the trace of the past

Reading k’s post on childhood reminded me of going to Fatehpur Sikri. It’s a place in India, a few hours drive by car from Agra + the Taj Mahal – but less visited.

Naming it as a place is a bit misleading: it’s a palace, a walled, royal complex. It was built in the 1560-70s I think.

And it was abandoned only 14 years later.


When I went, it was early morning, just after sunrise; it was going to be a hot day. The light on the stone buildings was beautiful.





But despite this beauty, each part of the palace I explored felt like an echoing chamber. It was haunting. The buildings, squares, temples and walls all remained – they were physical traces of the past that I could touch. And yet, at the same time as it was present, the past felt completely absent. It was gone, and quite impossible to return to.

This is also what I feel when I visit places of my childhood. Like schools I went to, and places I once lived in; people I knew, and the person I was. Those incompatible states of presence and absence jostle one another.



Each corner promises something, and never reveals it.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

especially in summer. now we've switched to daylight savings, it's all about to begin

hitting the road

on the road. someone said something the other day and made me realise this is the first october in years and years that I haven't been spending doing exam revision and final essays. wooohooo! so a road trip was called for, just to remember how good it is to have spare time, to choose to do what i like.

yes!



a truck...(now ignore the dirty windscreen - look at the lean of that truck's cabin!)


...and a truck stop. a friend and i once drove to melbourne and we stopped at as many truck stops as possible. by the time we reached melb they were no longer so good looking; but that was two years ago now and i can see the attraction is creeping back into my heart...

ready, set

yesterday - did the interview for a position in png. and my tickets and visa for china arrived.
but i always hated waiting for christmas and my birthday. patience is not one of my traits. I'm ready now!

it's a sunday

wasting time fiddling with this stupid template; comments have gone off into the ether; have done no preparation for job interview in lunch hour tomorrow; anxiety is building but am stuck in avoidance mode; maybe if i get up early tomorrow i can prepare; damn hangover

see you in harbin

one of my favourite things of the moment is tea with milk and honey. i'm no tea fanatic obviously (disguise the taste! disguise the taste!), and maybe it'll turn into diabetes. but at the moment it's delicious, and somehow comforting. and dad's given me some honey from his bees and their hives - and i can confirm that this year's a good year in honey harvesting.

the desire for sweet tea always returns when i re-read a book i love: the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. (ok: books) [the first book is Regeneration ; and look: it's not on loan]. This series follows men throughout WW1 - and one of the things they drink endlessly is sweet tea. The book is almost too well-written; you become addicted to the characters quickly and read as if running. It's about the initial discovery and treatment of shell-shock (by a ex-anthropologist/psychiatrist, Rivers), but it focuses on the experience of it more than the diagnosis. It's based on real people and events of the past, and is completely compelling (Rivers for instance; and men like Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). Some people I know don't love it, but I think they're being contrary! You start it, you become addicted, you love it, you drink sweet tea...
--
another thing i'm rereading is Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. It remains innovative and relevant and exciting, even though it was first published in the 70s. It always makes me smile with recognition. Like reading this:

(on waiting) "Am I in love? - Yes, since I'm waiting." The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.

and this:

(on wearing sunglasses) Let us suppose that I have wept, on account of some incident of which the other has not even become aware...and that, so this cannot be seen, I put on dark glasses to mask my swollen eyes (a fine example of denial: to darken the sight in order not to be seen). The intention of this gesture is a calculated one: I want to keep the moral advantage of
stoicism, of "dignity"...and at the same time...I want to provoke the tender question ("But what's the matter with you?"); I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult. Thereby I gamble, I take a risk: for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever...

and this:

(on trying to write) To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not - this is the beginning of writing.

--
the submission date for the australian youth ambassador program has been extended to this friday. i've been thinking about applying, and this has convinced me.

getting ready

i hate having time to kill. (unless i've had a nap and woken up and it's not time to get up yet - it's one of the delicious things in life to simply lie there and think.)

If it's 8pm and you're going out in two or three hours...ugh. it's just the right amount of time for you to get settled and comfortable and content with being at home - and that's the point at which the doorbell rings and it's your ride and you can't pretend you're not there they can see the lights and it's too late anyway because you've already agreed and they're going out of their way to give you a ride so you're in their debt and this is only the beginning now you've got to be out and social and really you've left your mind inside at home and so whatever you do it will probably be half-hearted and with the awareness that if only you were back home ... but you're not you're out and so even if the mind isn't here you've got to focus on being animated and here's the crowd and everyone's buzzing and where's your smile ah there is it and it's cool drinks are on their way and you're out and oh that's right you're not a nana afterall and this is saturday night...

