The labyrinth is a “place with more dead ends, more flaws and fault-lines than the human heart”.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/sandh/2008/jan-jun08/minotaur1504.htm

The Poison Tree

by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

Only one person dies...

"... the Mishnah declares that, for the Justice of God, he who kills a single man destroys the world; if there is no plurality, he who annihilated all men would be no more guilty than the primitive and solitary Cain, which is orthodox, no more universal in his destruction, which can be magic. The tumultuous general catastrophes – fires, wars, epidemics – are but a single sorrow, illusorily multiplied in many mirrors. That is Bernard Shaw’s judgment when he states (Guide to Socialism, 86) that what one person can suffer is the maximum that can be suffered on earth. If one person dies of inanition, he has suffered all the inanition that has been or will be. If ten thousand persons die with him, he will not be ten thousand times hungrier nor will he suffer ten thousand times longer. There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human suffering; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.”

Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions. 1937-1952. p178, “the Modesty of History.”

the full text

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men...

Summer Swallows

It's been a long day, a busy day, moving sheep and checking troughs, inspecting fences. We drenched two mobs of big, headstrong wethers. Hard work on a hot day. At the end the dusk comes very slowly, the heat sitting in the hollow, the sky turning orange like the underbelly of the swallows.
Swallows nest on the metal girders of the machinery shed. Swarms of them swoop in and out through the open front side of the shed catching insects abundent in the gloaming; their darts are a pure, sharply precise cutting of the air. My brother winds down after the long day shooting them with the air rifle. He is quite an accurate shot. The roof and tops of the walls of the shed are speckled with dozens of feathery, bloody slpodges. He knocks down their nests, too, until dad gets annoyed with the mess of the nests falling on the vehicles parked underneath.

http://www.ekosystem.org/

I want you - live

Oh no, my darling, not with that clown!

I'm gonna say it one more time, til I instill it...

I know I'm going to feel this way, until you kill it.

Fuck, ey?

My dog doesn't work.

I leave the mobile phone charging on a shelf in the kitchen where I keep pills and salt and stuff, and eggs which I like at room temperature, because its a convenient powerpoint and doesn't get in the way of much. Normally when it rings I think to disconnect it first, but I was in a rush just now when it rang, and forgot to unplug it so of course pulled everything down, including the box of eggs. The eggs hit the corner of the antique dresser - I'm house-sitting - but only one broke, so not too much damage; I'll get the dog to lick that up.
"Yoshi, come here! Come on little dog, another breakfast for you! " Yummy egg, what dog could resist?

This dog! she cautiously approach, had a sniff, looked at me slightly offended, and went back into the kitchen to sit on her haunches, saying "I thought there was some food for me."
The egg dropped and broken into the wheel-foot coaster started to soak into the carpet, the deep-pile cream-coloured carpet.

"Come on! It's egg. Yum. Here, I'll show you..." Nope, not interested.

In lots of ways having a nervous minature is slightly annoying but quirky, like when she needs to climb on my shoulder to escape bigger dogs that scare her at the dog beach - like miniature foxies and those savage silky terriers. It's kinda cute. She has such delicate little feet and is so pretty. And most people aren't too scared when she comes racing out onto the street to bark like crazy with her hackles up.

But not eating eggs is really just taking the whole delicate thing a bit far.
This dog just doesn't work properly, and I'm wondering if she's still under warranty.

before dinner

and here they are, just sitting around waiting to be eaten.
they look kinda suprised...i guess if i woke up and found that i looked like that, i'd be surprised too.
i wonder if they were about to play a game of....
ha ha
ha
ha ha

ha ha ha!!!
(leap frog)

Prudence

John Ralston Saul:

"Beyond politics, many would assume that prudent behaviour meant in a sense conservative behaviour. But that would be to misunderstand the meaning of common sense. The very essence of good military strategy - which often means radical behaviour - has always been built around prudence. Two and a half millennia ago Sun Tzu set out the basic rules. His incisive summary was further summarized by Mao Tse-tung into a sixteen character jingle which provided the general instructions for defeating Chiang Kai-shek:

1. When the enemy advances, we retreat!
2. When the enemy halts, we harass!
3. When the enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack!
4. When the enemy retreats, we pursue!

The Viet Minh and Viet Cong in turn took this perfect evocation of common sense as their method for defeating two of the most rationally organised armies in history - firts the French and then the American."

p46 On Equilibrium, 2001.

tigersnake eating a frog

This is a photo from the early weeks at the new house in Elleker. I nearly stepped on this snake an hour earlier, then when I was inside I heard the last of the frogs in the bathtub squealing...

Déjeuner du matin

Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler

Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder

Il s'est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis
Son manteau de pluie
Parce qu'il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j'ai pleuré.

