Beauty and folly are old companions.

Careful now, men at work. A crane as seen from the corner of Liverpool and Argyle Streets, Hobart. January 2010.

I treat the discovery of somebody else’s library due date slip – now helpfully printed out by some kind of bibliophile robot – as a rare insight into the mind of somebody else. Thus, when I found tucked in the back of Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things a slip from the Burnie Library, I eagerly pocketed it for my perusal.

What might it tell me about the puzzling punter who had previously perused the putative plot of a perplexing pederast?

Let’s have a look shall we?

The Critique of pure reason

The very best of Bert Kaempfert [sound recording]

Water music : and, music for the royal fireworks [sound recording]

Immanuel Kant’s bold – and utterly impenetrable – attempt to understand understanding, a collection of the hits of a German ‘easy listening’ orchestra leader, and GF Handel’s most famous piece paired with a suite written to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.

Is there a neo-Kantian with a penchant for ‘safe’ Teutonic jazz orchestral stylings, still resentful of Maria Theresa’s ineligibility to succeed to the Habsburg thrones wandering the streets of Burnie?

Be afraid…

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

Why do I bother?

18 February 2011 at 12:04

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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