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| Photo by Sydney Herron on Unsplash |
Here's my second poem from long ago and far away:
2. Floating free
I see the shadows of
the future in that white
island which is San Francisco
From Tiburon I watch
the misty sea
edging south over San Francisco
and the island of the city
is truly floating free at last
Love and peace - Wozza
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| Photo by Aimee Burrows on Unsplash |
Thought for this one I'd revisit some of my poetry from long ago and far away.
Three at random, over the next three posts, and the link between the natural world and my inner world is very obvious.
Here's the first one from around 30 years ago:
1. Mist
There's a mist on the lake - night isn't too
far away.
Faces of the past come to mind
as if the mist has called them.
They were maybe always there -
in the rarified air.
Lake Taupo lies somewhere beyond the mist -
keeping its secrets.
It's been a cold day - lazy drizzle
As I stood on the river bank - listening
to the sound of the reeds on the rushing
water and my line
making darts in
and out of the
currents - in the
shallows and
in the ripples.
Coldest part
of the country
apparently - as
I stood under the shelter of the blackberry
bush and let the rain
come down
back to the river,
back to the faces.
Love and peace - Wozza
Our brother-in-law, Gavin O'Neill, recently gave Jacky this exquisitely ornate picture frame (with no picture inside).
That created a dilly of a pickle for us.
We wanted/needed something special in such a great frame.
We tried a number of water colour and oil paintings, even a wedding photo of my mum and dad, but Jacky wasn't content.
Instead, she mentioned jokingly a few times that a photo I took of her once upon a time at The Victoria and Albert Museum, would look cool.
The idea at the V&A was that you stepped behind a frame and it would reproduce a kind of Victorian era image in the style of Julia Margaret Cameron which you could then photograph.
Here are our efforts:
As a joke I printed off my picture of Jacky and stuck it in the said frame.
And it looks terrific! It immediately reminds us of that great trip to London's V&A as well.
So it's a keeper!
Love and peace - Wozza
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| My original hard back copy from 1970 looked like this |
Hopefully the answer to that question is that 2021 has started off more positively than 2020 for you but I know a lot of the planet is in lockdown or some sort of covid-19 hell.
Here in Nu Zild, life continues to gear up for a normal return to work for me next week with students set to arrive back on campus a week later.
I bought it in hardback in 1970 and, at the time, it signalled something of a transition towards more adult themed novels.
Recently, I was browsing in the Hastings' Warehouse and saw a copy for $6.00 so I decided to re-read it.
It's still an exciting enough adventure/spy story but the writing hasn't aged particularly well, or else my tastes have expanded during the 51 intervening years and my standards have risen. Take your pick.
I guess you could file this away in the 'you should never go back' category.
That George Lucas bio though! Boy, that is delivering!
Love and peace - Wozza.
George Lucas A Life by Brian Jay Jones has moved to the top of my reading pile.
It's been sitting there for a while, ever since I bought it for $5 from a second hand shop in Woodville.
I'm not usually one for biographies (give me an autobiography instead) but George is special and Brian Jones does a pretty good job.
It also turns out there are additional pleasures to reading about his life as a student in the sixties. In the age of YouTube - we have access to all* of the films he made as a varsity student:
Herbie (* or nearly all - Herbie is a short film about a car - not that VW beetle one - but it's not on YouTube)
These are fascinating and pretty typical of students' films I guess. I did a Film Studies post graduate masters paper at Auckland University back in the 1980's and made similar types of films, albeit on video. I loved fooling around with cut up images and soundtracks but the passion to continue down that film route didn't exist in me like it did in George.
I love the fact that I can instantly reach those films now. I wonder if George minds that?
Whatever, the force is strong in these short films!
Love and peace - Wozza
Alternating a 'serious' book with a 'light' book has been the way I've rolled during these holidays.
Anne Tyler novels and John Cleese's autobiography have been the light ones to heavier stuff - a Michel Houellebecq novel and a rereading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
I read Invisible Man in the late seventies as an undergraduate - so about 40 years ago (time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like an apple). I picked up a copy recently from the Little Red Bookshop in Hastings and not remembering much, decided to read it again in light of the black lives matter movement.
Can't get much more serious and 'heavy' than that really. This extraordinary book is like a fever dream put into words. The cops' killing of Tod Clifton and its aftermath in the book is harrowing to read and, sadly, very relevant to black lives matter events in America.
During his lifetime Ellison only wrote one novel. If you read it you'll understand why (a posthumous novel Juneteenth came out in 2019).
After that one I needed something from my unread pile that would create a different mood.
Enter Rod The Autobiography (by Rod Stewart) - the very opposite of an invisible man! It's become an inspired choice as Rod turns out to be hilarious! It's all very laddish and he's certainly a cad when it comes to the ladies, but the humour is what saves him.
Somewhat inevitably, it's prompted a Faces and Rod-a-thon at Maple Grove and a search for some of his early solo albums.
Top three songs: Mandolin Wind; Stay With Me; Miss Judy's Farm.
Love and peace - Wozza