Monday, March 27, 2006
The Last Tango - Kaya Sulc
Staying up late
Well here I am, matchsticks propping open both eyes while I await my 1:30am flight out of Darwin. I've been at work all day and went to my last art class tonight, I've packed and am just waiting and hoping I don't doze off and miss the plane.
One of the instalments to make on the price of living in paradise is the fact that virtually all the planes go in the middle of the night - between midnight and 1:30am. The rest of Australia has a curfew and nothing flies in or out between about midnight and 5am - even Perth our other distant capital city has its last flight out at midnight but not Darwin - no, to live here you have to be prepared for a little inconvenience if you ever want to escape the place. Oh, and because it's so darn far from everywhere else in Australia you don't even have the option of driving out unless you have way more holidays owing than I do. I should really take all my holidays in Bali which is only a short flight instead of Sydney, Brisbane or Canberra.
So, providing I don't fall asleep in the next couple of hours, I'll head off to the airport at about 12:30 and arrive (relaxed and refreshed!) in Brisbane just before 6am. After that the two hour train ride to the Gold Coast is a doddle. I must be mad.
The main reason for my short break is to attend the opening of an art exhibition. The artist and his wife are old and dear friends and I haven't seeen them for seven years. It's his first major exhibition for ten years and well, none of is getting any younger. I'll try to post a picture of one of his sculptures if any of my picture-posting programs still work.
Better go and finish organising myself or I will miss the wretched plane. Keep your fingers crossed cyclone Wati doesn't choose tonight to hit Brisbane and none of his mates decide to head for Darwin while I'm away.
One of the instalments to make on the price of living in paradise is the fact that virtually all the planes go in the middle of the night - between midnight and 1:30am. The rest of Australia has a curfew and nothing flies in or out between about midnight and 5am - even Perth our other distant capital city has its last flight out at midnight but not Darwin - no, to live here you have to be prepared for a little inconvenience if you ever want to escape the place. Oh, and because it's so darn far from everywhere else in Australia you don't even have the option of driving out unless you have way more holidays owing than I do. I should really take all my holidays in Bali which is only a short flight instead of Sydney, Brisbane or Canberra.
So, providing I don't fall asleep in the next couple of hours, I'll head off to the airport at about 12:30 and arrive (relaxed and refreshed!) in Brisbane just before 6am. After that the two hour train ride to the Gold Coast is a doddle. I must be mad.
The main reason for my short break is to attend the opening of an art exhibition. The artist and his wife are old and dear friends and I haven't seeen them for seven years. It's his first major exhibition for ten years and well, none of is getting any younger. I'll try to post a picture of one of his sculptures if any of my picture-posting programs still work.
Better go and finish organising myself or I will miss the wretched plane. Keep your fingers crossed cyclone Wati doesn't choose tonight to hit Brisbane and none of his mates decide to head for Darwin while I'm away.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
catching up
I've gotta say I feel pretty 'over' blogging and I've noticed a few other blogs I liked seem to have slackened off too - or stopped altogether. It was cathartic for a while, writing my thoughts and observations to the world at large. Then for a while it became a duty - something I felt an obligation to keep up and it started to take a fair bit of time; not so much the writing as the reading and commenting on other blogs. Then I went away from my computer for 1/3 of a year and somehow it just all didn't seem very important any more and I didn't want to share my thoughts with the anonymous internet... Well tonight I was encouraged, by discovering that my two favourite Australian bloggers who appeared to have almost or completely given up the sport had both written a couple of recent posts, to check out my other couple of favourite blogs. Having scanned through them, well I thought it wouldn't hurt to just say hi again. So Hi!
............................................
So what have I been doing while I haven't been blogging. Well... I've seen three new release movies at the actual movie theatre rather than waiting for the DVD and I've loved all of them...1.Walk the Line, 2.Brokeback Mountain and 3.Mrs Henderson Presents -all come with my thorough recommendation but ONLY 1.If you want a toe-tapping good time, one of the great love stories of all time and wonderful acting and can handle a touch of adultery; 2. Wonderful scenery, true-to-life excrutiatingly sensitive characters - but the gay sex scenes are quite confronting, so if the very thought of that makes you uncomfortable it's a definite DON'T go there; 3. Hilarious, 'laugh-out-loud and damn the embarrassment' funny but tinged with some pathos and made all the more rewarding because it's based on a true story. Only a little nudity to offend in this one. Why is it you can always find something that would probably offend someone in any movie these days? I hadn't even thought about these things until I started recommending!
Been renting lots of DVDs too, the latest of which, 'Hotel Rawanda' was inspirational and agonisingly, painfully tragic - also based on a true story.
.................................
Most uplifting thing that's happened to me lately: Well I found out a poem I wrote a couple of years ago about Darwin was published in a book put out by the ABC. The book is called "Why I live Where I Live" and it's a selection of the letters written in to the radio program "Australia All Over" over the past 20 years. I knew my poem had been read on air at the time (only because someone heard it and told me) but didn't have any idea it was in the book until I received a call from a friend who'd been flicking through it in a bookstore while looking for a gift for an overseas friend and who wanted to know why I'd never told them I'd had a poem published in a book! I was thrilled as you can imagine. It's not really a very good 'poem' because I don't know the first thing about the rules of poetry - just some words from the heart. From memory I think I published it on the blog at the time - sometime around August 2004 - but what the hell, if the ABC sees fit to publish it, I might as well give it another run on the blog. Here it is, my 15 minutes of fame.