--

but it does give me time to post a little. things like this:

from andrew wylie (he's a big literary agent, who represents - or used to - salman rushdie/martin amis/that type of crowd)(when asked, would you like to be a writer?)

'God! No! What a life! The last thing! No! No! To go off in a room with
yourself, the size of your ass after a few years, the whole thing - what a
nightmare! Christ! You look like shit! Your eyesight goes, you're fat, you're
anxious, you're worn out, you're depressed. God forbid! I would rather be a
chicken farmer than a writer!'

if only more creative writing students read this type of stuff! (sorry - this is a pet hate: 'creative' writers; who are they? no one, nobody. what writers worth reading describe themselves as 'creative'? only people who are paying to be taught how use the term 'creative'. hisssss)

b

This is a new one. 'b' is cute - it's a nice choice. 'p' for instance would be too much like 'pea' - aka the princess and the pea, sore bum..no doubt it's not at all connected to the pic, but stuff it i'm exhausted and it's making sense to me.
ah, the week's done, kids. i'm done in. i'm going out fora few and then home to bed. something intelligent will be posted after that.

(but check out this one for something spectacular)

lately it feels like i get one part of life spinning just as i like it, and just as i think 'yes' i find there's another to get spinning - or to slow down - and another. (this is not a whinge; just a note. i know things don't turn out as expected - but i get lazy and expect what's unexpected - forgetting it actually means you're caught unawares. so i'm caught unawares, again.) If I were in a '40s slapstick I would be spinning plates, but I like this image better

petty theft

i have been asked to sit on an interview panel. (never done this before and it's quite different to be sitting on the other side.) (actually i don't think i've ever had an interview in front of a panel; i have never sat on either side.) (anyway; enough of that aside.) (har har)

so: i have to look through all of the applicants' job applications and argue for who we should interview. and i was merrily doing this when i found one person who had applied who currently works in the advertising organisation, just in another dept. to my astonishment, i found that she (for so it was) had copied several paragraphs from her department's website in her application - pasting them straight in, without any change (so they didn't even really make sense - hence i found them). how stupid is this? to steal from your current dept to apply for a job in the same organisation. are you a r-e-t-a-r-d?

needless to say, she is not getting an interview

(delicious sense of power)(evil cackle)
(but she deserves my cackle)

are you experienced

KATE Ellis was trying on 8cm-high green stilettoes in a Rundle Mall boutique on Tuesday when Latham telephoned and congratulated her on her win.

I wonder what Trish's mood was as she read this in today's rubbish. 'Privately livid' could be one possibility. Not sure whether it's a) good; why should anyone conform to rigid ideas about professionalism? shopping for stilettoes doesn't reflect your iq; or b) bad; do you want to inflame the idea that a lot of middle-aged and older people think: you're inexperienced, and that = young and ditzy?

Well, at least she wasn't spotted making out with the intention of mating last night...or if so only by a strange lookin' arab and his crew...

the hood is watching...you

neighbourhood watch newsletter...

w st: letter box stolen from front of address. overnight. $50

(it would be annoying. but it makes me laugh to imagine the call to the police. spluttering outrage etc.)

cross rd: graffiti on fence. tags 'PROPS' and 'KWOTES'. day.

(kwotes! kwotes. so dumb you have to be impressed.)

friday am

as someone else was getting to sleep , I was walking into the city. I can't sleep past sunrise at the moment, and on this morning as soon as my eyes snapped open I had to get up and go. So I walked into town; this was in the parklands at about 6.30am. (taken just after being swooped by a viciously protective mother bird. it's that time of year again.)

Public Notices

In today's local paper:

PROF. Von Remmahcsk
to avoid college
contact (mobile)


a basic google search = nothing for the prof. So it's a message, a riddle. But who is it for? What does it mean?


so yeah it's a lazy saturday where you buy three papers and even read things like the public notices. and you listen to music you listen to every spring, because once, the first time you listened to it, it was spring; and so now and forever spring means this music, and this music means spring.

Is not every spot of our cities the scene of a crime? Every passer by a perpetrator? Does not the photographer...uncover guilt in his pictures? (WBenjamin) 

the harbour view... 

pt 

wheels in motion

There's just something about freight trains.

Do people still hitch rides on them? This one passed by so slowly I was tempted.

cowboys in wayville

ride em cowboys!

Robert Drewe, from cover of The Shark Net (Penguin Camberwell, 2004 (2000)) 

The past is true crime

Writing stories about the past you act as detective. What, who, when, where, how and why are your preoccupations; they drive the story (in different orders according to the type of story you want to tell).

