It’s a bad habit

To start something, stop it, and then take it back up again.

You don’t know where you left of, why you were doing what you did, why you’re back again. It’s confusing.

I seriously do not know why I was blogging. But I guess since I started it i’d better finish it.

I get up at 5am. I believe in destiny. Why? Because you must believe, or you fail. Keep things close to yourself, people are out there to hurt you, to kill you mentally and physically, if you’ve got something good, share it, but protect it with your life.

Peace.

Further moments from Japan

1. A man waves a colourful fluro baton at pedestrians across a small intersection. Please, go this way, be careful, we are doing some construction work. He nods his head in a slight bow. And so it goes for the entire night.

2. Rain begins to fall and the baskets outside department stores (takashimaya, daimaru, isetan) begin to fill with umbrellas.

3. They sell handkerchiefs at takashimaya. And on the basement floor they sell all kinds of wonderful food, from packaged bento lunch boxes to new york cheesecake.

4. Staying on level 2, only 2 stories up. There is no G floor.

5. In the summer the residents keep potplants in front of their houses. They bloom, particularly the hydrangeas, all blues and indigoes. The soil doesn’t seem very acidic.

6. Vending machines along every street corner. I don’t have a taspo and therefore cannot by tobacco. However I can buy drinks like Royal milk tea and Calpis Soda.

7. Smoking inside a cafe.

8. Tower records. Where you can be shocked that cd’s cost $50 each. But where you can also listen to them for free on the instore computer system.

9. AV stands for adult video. There are many levels of AV in this building. And it is split into many sections. From mature, to schoolgirl, to gravure, to …

10. Vans mounted with PR systems blast out political propaganda, there is no escape, if only we could vote in the election. I would vote for the party for ‘greater happiness’.

Recollections of Japan

I find lists easier to maintain than a recount, they’re pointed and eclectic and allow me to be lazy without risk of exposure. So here goes. Enjoy.

1. Clouds swarm down Mt. Fuji. What was a fair summer’s day, redolent with crisp beams of light that warmed the hikers on their way down from a cold summit. The clouds were more like fog, and suddenly enshrouded everyone on the slope in white moisture.

2. Sometimes they’d play songs I knew over the airwaves. Some songs were: Concierto di Aranjuez — Miles Davis (Sketches of Spain), First cut is the deepest — Sheryl Crow, Hey Jude — The Beatles (Orchestral), Beethoven’s Ninth,.

3. A chinese man, who I shared a hostel with, studying japanese late into the night.

4. The homeless men who never beg. Enjoying the summer weather in the park, out on the streets. They used cardboard between their bodies and the rough streets.

5. The band at Asakusa dressed to the nines, composed of Double bass, Accordion, Classical Guitar, Harmonica and lead vocals. The singer was a pale lanky fellow. They all wore top hats and suspenders as per the meiji style and sang music from the same era. The singer had a tough time raising his voice, and always faced the bassist, somehow I felt the sadness in his soul, though it was rather patently marked on his thin face.

6. Chinese tourists. In awe of the Japanese economy. Yet still proud. Who will always speculate on the purpose of a towel left on a wicker tray in a self-service restaurant. Is it to wipe one’s face with? Or one’s hands? It’s to wipe the table with.

7. The beautiful powdered women with orange hair who roam the streets. Those with the aspect of wolves especially. Where are they going? What can they be looking for? Happiness, pleasure, tomorrow? I Cannot tell.

8. The endless torrent of signs in Japanese and english. I had sign fatigue.

9. Getting tired of shibuya. I don’t really want to go back, not like this anyways.

10. The check out girl who laughed at me. It’s rare for them to even smile.

11. Finding a copy of Robert Grave’s autobiography — ‘Goodbye to all that’ at the hostel. And taking it home, after I finished the book I brought with me ‘An end to suffering ~ the buddha in the world’.

