And so it goes...

.......This is a blog where my other self exists in any number of the dimensions of Time and Space........... .

Saturday, 24 July 2010

today's Carboot Sale

Russel and Kym's offering

Russel  with some few things he found on Chris Spickett's offerings
The offerings of Mick Steggles
Russel and a rather pleased Chris spickett

a meeting of minds around Dave Veasey's offeringsd
Robbie Manning testing out one of the Cardinal's chairs

 Chris M's offerings


The Cardinal's back patio




Adam and the Big Willow , 'Ard Men
 Robbies stuff, lots of nice 1/72 WWI planes that went very fast

the Cat slept through it all

Saturday, 17 July 2010

It has reached that time of life ...

or possibly passed it but I do like this poem...again cribbed from my cyber mate G.K.

Early Sunday Morning

I used to mock my father and his chums
for getting up early on Sunday morning
and drinking coffee at a local spot,
but now I'm one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations,
but they go on dragging through my sleep
like a string of empty tin cans rattling
behind an abandoned car.

It's like this: just when you think
you have forgotten that red-haired girl
who left you stranded in a parking lot
forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing
around the corner of your dream
on someone else's motorcycle,
roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I'm sitting in a dimly lit
café full of early- morning risers,
where the windows are covered with soot
and the coffee is warm and bitter.
"Early Sunday Morning" by Edward Hirsch, from The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010.  (buy now)

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Astral Weeks .. the early '70s

and there we were, Pete Carrol , Steve Garton and I ..hang'n in my bedroom listening to Van the Man's  Astral Weeks..Steve said, quite emphatically , from his postion of authority  sitting on  the bedroom floor that  it was the greatest  record of all time..over the last  40 years I think I have to agree..a moving memory ..I think we might have still been at school..a moving memory.."the slipstream between the viaduct of your dream"..I sometimes think I have been there all the while  since that night.....

Astral Weeks

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
From the far side of the ocean
If I put the wheels in motion
And I stand with my arms behind me
And I’m pushin’ on the door
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
There you go
Standin’ with the look of avarice
Talkin’ to huddie ledbetter
Showin’ pictures on the wall
Whisperin’ in the hall
And pointin’ a finger at me
There you go, there you go
Standin’ in the sun darlin’
With your arms behind you
And your eyes before
There you go
Takin’ good care of your boy
Seein’ that he’s got clean clothes
Puttin’ on his little red shoes
I see you know he’s got clean clothes
A-puttin’ on his little red shoes
A-pointin’ a finger at me
And here I am
Standing in your sad arrest
Trying to do my very best
Lookin’ straight at you
Comin’ through, darlin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me
Would you kiss-a my eyes
Lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
To be born again
In another world
In another world
In another time
Got a home on high
Ain’t nothing but a stranger in this world
I’m nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
We are goin’ up to heaven
We are goin’ to heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
In another face
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ech6pZoBJ4

Saturday, 26 June 2010

Yeats

My  cyber imaginary chum Garrison Keillor posted this up on his Writer's Almanac  on Yeat's Birthday  June 13th
and well if it was good enough for him then it is good enough for me..I first puzzled over this poem in room 20 Turramurra H.S. in 1972 for the HSC..I am a lot more comfortable with it  now... 9/11 and all that ..

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. Public domain

this is room 20 as it looked in 2007 , still much the same as it did in 1972 when  Mrs Apps  was in nominal control.

Thursday, 24 June 2010

I do like this poem , a lot

Outscape

There's no way to describe how the light splays
                                                    after the storm, under the clouds
Still piled like Armageddon
Back to the west, the northwest,
                                                 intent on incursion.

There's no way to picture it,
                                          though others have often tried to.
Here in the mountains it's like a ricochet from a sea surge,
Meadow grass moving like sea stalks
                                                        in the depths of its brilliance.
"Outscape" by Charles Wright, from Sestets. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.  (buy now)

Wednesday, 16 June 2010

To A Mouse By Robert Burns


I do love this poem and a small incident has befallen a friend , for  whom the  spirit of this poem  is most apt.
And a nice reading is at :
http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/mouse.html

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
 
I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!



I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request:
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!


Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!


Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast,
An' weary Winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!


But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear! 
  

Thursday, 3 June 2010

I am the Walrus

It must have  been early 1969  and Neil Stephens and Tony James passed me on the walkway between class  one moring..
"I am the Egg man " they were singing..I had to find out about that ..my up till then  life had been sheltered but  was  .....

I am he as you are he as you are me
and we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun
see how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man you've been a naughty boy
you let your face grow long

I am the eggman
they are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Mr. city policeman sitting
pretty little policemen in a row
See how they fly like Lucy in the sky
See how they run
I'm crying
I'm crying, I'm crying
Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog's eye
Crabalocker fishwife
Pornographic priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
you let your knickers down

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Sitting in an English garden
waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come you get a tan
from standing in the English rain

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

Expert, texpert choking smokers
don't you think the joker laughs at you
See how they smile like pigs in a sty
See how they snide
I'm crying
Semolina pilchard
climbing up the Eiffel tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking
Edgar Allan Poe

I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' goo
goo goo g' joob goo
juba juba juba
juba juba juba
juba juba juba juba
juba juba