in-dentured

I have a broken tooth, which has become infected. It has to come out, but before that can happen I have been placed on a week-long course of two antibiotics – two because the dentist is either unsure whether the bacteria causing the infection are gram-positive or gram-negative or it may be, as he says, one hastens the action of the other - to clear the infection up.

Pain is something I am familiar with, can handle or, at least, manage it through natural alkaloids or artificial suppressants or a combination of both. But these antibiotics are strong, & make me somewhat uncomfortable & woozy.

I feel clammy, unsteady, out of my environment, ready to play the title role in the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The Accidental Intersection

for D.S.

Simple enough beginnings. I am here
with Lauren, dropping off a bar fridge
that we'd bought on special
for her office. Down the hall
you are packing for your move
across the continent, the room full
of unsealed cartons. My eye
isolates a book by Umberto Eco
on top of one of them; I am surprised
to see it here. Not in this
specific place — I do not know you,
know your tastes — but in the wider space
that is Rockhampton. It took the
local bookshop six weeks to bring in
Baudolino for me & I forget
how many times I had to spell
the author's name, the book's
title. (Alberto? Echo? Bordello?)
I make a comment on it. You spontaneously
give it to me. An unwrapped gift; but the panel
from Bosch's Temptation of St Anthony
that decorates the front cover
is better than any wrapping. Triggered
by some spark, an arc in the air
that adds to them, impetuous presents
are so often the best. & Serendipities
is such an appropriate title in this
happy & accidental intersection where I
have gained from your generosity.

&,

belatedly, but I've been away from the keyboard, I have to mention - nay, shout it to the world although I'm about the 777th person to do so - Tom Beckett's wonderful new blog E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S, an interview site with the first interviewee the equally wonderful Crag Hill.

Jonathan Mayhew describes Tom as "one of the best interviewers of his generation". I would take issue with that, would delete the "his" & substitute "any".

This is going to be a must-visit site.

Thank you

Richard Lopez for the green fuzzy slippers. Now I can sleep safely, knowing I will never fall through the cracks in my dreams.

For Toshiro Mifune

I
would have
liked you for

a
father. Or,
perhaps, a lover.

Back in Capricornia

after a week & a bit away. In Sydney getting the city fix which I've been without for about a year. Was good. Like the coffee. & the joy of being in a place that was open until late or, in some cases, never closed.

Caught up with friends, rode on ferries & trains & trams, played the tourist, bought some books. Filled in a couple of holes in Library #3 - selected Paul Eluard, selected Ezra Pound, the City Lights Pocket Poets edition of Howl (ah, nostalgia! though was tempted to wait for a new printing in the hope it might be me that bought the millionth copy) Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal (hard to obtain for some obscure copyright reason). Bought some new stuff. Jill Jones' wonderful Screens Jets Heaven, J.G. Ballard's latest novel Millenium People, The Portable Magritte - 400 plates yet! At the rate I write my Series Magritte poems that's about seven years feedstock - & a quite incredible book by Joe LeSueur, Digressions on some poems by Frank O'Hara. Was given a couple of beautiful small books too - Jill Jones' Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries & Martin Edmond's essay Ghost Who Writes.

Had
lunch with
Jill & Martin.

Exchanged
books instead
of business cards.

& now back in Rockhampton, suffering from toothache. & reminded what a weird place this is, how nothing is easy. Finally found a dentist who could see me today, went there, was examined, given a script for antibiotics; had another appointment made for me, several hours & several kilometres away, for an X-ray; &, because the tooth was bad & has to come out, had another appointment made with another dentist, two appointments actually, two weeks away, one to see if it can be done under local anaesthetic & then one for the next day if it can be. Christ knows what'll happen if it can't. Six months before I can get into a public hospital since it's not life-threatening. That's the current waiting time.

Picked up the cat from the boarding kennels last night. She's pissed off. Apparently had lots of company there plus air-conditioning, & now only has me & the hot paving.

But it's good to be back, back at the blog.

Some more information on the Jackson Browne cover here.

Noticed the cover of Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky" reproduced at Laura Carter's écritures bleues. Check it out against the Magritte below.
 

René Magritte's The Empire of Lights.
 