12. The korean girls who passed through our room in the 7 days. They spoke only korean. Were very fastidious and punctual. And brought home confectionary and makeup.

Books I left with my ex-girlfriend.

In times of tyranny, famine, plague, divine reprisal, the people live in fear. In betwixt these events however, the people live in fear of other things — Warts, Acne, Flatulence, Scurvy, Dispepsia, Videogame Addiction, Dead pixels, Mono-Sodium Glutamate in their chinese food, and whether Rhino-therapy would be cheaper in Korea or Thailand (and whether it would be a better idea altogether to forego beauty altogether and go in for religion…).  Oh yes, and leaving stuff with their ex’s.

Here’s a list of books I left and my feeble attempts to remember their content.  (Is an obsession with lists another mono-mania?)

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1. Marcel Proust — By way of Swann’s

The first book of Proust’s 6 volume modernist opus A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time; in which the author recalls the moments of his childhood in ever more lucid detail, seeking to bring to us the hidden beauty of life. The pleasure in not receiving what one wants, the pleasures that can be taken in the defects of friends, the pleasures of art, the pleasures of dissatisfaction.

All the moments in her company are Proustian, they are eternal in time and in my memory. That I cannot reprise my role in them, Proust would say, only heightens their value. If I were to have them, I would no longer value them. This contradiction is captured perfectly in the example of a courtesan who has no power over man, because she cannot withhold exactly what he wants.

2. Milan Kundera — The book of laughter and forgetting

A series of inter-connected tales of love under a totalitarian regime. Humourous and written with sharp verve. We can forget anything, even the harshest injustice, if we let go, laugh and laugh and laugh and forget about it.

So let us laugh and laugh at the absurdity. This won’t happen again; in a world without eternal recurrence, where events can happen only once, events cannot have any significance. Hence we can laugh, and we can forget (about him/her)

I’m Bobby Fisher (the chess champion who played two games at the same time)! (You shout this over and over when your menage a tois with your wife and your lover is stumbled upon by your wife’s blind mother.)

3. Marcus Aurelius — Meditations

The Roman Emperor wrote this manual to his beliefs in stoicism. Some lines I recall (heavily paraphrased)… ‘A puff of breath and a drop of will, that is all I am’ ; ‘before you do anything, ask yourself, how will this make me a better person?’; ‘Everyone despises the friendship of the wolf’.

According to a stoic it is not better to have lost than to never have loved all. Rather, it is neither better or worse either way. The stoic doesn’t care what befalls him/her, whatever happens, a good stoic is ready for the worst! So no matter what happens, whether you fall in love, or fortunately don’t fall in love, keep your equanimity… keep your equanimity…

She dropped the book into a cup of water, or something. (keep equanimity, keep equanimity, keep….)

4. Friedrich Nietzsche — Human, All too Human

Along with other Nietzsche books I read for kicks but don’t really understand. This one was my favourite, a bunch of epigrams sympathetic to my plight of being an Under-Mensch! Of course, the Ubermensch (superman) is probably not even mentioned in this early work, which predates ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra).

I never got to finish this, nor even make it half way. Human, all too human… My weakness and her’s — because she probably didn’t finish it either.  Thus, I can unlike her by dwelling on her faults; and speak nothing of mine.

5. Mao, a history — ?

I read this on a trip to China. A biography of Mao. It was not until 2 years ago that it finally struck me how awful his regime was and how much better things would have been had Mao never existed, and how awful the world would have been if he were to exist over and over again. He wasn’t even original! Burning history and memory and culture wasn’t even his idea!

It was mine. Hahaha…

6. Alain De Botton — The Consolations of Philosophy

I liked this book. Now I have to read it at the bookstore. How can I possibly buy two copies of the same book? Or even a copy of a book I’ve already read? Things can only happen once, to have them happen a second time would be a farce! (But what if you get back together a third time? Isn’t that just the biggest farce!!!)

–

Keep your equanimity, keep your equanimity, keep your equanimity.

