
I won’t go there again.
Hong Kong’s so far from Melbourne
where I wear black
don’t believe in spirits
and keep my bamboo in a pot
glazed blue as the deep ocean.
each glass-shard leaf
redefines green
set at no other angle
than the right one.
The stabbing points echo bamboo spears.
I keep it confined,
pot-bound.
I’ve seen how it invades;
takes over whole backyards
even makes it inside
onto wallpaper
the pattern of the drapes,
insinuates itself as furniture,
picture frames,
handles for handbags.
(copies of which are sold for a tenth the price
in the markets of Hong Kong.)
Bamboo, in China, is serious business.
It grows to a height of 200 metres
or more
in elaborate criss-cross frameworks
inhabited by agile building workers,
covered up with cloth.
And when their work is done,
the bamboo falls away,
clattering to the street,
revealing itself
a womb
a cocoon
for a 21st century skyscraper
Pandas chow down
on rare and unusual varieties
as if there were no tomorrow
and there probably isn’t
for them.
It grow to a fractal blueprint
pointing leaf-arrows
east and west
at delicate angles
I can’t follow.
One hot day on Hong Kong island
I climbed down a narrow path
to the temple on the cliff.
Breathed incense;
bowed to foreign gods.
Water burbled from the spring
filled a bamboo tipper
and every 30 seconds
it chimed
struck wood on stone
emptied to the sea
and filled again.
I won’t go there again.
Hong Kong’s so far from Melbourne
where I wear black
don’t believe in spirits
and keep my bamboo in a pot
glazed blue as the deep ocean.
our network's playing up, so I can't save stuff on the server. nor do I trust the desktop machine, which crashes frequently. so I'll have to post stuff here if I want to get any work done at all...
