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Showing posts from April 5, 2009

“The boy is father to the man”

Here are my two very favourite sons enjoying the afternoon sunshine in our living room. Renowned sale vieux homme - and one-time collaborator with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and the Vichy regime - Maurice Chevalier used to sing Thank Heaven for Little Girls . What I want to know is, who do we have to thank for little boys?

A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks; do you think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see another cross?

Here is a special Good Friday good sunrise over the Derwent looking east. So it is Good Friday again. I love Good Friday. You have to wonder what old Jesus was thinking when he got up that morning. Did he think that he was going to have a good Friday? Was he disappointed? I would be. I have been explaining the concept of Easter to Henry. "There was this guy, and some chickens, and some rabbits. There was some argument about something. I think that it was over chocolate. And eggs. This guy's father wasn't happy. It had something to do with fish as well. Chocolate fish eggs maybe. Anyway, the rabbit eventually must have won and this chicken got nailed to this guy. His father wanted to prove a point. Because he sinned. Or something. The father sounded like a bit of an arse actually. Nailed them to a cross I think. Something like that. So we eat chocolate eggs delivered by rabbits in bonnets and there's nothing good on TV." I don't understand it either.

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

Here you can see Henry's very best friend just last night. Yes, it is the moon . So Theme Thursday is upon us again and the theme actually has nothing whatsoever to do with anything lunar, space, sky or suchlike. The theme - as I am sure that you have guessed already - is EGG . Egg?!?! Yes EGG . You see, when I look up at a nice moon like that, in a clear dark sky, I think of the precious little EGG that cute little babies are before that filthy little tadpole appears and turns into a baby. I have this whole notion of the egg sitting there in the womb uterus cervix pancreas – wherever it is that eggs sit in a lady's tum – and it sits there and glows like the moon in a dark sky. It’s a very romantic notion of a lady's reproductive system I think, and doesn’t involve blood or amniotic fluid. Maybe any stray stars can be platelets of something... Anyway, at some point I imagine my two young fellows were once lovely little moons eggs lurking within their mum, waiting all

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

It's that damned robot again. This time he's delivering letters!

When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear.

This is the concrete bunker that leads through to the carpark in Salamanca Square, which is built into an old quarry. I think that it looks suitably World War Two. On occasion I drift into moments of Zen-like prescience, peace and composure. Of course, these moments represent diversions from the reality of the daily grind of waking up, rustling up Weet-Bix for Henry, shower, dress, bus, work, lunch, work, bus, rustling up Henry dinner, washing children, sleep, rinse, repeat. What I want to know is whether Zen is fulfilment or exertion? Permanent or transitory? Arrival or journey? Would we want it to be permanent?

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Here is the little bloke threatening to crawl. Jennifer has a very narrow definition of crawling, and reckons that he can't. I am a more positive and creative chap, and am firmly of the opinion that Ezra has more than met the criteria of a crawl. Of a fashion. Note: I have had word from the chief steward, and Ezra has weighed in this morning at a solid 10.12 kilograms. That's a fair chunk of beefcake!

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig.

So yesterday it was snowing up on Mount Wellington. I took a few snaps in the morning, but didn't have the necessary equipment to transfer the images across from the camera on hand. Above is a bit of a zoom in on the Organ Pipes , and below is a broader view from the fire escape at work. These were taken at around 8 am, I've not been able to get any more because the damn thing has been shrouded in cloud ever since!

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Here we are on Hunter Street, outside the University of Tasmania's Art School looking towards what remains of the working port. It's an interesting nexus of ideas at work here, and is replicated in Launceston, where their Art School is located with an old railyard. Deliberate? Who knows! Here's a romantic poem today. Woman Her hair... shimmered. Her eyes... sparkled. Her smile... glimmered. Her neck... glistened. Her pancreas... excreted.

Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.

With Ezra's foray into The Sorrows of Young Werther , Henry was feeling a little put out so has started to explore Daddy's extensive library on the works of one G.W.F. Hegel. So Saturday afternoon, when Jen was out knitting, he starts on about Elements of the Philosophy of Right , and was asking me what defines the actualisation of freedom . I said that I doubted that history had an actualisation point and wanted to leave it at that, but then he started on about what it was to lead a ' moral life ', so I asked him what it was to lead an ' ethical life ', and then Ez got started on the unity of being and nothing which Henry confused with the master-slave dialectic and things were just getting out of hand, and I was rapidly getting a headache. We did however, find some common ground regarding the owl of Minerva, that is, its big eyes made it appear quite cute.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

I like photographs involving water. I like photographs involving reflections. I like photographs involving the autumn light. I like photographs involving the morning sun. Here we have all four taken just last Thursday down in Sullivan's Cove! I am currently enjoying Timothy Gaton Ash 's excellent History of the Present . If you don't know his work, he's an academic/historian/author/journalist with a way with words. I will probably expand on my thoughts when I've finished it, but one brief comment struck me as I read it on the bus this morning. It concerns a point early on in the siege of Sarajevo. There was a bombed-out post office with a common piece of graffiti/political comment, " This is Serbia! " Apparently someone had scrawled underneath the retort, " No, you idiot, it's a post office ". I like that. It pretty much captures the sort of inanity that drives people to war, ethnic cleansing and all of the kinds of atrocities within. It'

Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.

Here you can see Ez and myself looking suitably tired this very morning. Henry and Jen had a mother and son morning, while Ezra and I stayed home to do some autumn cleaning and grumble about the declining fortunes of the Latvian industrial economy. To cheer ourselves up, we later went out and purchased one gross of rusks, a terrabyte of hard drive, a sausage and a bloody great pencil. Seriously, the pencil is a foot long.

I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.

Looking up to where the crow's nest should be, I see no pirates, parrots or Great White Sharks. I see ropes, levers and wispy clouds, but not a brigand , buccaneer nor buggering bastard in sight! It was such a disappointment. Christ I am tired. Neighbours who come home after a night on the piss, put on their heartfelt torch songs on far too loud while they have a smoke and reflect on their lack of romantic success should be shot.