This was harmless, wasn’t it?

N

Many ways to say ‘I love you’.

I branch away from my usual cryptic and self-absorbed material and try to write some interesting material.

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There are many ways to say those three words ‘I love you’. God knows how many I have experienced personally to no avail, but let us investigate the context and circumstances of this most over used adverbial participle (my grammar is circumspect…).

To be clear, chances are when one says I love you, all of these are encompassed.

With sincerity

Always, this sincerity is exaggerated due to intoxicating the effects of lust. If you ask the lover who speaks sincerely after the affair, they will declare, dejectedly, “I never loved her!”. Yet in this sorry reply there is always an unmistakable tinge of indignation. As though the lover had loved sincerely. A pity the sincerity is only exuded when it is of little use to anyone.

With intent to ensnare (ie, with strings attached)

There is a sense that in every I love you. Or even in every act of loving, there is an intent to ensnare. To draw the lovee into the lover’s ideal of the world, to make the lovee like the same things, dress and speak in the same register, meet and greet the same people, live the same kind of life, sleep in the same bed, live in the same house, and have the same children. You might conclude that love is, therefore, not for the individualist among us! And that is entirely right. A base thought might be that only those who feel an inherent deficiency (or in the case of the man, an extra appendage *wink*) feel the need to find another. If we were perfect as ourselves, then why love for? But of course, the deficiency may also be emotional, and hence, we must ensnare the lover when we say — I Love You — because they must not know that we are weak in any respect! It is war!

With Confidence

Often said by those who believe that saying anything confidently, no matter how unsure they are of the truth, makes the listener believe in the statement. It’s a real hoodwink this one. Few people are sure of love without the mutual commitment of the other. But this happens to be so commonly practised that it’s the oldest trick in the book. I, Love, You. Da da da. Said with clear piercing barotone lines, without a flicker in the eyes. Eyes that might turn you to stone! Yes! They love me! I am sure of it. I love them! I am sure of it. Oh what tomfoolery. Go rob a prison.

With desperation

Is there a more pitiful situation? Your lover is leaving, you are devastated. You love him/her! You love only him/her! There is nobody else in the entire world of 6 billion people like him/her! They’re almost like him/her, there are people almost identical, there are people with, admittedly, even better features than him/her. But they’re not him/her. They have not have spent the self same time they have with you. They have not even met you. They haven’t led you into some mistaken assumptions as he/she has. And so you plea and plea, you wring your heart and your sleeves.

With longing

Inevitably this is said when he lovee is not there. In my books, if you speak to somebody who is not there, you are a) under the effects of a hallucinogen in which case you should stop; or b) completely out of your mind.

With tedium

Ah, my favourite. When you no longer mean it but say it out of obligation only. Is there any greater lie? Do you really believe you won’t be crawling on the floor if they walk out the door? A testament to the human’s ability of self-denial!

The outright lie

Praise be to you, you Machiavellian! I’m unsure whether Byron said I love you to any of his many reputed lovers but if you were him you would have, because you can lie without a prick in your heart. Surely this is the highest achievement, but only if you looked them straight in the eye! You are destined for success in love, and life.

The silent I love you

You might mistake this for a lack of love. But as in a certain Sherlock Holmes novel (I think), lack says more than existence. The fact that two people need no longer say some hackneyed phrase for reassurance sake really says more about their relationship than any thing else (apart from dying for the other person but that’s an entirely different story and comes with it’s own exceptions and riders… which I shall visit another time). This is the most common of i love yous I’m sure, because people are lazy and indolent. But that change the fact that this is part of Louis Armstrong’s song ‘What a Wonderful World’. ‘They’re really saying I love you’ when they’re saying ‘How’re you’.

This saves a lot of trouble doesn’t it? Beautiful. Life is love.