& the poem at Series Magritte.

a note on magritte

"The art of painting expresses the invisible by means of the visible, thoughts by means of images. People have often abstractedly  theorized about this form of articulation. Magritte's genius doubtless lies in the fact that he concretely  reflected it, made it the subject of his pictures themselves. If he is to imagine the difference between what is visible and what is thought in his painting, the painter must render these thoughts visible, must render them so that they can be perceived by the eye. It is for this reason that Magritte introduced words into his pictures, uniting that which can be seen and that which can be read on one and the same surface."

Marcel Paquet: René Magritte (1898-1967); Thought rendered visible

Fuck the global economy!

To paraphrase a financial expert aka talking dickhead on last night's tv news.

"(The tsunami) has had no impact on world markets because most of the victims were marginal to the global economy."

PENNSOUND

Have added PENNSOUND to the Other Links part of the side bar. Ali Baba's Cave! Kid in a Candy Store! What's collected there is overwhelming!! I have many, many treats in store.

I pay no attention to fixed seasons & solstices. My summer begins when black muscat grapes appear in the shops. Juicy & full of sugar, they are my favourite grape, bottled or otherwise.

So, on January the 5th, let me just say that this year's summer has finally - vinally? - arrived.

In this world

of doom & gloom it is a minor thing. But major for me. The fucking locusts are eating the shit out of our citrus trees & I can't get rid of them.

We bought three a year ago, a lemon, a lime & a grapefruit. The lime we planted amongst the trees in the garden where it struggled but grew. The grapefruit we left in the earth inside its black plastic wrapping where it grew quite happily. The lemon went into what was supposed to be a part of the garden but with poor soil & so previously home to a wild gathering of opportunistic weeds.

All three flowered. Then the ants came along & decided the fertilised fruit would be their larder & ate the buds. One grapefruit survived, probably because they're fairly large fruit & by the time the ants had got through the others, this was too far along & defeated them. But the plants still looked quite attractive. Then came the locusts. They ignored the lime most of the time, but now the lemon especially looks like it got so sick of having bad hair days that it ripped all of its hair out.

I've transplanted the lemon & the lime into plots & am monitoring them. I go to the hardware store & look for weapons of mass destruction but they all say "do not use when the temperature is above 30°C" & it's that for at least ¾s of the year here. I have become a locust-killing machine, & feel no shame.

Forgive me, Gautama, for I know very well what I'm doing.

a reciprocal act of love

The back story comes back for us:

reddest rockets of the universe, that stick out like sore celestial thumbs, and in the present tense there will be time. These rockets are earnest in the giving of wide to where we'll be. In time, vetting something with great civilizations of anteriour creatures who've crossed vast distances to exert overthrow or just normative hopalong pleasantly. Such as the gainsay, after we have met. And the whirl of future trust in spins and spans, halting only when the movie gets too rich, and residuals take the story line. you can see the stress factor of living such a life, there in the future, which we make even now. Trifle of laugh but mostly real screenwriting hard work, getting heroes in position with a kiss or two, and looks of flashing things of circumstance. Language will follow us everywhere.

And wend.

Am adding Allen Bramhall's writing blog Seize Song to the sidebar. He describes Seize Song as "an ongoing poem built into the season". First posted to a freehost site where he paid the mortgage through popups. The last time I visited I had five showing before I'd even finished downloading, & one so large it concealed the page.

Blogger's latest to earliest format may not be the most ideal for an on-going work but it's free of ads. & work this good shouldn't be dis-enhanced by the crass distractions of a plethora of popups.

A reminder

that Jill Jones' interview / reading is still available for listening to at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Poetica site. Will be there for roughly another week & a half. It's a must hear!

Adding

Laura Carter's écritures bleues which is her new home in 2005, having moved away from Blue Revisions & Blogger.

Starting the year with J-P K

The collages Jukka is posting at mailXart are beautiful pieces of work. The form, the use of colour, the spatial arrangement. & I’ve always loved the way his various blogs seem to cross-pollinate. Check out the asemic collage at self similar writings. (You may need to scroll down the page to see it – Blogger's doing one of its weird things.)

Hoth hies hither

He of the Heteronyms - Joseph Garver, Simon Hoth - comes closer to revealing his true name, but if totally then his soul would be seized. So, no more than Craig.

& in the process The Red Dragon & The Black Beast is destroyed. Wiped out. Now a new name to the blog, Random Assault Generator. & only a single post (where yesterday there were two, one of intention, one of suffering; & before that many more). Now only the headache remains. Which I hope is over soon, so some more of his hard-edged hard-hitting posts appear to fill the space.

Far-called our navies melt away;
      On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

irresolute