Why I live where I live
A large-bladed knife
scabby with rust - or blood
on one side
dull steel gleam
on the other
Poised on the sharp edge of the blade
balanced between civilization
and the raw power of the natural world
You shiver at 24 degrees celsius
and wear sox to bed
And read in the morning paper
about the 4 metre crocodile
on the beach
opposite your front door
Where once in five years
you turn off the fans
Where yellow fig birds
pure white torres strait pigeons
bronze shouldered doves
rainbow lorikeets
white and black cockatoos
bush curlews and several kinds of kite
are daily visitors to your suburban home
And frill-necked lizards
posture and dance
and dodge road-trains
on the highway
Darwin
where you soon believe
it's unreasonable to travel more than 20 minutes
to get anywhere within the city limits
and if you can't park within 20 metres of the door
you might as well turn around
and go home
Where one day you're being eaten by mozzies
and tormented by sandflies
sitting cross-legged
sweating and steaming
on the dusty red earth
of Arnhem Land
And eight hours later
enjoying a glass of champagne
and an Eric Bogle concert
at the air-conditioned
entertainment centre
.................................
Most heart-warming thing that's happened to me lately: My 8 year old grand-daughter sent me something she'd written on the computer entitled 'My Family', which said in part: "I have a great family. It is loyal, helpful, willing to help, loving and funny. We are the most happiest family in the world!"... now how cool is that!
..................................
That's it for tonight - I gotta go and feed my addiction for computer scrabble!
............................................
So what have I been doing while I haven't been blogging. Well... I've seen three new release movies at the actual movie theatre rather than waiting for the DVD and I've loved all of them...1.Walk the Line, 2.Brokeback Mountain and 3.Mrs Henderson Presents -all come with my thorough recommendation but ONLY 1.If you want a toe-tapping good time, one of the great love stories of all time and wonderful acting and can handle a touch of adultery; 2. Wonderful scenery, true-to-life excrutiatingly sensitive characters - but the gay sex scenes are quite confronting, so if the very thought of that makes you uncomfortable it's a definite DON'T go there; 3. Hilarious, 'laugh-out-loud and damn the embarrassment' funny but tinged with some pathos and made all the more rewarding because it's based on a true story. Only a little nudity to offend in this one. Why is it you can always find something that would probably offend someone in any movie these days? I hadn't even thought about these things until I started recommending!
Been renting lots of DVDs too, the latest of which, 'Hotel Rawanda' was inspirational and agonisingly, painfully tragic - also based on a true story.
.................................
Most uplifting thing that's happened to me lately: Well I found out a poem I wrote a couple of years ago about Darwin was published in a book put out by the ABC. The book is called "Why I live Where I Live" and it's a selection of the letters written in to the radio program "Australia All Over" over the past 20 years. I knew my poem had been read on air at the time (only because someone heard it and told me) but didn't have any idea it was in the book until I received a call from a friend who'd been flicking through it in a bookstore while looking for a gift for an overseas friend and who wanted to know why I'd never told them I'd had a poem published in a book! I was thrilled as you can imagine. It's not really a very good 'poem' because I don't know the first thing about the rules of poetry - just some words from the heart. From memory I think I published it on the blog at the time - sometime around August 2004 - but what the hell, if the ABC sees fit to publish it, I might as well give it another run on the blog. Here it is, my 15 minutes of fame.
Why I live where I live
A large-bladed knife
scabby with rust - or blood
on one side
dull steel gleam
on the other
Poised on the sharp edge of the blade
balanced between civilization
and the raw power of the natural world
You shiver at 24 degrees celsius
and wear sox to bed
And read in the morning paper
about the 4 metre crocodile
on the beach
opposite your front door
Where once in five years
you turn off the fans
Where yellow fig birds
pure white torres strait pigeons
bronze shouldered doves
rainbow lorikeets
white and black cockatoos
bush curlews and several kinds of kite
are daily visitors to your suburban home
And frill-necked lizards
posture and dance
and dodge road-trains
on the highway
Darwin
where you soon believe
it's unreasonable to travel more than 20 minutes
to get anywhere within the city limits
and if you can't park within 20 metres of the door
you might as well turn around
and go home
Where one day you're being eaten by mozzies
and tormented by sandflies
sitting cross-legged
sweating and steaming
on the dusty red earth
of Arnhem Land
And eight hours later
enjoying a glass of champagne
and an Eric Bogle concert
at the air-conditioned
entertainment centre
.................................
Most heart-warming thing that's happened to me lately: My 8 year old grand-daughter sent me something she'd written on the computer entitled 'My Family', which said in part: "I have a great family. It is loyal, helpful, willing to help, loving and funny. We are the most happiest family in the world!"... now how cool is that!
..................................
That's it for tonight - I gotta go and feed my addiction for computer scrabble!