–

Indeed. It’s not all bleak. If you don’t have the guts to say it. You needn’t say it. if you did you’d be buying into a really gutteral culture that requires certainty. Let me tell you there is no certainty, even with those words said, your incessant mind will ask, how much? In what quality? They’re endless. We must learn to cherish the inherent ambiguity in it all; and to notice the love and care that others show in their motions, in their speech, in their bodies. Only that secret love, that dwells beneath the surface. Only that, and that only, is not worth mentioning. (Please forgive my style and my cynicism. This is just a bit of fun)

God it’s so cold and I’m growing tired of poverty.

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So I make it sound like it was a conscious decision

That’s the idealist. Poverty was a conscious decision. Yes, it must have been, it can only be this way. I have so much time. But not much money. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, because I chose this. Certain people and opportunities have passed my way and I chose consciously to spurn them. What is it to me that the consequence of those decisions resulted in this, which I may or may not have foreseen. But if a decision loses it’s quality of having been consciously made just because an unforeseen result occurs, then that is absurd. Absurd I say. I am the cause of my own poverty!

And I’m also tired of it.

Saw a movie about God

It made me believe less in God. ‘God is in the himalayas’. Some Kid decides to go to find God, after being told that he’s in the mountains. Then God appeared. And that’s when I started to doubt a few things. I’m a real believer in averages (a real hater too), but how can a kid just see God. Leads me to believe that he was suffering from serious delusions of the mind induced by exposure to cold and extreme altitude, and extreme thirst (these kids didn’t even have water bottles for the trip into the himalayas *sigh*).

In any case, there are no certain pronouncements. Time beginning is time end. But in the middle lies the shadow. Eck***.

The library is for bums only

A bum decided to use the kids corner in my local library for a nap. He smelled. There were no kids, thankfully (or not?), as it was 2pm. But why didn’t we stop the bum? Because it’s a public institution. But the man doesn’t pay taxes, he doesn’t even have shoes. Yes I’m being acerbic. Truly poor people are truly dirt. Forgive me, but my statements apply, of course, only to the bums who decide to sit in the kid’s corner. At least go to the astrological reference section. Then you will escape my rant which you will never see because you can’t afford to go on the internet.

I feel like my dog. Lying on the bed. Eyes balls swishing around. Looking at any movement. But not moving itself. What a lazy animal.

Symphony of sorrowful songs

Gorecki sure knows how to pull the heart strings. Really nice symphony I heard on the radio. I wish I could tell you more but wikipedia can probably do that for you.

I wish I could provide you with a link but I’m too lazy and there’s no money in it for me.

So, anyways, I’m tired of this.

What Symphony will heal my pain, rather than multiply it and broadcast it throughout the airwaves until the suffocates me through the air tracts.

The red and the black

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Got real lazy,
No pics or thumbnails,
Mind’s a bit hazy,
Gnashes and wails.

A home by the sea

If you ask me, the only places worth living in the world are by the mountains or the sea, or both, if you’re lucky. But either of them will do me fine. I live, unfortunately, in the desolate hills that skirt the city of Sydney, there aren’t even rivers. Only polluted streams strangled by urbanization. In this city, there are harbours and pure bays, just not here. Sometimes the stereotype is truly desirable.

It would be nice to have a home by the harbour. Or a small beach. Or near a tall mountain. There are no tall mountains in this corner of the earth though. Time has seen to that. A fact my parents did not quite take into consideration when they came here. A pity. But the harbour is the second best, and the beaches too. The sand’s are pale and yellow, the water clean and the sun.

But to get to the point, well, I’d like to live next to the water. I won’t get into the economics of it. I’m sure it’d be possible one day. Not today, though it’s nice to think of it.

Ulysses

Took this one down from my shelf again. Going to have another try at the labyrinth that is James Joyce’s opus.

