Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Lines. East Derwent Highway, Geilston Bay. June 2012.

And yes we are continuing our slog through the Q and A shamelessly stolen from Sunday Stealing. This week, The Imaginary Meme, Part Four

61. Ocean or pool?
It depends on the weather. If it’s too cold I am heading to the pool.

62. Fridays or Ruby Tuesdays?
Fridays, although I don’t mind The Rolling Stones.

63. Did you want to go to college?
Again? I wouldn’t rule it out, but it is probably a longshot.

64. What did you buy last time at a mall?
Some presents for Ezra.

65. Which close friend have you known the longest?
It depends on how you define ‘close’. Probably my wife.

66. Why do you like the music you do?
Because it makes me feel something that I like feeling.

67. Do you read much?
I read all the time. I love reading.

68. Favourite country?
At the moment I have a hankering for Finland.

69. What is something you wish you were better at?
Tranquillity.

70. What’s your favourite album/ CD?
This is a very tricky question. In terms of the one that had the biggest impact and has consistently stayed with me, I would have to nominate Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

71. What's a good dinner order?
Something involving octopus.

72. Planes or boats?
Boats.

73. One rumour that’s been spread about you:
That I’m an incredibly good lover.

74. Who is your newest friend?
Some of the kids at Auskick are very nice.

75. Have you ever sat on a rooftop?
Lots of time. You could pick up the radio and television from Melbourne while sitting on the roof in Burnie in the summers of my childhood. Try explaining that to the children of the gizmos and gadgets generation...

76. Was your last text useful?
Yes it was.

77. Favourite soda?
I don’t drink fizzy drinks any more. I do like a nice sharp ginger beer though.

78. Do you like yourself?
Increasing less so.

79. The worst weather: Hot or cold?
Any time that it is excessively grey gets me down. I can handle hot or cold as long as I have a big blue sky above me.

80. Do you play an instrument?
I play a number of instruments very, very badly.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

Ku janë njerëzit?

13 September 2012 at 13:09

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...

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. ...

This will hurt me...

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