Skip to main content

All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.


When I first moved to Hobart in the heady days of the mid-1990s, I used to have to walk up this lane carrying all of my groceries for the week. The lack of shorter alternative routes should explain the voice. Somewhat unwisely though, I also chose to jog up it every second day for "relaxation". It was an odd kind of folly, and demonstrates the extremes that vanity will drive us!

Go on, here's another one minute poem, this time penned at the bus stop.

indignation
get it?
got it.
et cetera

cornered into thinking
specified instructions
yeah...

and she can tell you
every detail

every fucking detail.

Comments

tony said…
The Devil's In The Detail!
Sue said…
You're a big strong boy...you could jog up that now with one boy on each arm and Jen on your back!!! hehehe??
stromsjo said…
I wonder what this lane would be like adding some of the ice we're currently struggling with on side-walks, parking lots or indeed bus stops. On second thought, I don't want to know. Some jogs are simply too exciting.
KL said…
Seems like a nice little place for some secret romance.
Anonymous said…
nice shot.. =)
Kris McCracken said…
Tony, bloody detail!
Kris McCracken said…
Sue, I struggled walking up with just me and the camera.
Kris McCracken said…
Per, we don't even get much of a frost here in Hobart, let alone ice!

I slipped and damaged my knee on a wet road not far from where this photo was taken, so I shudder to think how I would go in the snow.

Do people just use treadmills over there in winter (I would)?
Kris McCracken said…
KL, I'm sure that it happens.
stromsjo said…
Treadmills are certainly a safer alternative to jogging in an icy landscape. I guess they are becoming increasingly popular. Ice or no ice, it's cold and dark here for several months. Still, having finished a turn at the treadmill it's time to catch that bus by an icy pavement. There's no such thing as zero risk. The elderly are particularly vulnerable of course.
Kris McCracken said…
Per, I think that we often forget that side of living in a cold climate. It must get dangerous on the roads as well.

Popular posts from this blog

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...