The Novel

The what? I’m writing a novel again. Again. Again. Again. I never really did before. Never really got past the first paragraph. Something about my being lazy. But it’s starting in earnest this time. I also have a short story in the works. It’s on paper at the moment (real paper) and I’m just looking for a few hours to pound it out. I can feel it already, it feels good. Somehow my writings always have this breathlessness about them, unsolid, unconcrete, airyness. To ossify it would be to sell out to plot. But we all need a bit of plot, which is why somebody has to die at the beginning, in that way, at least people feel they’re getting closer to a concrete resolution. Don’t be fooled and utter caution, because the lamest form of writing is to be found in the detective genre.

Hard-boiled trench wearing men who don’t shave but smell like cologne are so passe. I’m not saying anyone can write a detective novel.

Still gonna study accounting, however.

Peace out.

N

I’ve been a bad boy.

Somewhere, some time, people lose their way. A person loses their way. They go through each year thinking this will be a better one. Each day thinking this is the first day of their lives. It’ll be different. The deception is that each day depends on the last day that depends on the day before it. And years are just endless days stringed together. And if you go back long enough you come to the grandest achievement in your life: your birth. From that point, your entire life is determined. Your volitions are premised on our existence, their quality as much as anything. Ponder on it.

Luckily, the days do not stack on top of each other like an ill-built tower, ready to crumble. As soon as a second has past it’s set in the most ossified stone, unable to be hewed by anything but the death of memory and collective memory. So if it was a tainted kind of past we can only count on spots in brains like the sunspots that wax and wane.

I’m, obviously, being too philosophical.

Aside from that. I haven’t posted in a month. It’s been a riproller of a month. I don’t want to tell you about it. Suffice to say I’ve been keeping busy to keep the bete-noir(s) at bay. You know, the glumness of existence — and all the rest of it.

Reading

I’ve recently read Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Razor’s Edge’. A story of a man in search of the absolute, the truth, God. Told indirectly by Maugham. The story is often more about the lives of the socialite and the ambitious debutante who marries the stockbroker (this was in the 1920′s when stockbrokers were the richest guys in finance). Through this, Maugham holds these lives against each other. But he passes no judgment. I don’t know if anybody can pass judgment on a life lived for the spiritual absolute.

Listening to

Not very much I’m afraid. Georgia on my mind has been on my mind. A few Dave Brubeck’s. Beethoven’s 4th & 5th. No new CD’s. I’ve really tried to cut down. E.S.T.– Estbjorn Svensson Trio. Whatever’s lying around. The music appears to have passed a little from my life this month. But on the 29th Das Lied is playing at the Sydney Opera house and I have fine seats.

Finding Rhythm

I get worried sometimes that if you play to discords and unrhythmic tunes too long you get used to it and the true harmony and beat begin to sound like their imperfect counterparts. I think this goes with life.

I’m finally finding some rhythm. Harmony with the my true nature. Here it is. All of it. It needs nothing more. It’s perfectly adequate as it is. Whatever you add to it is superfluous, merely to kill time. Whether this is the right one or not I don’t know. The notes are evenly spaced. There’s no objectivity. But subjectively, this is perfection.

Adverbs

Ever notice, keenly,  how, obviously, adverbs can, surreptitiously, be put anywhere, succinctly?

Saw a play

Thanks to Adam (www.epistemysics.wordpress.com) I had the chance to see ‘Himmel Vec’ (the way to heaven) at Griffin Theatre a few days ago. A play about a fake town 40kms north of Berlin where the Nazi’s staged their peaceful resettlement of jews so as to dupe visiting observers. It was rather enjoyable but for my tired body. I particularly liked the contrast between the values of drama and of the human strife of the holocaust. How can people be expected to stage a show when they know they will die? How can people be expected to do anything without a future?

So really… the future is all we have. The present is worthless without a future.

–

Having said all this. I need to increase my reading time.

Peace out.