Jacques Prévert

A couple of my favourite poems from high school. The first I love for its simplicity, the second for its sentiment and beautiful sounds. Verlaine, watching his youth drift away as he lies in prison, due to his arrest after a drunken rage at Rimbaud, if I remember right.


Le ciel est par dessus....

Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme!
Un arbre, par-dessus le toit,
Berce sa palme.

La cloche, dans le ciel qu'on voit,
Doucement tinte,
Un oiseau sur l'arbre qu'on voit,
Chante sa plainte.

Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est là,
Simple et tranquille.
Cette paisible rumeur-là
Vient de la ville.

-Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà,
De ta jeunesse?

Paul Verlaine (Sagesse)

I view myself with detachment? No, I hunt myself out frantically.

But is only through the words of others and their memories of you that you come into being in the world.

Be careful who you choose as your friends.

Back to the Nullabor Crossing

yeah, so as i was saying, i stopped the night at Tintinara, then drove a bit more, and came to this little town, which is just a railway siding for loading grain.




love these silos!

134 ZEN VIEW*

…how should one make the most of a view? It turns out that the pattern which answers this question helps to govern not the rooms and windows on a building, but the places of transition. It helps to place and detail ENTRANCE TRANSITION (112), ENTRANCE ROOM (130), SHORT PASSAGES (132), THE STAIRCASE AS STAGE (133) - and outside, PATHS AS GOALS (120).

* * *

The archetypal zen view occurs on a famous Japanese house, which gives this pattern its name.

A Buddhist monk lived high in the mountains in a small stone house. Far, far in the distance was the ocean, visible and beautiful from the mountains. But it was not visible from the monks house itself, nor from the approach road to the house. However, in front of the house there stood a courtyard surrounded by a thick stone wall. As one came to the house, one passed through a gate into this court, then diagonally across the court to the front of the house. On the far side of the courtyard there was a slit in the wall, narrow and diagonal, cut through the thickness of the wall. As a person walked across the court, at one spot, where his position lined up with the slit in the wall, for an instant, he could see the ocean. And then he was past it once again, and went into the house.

What is it happens in that courtyard? The view of the distant sea is so restrained that is stays alive forever. Who, that has ever seen that view, can forget it? Its power will never fade. Even for the man who lives there, coming past that view day after day for fifty years, it will still be alive.

This is the essence of the problem with any view. It is a beautiful thing. One wants to enjoy it and drink it in every day. But the more open it is, the more obvious, the more it shouts, the sooner it will fade. Gradually it will become part of the building, like the wallpaper; and the intensity of its beauty will no longer be accessible to the people that live there.

Therefore:

If there is a beautiful view, don’t spoil it by building huge windows that gape incessantly at it. Instead, put the windows that look onto the view at places of transition – along paths, in hallways, in entry ways, on stairs, between rooms.

If the view window is correctly placed, people will see a glimpse of the distant view as they come up to the window or pass it: but the view is never visible from the places where people stay.

Put in the windows to complete the indirectness of the view – NATURAL DOORS AND WINDOWS (221); place them to help the TAPESTRY OF LIGHT AND DARK (135); and build a set from which a person can enjoy the view – WINDOW PLACE (180). If the view must be visible from inside a room, make a special corner of the room which looks onto the view, so that the enjoyment of the view becomes a definite act in its own right…

Zen View is pattern number 134, pp 641-43, of A Pattern Language – Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel. Center for Environmental Structure, Berkley, California. New York Oxford University Press, 1977.

Right is that which allows you to breathe, and allows others to breathe.

Meniscus

- Stop crying.

- I can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry with me.

- Well, go some where else.

- Please talk to me.

- Stop whining.

- Can't you just to talk to me?

- There’s nothing to fuckin talk about.

He leaves the room. She sits on the floor on her haunches making intermittent squeeks through her wide open mouth. Her face is red, like she’s not getting enough oxygen.

He returns. He has a glass and a cardboard cask. He sits in the single arm chair in front of the television and pours himself a wine and lights a cigarette. She crawls over to him and looks up.

- Don’t look at me like a dog.

She wails loudly, snot streaming out of her nose.

- I’m trying to watch the soccer.

She stands up and walks into the corner of the room, pushes herself as far into it as she can, and continues sobbing for some time.

She straightens herself, wipes her face with the bottom of the t-shirt she’s wearing and squeezes her nose into it. She walks behind his chair, takes the tobacco and box of matches outside.

The grass is covered in dew. She walks to the verge and leans against the angophora. She pinches tobacco onto creased paper and with slightly trembling fingers rolls a thin, papery fag. She wets its end and rotates it between her lips before she lights it.

She walks into the empty road, to the end of the street, round past the shopping centre, strips of quiet houses, into the reserve. In the bright moonlight she picks her way along the narrow tracks and across Kangas’ rock. A dog barks in the still distance, part of the perpetual conversation.

She crouches, feet flat on the cold rock, gazing out over the town, for a long time.