Song, by Judith Wright

Song

Judith Wright

O where does the dancer dance –

the invisible centre spin –

whose bright periphery holds

the world we wander in?

For it is he we seek –

the source and death of desire;

we blind as blundering moths

around that core of fire.

Caught between birth and death

we stand alone in the dark,

to watch the blazing wheel

on which the earth is a spark,

crying, Where does the dancer dance –

the terrible centre spin,

whose flower will open at last

to let the wanderer in?

How to be Alone

This four-minute video video by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, set to words by poet and songwriter Tanya Davis, is just gorgeous.

'Something to make you feel loved'

The folks at The Rumpus recently tracked down the text of the priest's monologue from Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche,  New York, one of my favourite films of recent times. It's incredible stuff: 

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years! And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce ...

And they say there’s no fate, but there is, it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn’t really.

So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel cherished, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay, just to get along!

I don’t know why. Maybe because ... no one wants to hear about my misery ... because they have their own.

Fuck everybody. Amen.

The great eternal truths

The great eternal truths are not expressed in words, but in the silences that pass between two souls.

Khalil Gibran

In support of gay teens

Dear America, when you tell gay Americans that they can’t serve their country openly or marry the person that they love, you’re telling that to kids too. So don’t be shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing young kids and driving them to kill themselves because they’re different. They learned it from watching you. 

Sarah Silverman

Inspiration: Linked Destinies

It can be quite striking when something mundane or technical is explained with a sense of the beautiful.

In the Fall issue of the Paris Review, Michel Houellebecq talks about the inspiration for his second novel, The Elementary Particles (or Atomised):

the experiments of Alain Aspect in 1982. They demonstrated the EPR paradox: that when particles interact, their destinies became linked. When you act on one, the effect spreads instantly to the other, even if they are great distances apart.

I like that.

Hope

Yesterday I watched Cinema Paradiso and enjoyed seeing it again (well, ‘again’ is a bit overstated, as it was maybe 15 years ago that I saw it). But here’s a quick hint – if you’d like to see it, try to get the original edit: the director’s cut, while it provides a new, poignant perspective on the story, is pappy soap opera. But other than that it’s a gorgeous little film about child-like wonder and teenage longing and love and hope.

Take this one scene, where Salvatore has just returned from military service, and takes Alfredo to the seaside and recalls an old story. Standing among a tangle of intertwined anchors, Salvatore tells Alfredo: ‘Now I understand why the soldier left right at the end. One more night and the princess would have been his. But she might not have kept her promise. That would have been too cruel. It would have killed him. This way, at least, for 99 nights, he lived in hope that she’d be his.’

Image: Screenshot, Cinema Paradiso

'When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.'

I attended a funeral yesterday, and it reminded me of an experience I had when I was 17. 

A friend had died overnight in our dorm, and his girlfriend had come screaming down the corridor. My girlfriend and I rushed to see what was going on, and we called the ambulance, comforted her, calmed her, made her eat, helped with this or that necessity, called people, controlled access, helped his friends into the building, answered questions from others in the corridor, calmed, comforted, made her eat … did all of that stuff that one does to be strong for another.

And when night fell, and our friend had gone to sleep, my girlfriend and I crawled into bed together and collapsed into a heap of tears and emotion.

Perhaps strength is a mask sometimes –


Photo: Monash University

Earlier, in Yarraville

Had the bright idea today to stop for a coffee in Yarraville, so here's the scene before me at Caffe Urbano: coffee, fruit salad (counts as second breakfast - was at Sugardough not an hour before), and a magazine piece on the recovery of Donald Friend's wonderful diaries.

Island of calm. Otherwise nutty day.

From our nation's capital

A few days in Canberra. A few photos.