N

Long time amigo

Autumn leaves ~ Arashiyama, Kyoto

Good day to all you friends. I haven’t posted in awhile. I’ve been in my bedroom pondering again. My ivory tower of glass and crystal. To be honest I don’t really know what to write these days. A week ago I was working really hard, but now it i seem to have passed through a gap in the fabric to the other side where work doesn’t seem to mean as much and I finally have an hour of patience to write something.

Autumn

It’s autumn again. And the best thing to do is to snuggle up to your best friend in the entire world. Because the air is serene and cool. It hints of winter, of harsher things to come. But that doesn’t stop us from enjoying it. And if you don’t have a special someone, well you can always cozy up to the idea of someone. Or if you have a special someone and they aren’t that special anymore, well, the idea is still there. You could make a break, or patch things up.

There are a million things you can do. But one thing you can’t, is resisting those autumn leaves. You just have to get run around them, feel them getting caught up in your trail, hear their crunching into a thousand shards. Yup, nothing you can do but relax and imagine that life wasn’t made for back breaking work.

Music

I’ll just make a list. The kind of music i’m listening to in autumn

1. E.S.T. — Seven days of falling
2.  Miles Davis — Bitches Brew
3. Seu Jorge — the Life Aquatic Sessions
4. Damien Rice — 9
5. Rachmaninoff — Symphony No. 2
6. Beethoven — Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor)
7. Hiromi’s Sonic Bloom — Beyond standard & ors
8.  Stravinsky — Violin Concerto
9. Watanabe Sadao — My dear life
10. Blue note plays The Beatles
11. Lezsek Mozdzer — Jazz Impressions of Chopin
12. The Dave Brubeck Quertet — Time out
13. Herbie Hancock — The Joni letters
14. Schumann — Piano concerto in A minor
15. Bill Evans & Stan Getz — But Beautiful
16. Eric Clapton — Discography

It takes a lot of time to load this music. Especially if you have an ipod. Sometimes you think, I spend so much time loading the music that the essential act becomes loading music, not listening to music. Then you wonder if this applies to life as well.

Two Autumns

I was in Japan in October last year. It was autumn then. As it is autumn now in Australia. That’s two autumns. Nothing strange about that with jumbo jets every place and every where.

Mt Fuji

I got a ticket for July. Mt Fuji, 3800m. Although I will only be climbing from 1500m, from the fifth station. I wonder if I should climb from the bottom? That’d take at least a day, which means camping out for a night. I’ll see what my travel buddy thinks.

Come to think of it. This will be two summers. Summer isn’t as nice as autumn of course.

A wild sheep chase, The sound of the mountain, Sanshiro, South of the border west of the sun

Something about studying a lot makes me run to read japanese literature. But i’m kind of running out. Rereading a wild sheep chase was wonderful.

I’m making an order for the following soon: Schindler’s Ark, The English patient, a Stendhal and a Conrad.

And I’ve also got… The sea, the sea; The master and margarita, and a few others to read.

I’d love to tell you about my reading but it’s such a personal thing it’s hard. What you read becomes a part of you and might not ever be communicated. Or maybe on a drunken night, or over conversation at a cafe, it might come out. But only serendipitously, without cognition. Whatever.

Mt Everest

Thinking of the obstacles that stand between me and that summit makes me dizzy. Will I ever get there? How old will I be? What possessions will I have? What people will love me then and who will I love? What scars will I bear when I am on the top? Will I make it out alive?

God

There’s not that much I want to say about this.

Peace & Much love.

N.

Time flies like an arrow, so do not waste energy on trivial matters. Be attentive. Be attentive!

My laptop screen broke …

R I P

… and I want to kill myself because of it. Well. No, just kidding. But it is a real pain in the neck because I have major assignments to do and this laptop is only about 5 months old and I’ve taken it out of the house about a total of once. Which is why one should always pay good money for good products, to pinch pennies is false economy! This one only cost me $800, but it’s a good 800 buck machine. Seriously! And I’m poor… okay no complaining about that. Poor people become rich, rich people can’t become rich because they already are. Hang in there.