Drewe’s story is autobiography, focusing on his childhood and adolescence. Autobiography has a bit of a routine: gather memories, historical records etc., and try to place them in some type of order so that they have coherence and meaning. This meaning is missing from the past because of the immediacy of experience: you are rarely aware of the broader implications and connections between events as they happen, especially as a child; it’s in hindsight, with more information and reflection, that we begin to craft these autobiographical stories.

But Drewe strikes out this writer – detective idea. You could argue that it’s because he was a participant: unlike the detective, he can’t be objective; he isn’t re-examining events he wasn’t part of.

But I think it’s more because he sets up the past as true crime.

The past as crime. This is what fascinates me in reading his book. The past isn’t depicted as a sun-lit idyllic time before the dark knowledge of terrible things. Instead, the past always involves the play of both light and dark. Just as when you’re a child you are naïve, and often naively happy, so too you are aware of tensions and wrongs. You’re not “innocent”, and that’s Drewe’s argument: your past is implicated in offences, illegal acts, shameful things. You’re not unaware that these things are going on.

In The Shark Net there are always whispers, things lurking. Undercurrents pull you along with only half your knowledge. When something happens you realise you kind of already knew it (as the protagonist starts to feel himself). It’s masterfully crafted.

And in Drewe’s case his past does involve capital-Crime. There are killers; there are bodies.

These bodies seem to haunt him. One of his friends dies when bodysurfing near a reef; his body is trapped in seaweed. (In a passage I find really affective,) Drewe writes: ‘It had not been disturbed by fish. This surprised me. I’d always believed there were these tiny sea-lice that could reduce a body to a skeleton in twenty-four hours.’

The body’s actuality seems to catch him unawares. It stubbornly remains, reminding him that people aren’t just stories, that it’s not as easy as that.

i'm heading to the beach

Today: Max 29
Monday: Max 30
Tuesday: Max 36


- especially after finishing The Shark Net. (Mainly set on Perth's coast.) It took me a little while to get into the narrative style, but once that happened I was hooked (ah, so many bad sea-faring quips possible here). Missed the tv series, but I'm glad; it is very finely crafted, and written to be read. Will post more on this later; am going to go and with a deep breath take a swim in that early-season icey-cold sea.

already? already

7:03pm update: predictions from all over, already, saying swing to and win for libs. vague sense of possibility gone. was right to be apathetic - dammit!
am hitting the beers now...

on voting

i just went down to the local community hall and voted. In the past fortnight I'd lost interest in the campaign because of a sense of inevitability: it seemed jh was going to be around for another sentence. But when I held the two paper slips in my hand, it felt important. I didn't feel important ('She's here, everyone! She's here!' they cried), but the act of voting did. I felt an active participant in that abstract thing, a 'democracy'. In the shoddy cardboard booth I paused and mentally weighed up again what a vote for x would mean and what were my other options. (I couldn't lean and rest on my elbows because the booth might have collapsed, which would have caused a rucus in the hall and coloured my voting experience with an embarrassed-hue; also I'm a bit too tall for leaning on its shelf; so I stood and gazed down at the papers.) And then I marked the boxes and folded the white elephant and posted the right bits in the right boxes (also wondering why they can't make the forms look a little more formal and less like a local school ballot? This is a federal election, folks!), and walked back out into the sunshine, ok, smiling a little self-righteously at the new comers because I had now voted. But the point was the experience reaffirmed the process.

Although, now that I type this, I wonder - is this a sneaky feature of the system? It makes you feel like you are empowered, but then results end up being decided through preferences and margins and god knows what else. Hm, this could deflate that sense of participation. But still I can't wait for tonight. Have been invited to the big liberal do, but (1) scared i might get beaten up by cheering or wailing at inappropriate times, and (2) feel a little unsure about it morally, so don't think i'll go. (Though if I do i'll take my camera to get some green-room shots). Not sure when the seat of Adelaide will be called; today's rag said the Worth might end up relying on postal votes to secure her seat - so I presume that means we might have to wait until sometime next week...

ouch (excuse me while i practice posting photos...)

belated reference to kent's duthy st flood photos of the 80s - this is dec 2003, fuller st [one of the worst sts in the hood in terms of drainage]; water had lowered enough for me to slurp along our front path (my sister was too late to move her car; it flooded; water was ankle deep inside - imagine finding the pedals! - when she could finally open the door; poor little mazda) 

Constructing, thinking...

What is the use of us talking, and there is is no end of talking.
There is no end of things in the heart.
I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here
To seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking - -

(Rihaku's 'Exile's Letter'. Trans = E. Pound)

back soon with more
- and more colours! I hate this orange; had a workable knowledge of code 4 years ago but it's letting me down...apologies