a duck other ducks are ashamed of

This morning I woke up in Carlton with dry lips, unsure of the whereabouts of my clothes and of the quickest way to get to work via public transport. My first morning in my new house. Who'd've thought that packing for three days straight and then shifting everything on the hottest day could suck the life out of your very lips, especially considering we were keeping hydrated with tea, coffee, beer and eventually whisky?

Our (mine and Adrian's) place in Carlton is a high point in both our housing histories. Albert Street just about fell down around our ears as we fled Abbotsford, and the junkies shook their fists and rattled their teeth.

some Larkin

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.


-Philip Larkin

Woolf

'...for he came every summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and pretended to read German with her, but really played the piano and sang Brahms without any voice.'


-Mrs Dalloway

Audiopig: A Cultural Binge

About six weeks ago I put out a facebook request for podcast recommendations. I now have a podcast diet which, although gluttonous, is very particular. Here are the highlights of my audio-glut:


1. This American Life - tried and tested, whimsical and wonderful. I was already a big fan of this one, thanks to my David Sedaris obsession. Friend Jens put me on to a particular episode entitled 'Pro Se' (episode 385), which you need to buy, since it's archived, but it is well worth the $3 or whatever you pay on itunes.

Quotes of Note

Some snippets I've copied into my notebook over the past couple of months...

'there's nothing we own that isn't mortal
save talent, the spark in the mind' - Ovid, Letters from Exile
(Initially I read 'mortal' as 'moral' - as if talent were too true a quality to be subject to society's arbitrary standards. Long live talent.)

And some more mortality:
'Photography is the inventory of mortality.' - Susan Sontag, 'Melancholy Objects' in On Photography