It’s Sunday

I always like posting blogs and writing emails on Sundays, it gives me this great clean feeling like cleaning your room. But today I haven’t had a chance yet even though it’s already 1pm because I had to google ‘my laptop screen broke’ and stumble across a site that taught me how to dismantle it to do no real effect. Great huh?

Simplifying things

So I want to simplify my life. I’m downgrading to my 10 year old Sony CD player. To CD’s. and to novels (well i’ve always read novels… so maybe I should think of picking up some pieces of slate?) In any case, in figuring out ways to downgrade my life further, I’ve stumbled upon recollections of the many times I’ve always tried downgrading but failed. I got rid of my IPod 3rd gen only to end up with an Iriver, I downgraded Iriver only end up with a Nokia that can do everything. Now I can’t downgrade the Nokia because it’s on contract. And in the middle of the night (I couldn’t sleep) I started thinking about how nice an Ipod would be.

I don’t like this consumerist rubbish. When can I be just free of it? Isn’t a discman also part of the whole scam? Isn’t the only solution not to consume at all. But then i’d end up worshiping something else, a man always needs something to worship, some people are just lucky in that they worship themselves.

CDs — Something’ Else

By Cannonball Alderly, with Miles Davis, Hank Jones, Sam Jones and Art Blakey.

I picked up this album for $9 the other day. And I’ve got to say that I like it better than ‘Kind of Blue”. It’s less radical, less cool — if you will — and I think this uncoolness kind of suits me more. Did I mention Autumn leaves is the opening track? You just don’t get better than that. I think I’ve talked about autumn leaves in the last post though, so I’ll just leave it at that.

I also got a few other CDs these two weeks… Bill Evans — The Bill Evans Album, Rachmaninoff — The best of, Art Blakey and the jazz messengers — Moanin’.

But I’ve been listening to mainly: Bach Lute suites for guitar, Mahler’s Song of the Earth, Dave Brubeck — Time out, and Stan & Gilberto.

If you’ve got any recommendations I’d love to hear them.

Writing my will

I’m writing my will this week. Not out of twenties morbidity but because I need practice. My part time job calls for writing a few wills and I feel like I’m not doing a very good job at it. It’s a very simple job, but that is deceptive, there’s a lot to it. A lawyer can easily get sued by a beneficiary who doesn’t get his/her cut in the will, since the guy who left the will is dead, who else can they sue? Ah, the lawyer who took the fees…

And if you’re wondering how I’m going to write a substantive will with my meagre assets, well I’m going to do funny things with the few worldly possessions that I have; I’ll post a copy when I’m done.

New Penguin 75

Has anybody seen the new $10 popular penguins, the list is on their site www.popularpenguins.com.au and they’ll be released in July. But let me just say that they look interesting, if not jaw dropping or anything. There are a few surprises and I’m keen to read up on some of the titles I haven’t heard about like The thirty nine steps and Therese Raquin and We have always lived in the castle. Albeit a few of the titles are quite surprising… like Orwell’s Keep the aspidistra Flying and Freud’s Civilization and it’s discontents and Dickens’ Hard Times.

You just have to wonder what kind of mood these guys at penguin are trying to set with a bunch of discount books about poverty and discontent…. why Hard times as the first Dickens’ inclusion in the series? I mean, Dickens always did write about social iniquity, but why not just Great expectations or Oliver Twist? They’re just as boring to read but at least the titles make them sound like they’re not about poverty and hardship.

Having said that, there is a rare beauty about dicken’s books. Maybe because they were the only real novels (apart from a few tom clancy ones) in my house when I was a kid and David Copperfield was the first real novel that I ever read and it was beautiful albeit 1000 pages too long for a 13 year old.

Going to see a movie

Well I keep saying this but it never happens.

Going to Bali

Yes this July, if anybody wants to join me then feel free. I shall be climbing at least 1 volcano. Could be 2, probably not 3.

Much love

N.