The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

Poppy fields. Table Cape, Tasmania's North West Coast. February 2012.

All of the running about up in the north west of Tasmania constrained my reading time this week, hence only one book was finished this week. It was the very interesting epistle from the past that is Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, which was first published in 1889 but promptly censored by the Russian authorities. The book itself represents an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and a thorough first-person description of jealousy.

This is a tricky little book. It stresses Tolstoy's rather unique view on human sexuality, one which physical desire is perceived as a barrier to ‘proper’ relations between men and women and a route to tragedy. I cannot say that I am convinced of Tolstoy’s viewpoint, but do recognise the power of his storytelling. The narrative itself is a powerful one – as sex and murder tales usually are – but my conclusion is somewhat different from that of central character Pozdnyshev (and we presume Tolstoy), in which sex is repulsive and destructive and that sexual love degrades a human being.

A good little read. Recommended.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

Lo siento, no hablo Inglés ...

15 February 2012 at 15:51

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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