The southern winter begins

The Taieri planes

We have moved. To a broadbandless rural backblock locality on 'the Taieri Plains' near Dunedin. Near, and yet so far from the city - down an unsealed road where the rubbish collectors don't go and the telephone wires can barely transmit scratchy voice signals, punctuated as they are by interference from ticking electric fences.

So it is beautiful - serene, quiet, a vast expanse of sky - hardly a building or an artificial light to see at night. New weather to encounter - frosts, strange little knee-high fogs, warm still days. We've had a couple of days when it snowed but didn't settle, as we're more or less at sea level, but not far away the Maungatuas - the leading edge of the central Otago plateau - loom up and behave like mountains, and they have been snow covered several times already. Gorgeous.

We are near the flightpath to the Dunedin airport. Very near it, which is just fine by me. I love the sound of the planes coming into land and taking off, and watching the lights blinking at night. And I can almost set my clock by the 10.35 am arrival of the big jet from Auckland. It is also good to know that if I ever want to get away from New Zealand the exit door is just ten minutes away.

The sabre tooth tiger discovers fire

"Cat said, I am not a friend and I am not a servant. I am the cat who walks by himself and I wish to come into your cave."

~ Rudyard Kipling, from the Just So Stories

May Daze

Hope you are having a happy May! All is well with us -  we have spent three weeks offline having moved into the countryside only to discover that "rural broadband" is an oxymoron.

Paws for effect

A whole lotta sleeping going on.

Tuesday Poem: Do Not Go Gentle

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


By Dylan Thomas (hear audio here)

Surveillance society

Tuesday Poem: 'The Sphinx' by Oscar Wilde

'The Sphinx' ~ by Oscar Wilde

(To Marcel Schwob in friendship and in admiration)

In a dim corner of my room for longer than
my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me
through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she
does not stir
For silver moons are naught to her and naught
to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air, the waves of
moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the
night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and
all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of
satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the
tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her
pointed ears.

Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent,
so statuesque!
Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman
and half animal!

Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and
put your head upon my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see your
body spotted like the Lynx!

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow
ivory and grasp
The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round
your heavy velvet paws!

A thousand weary centuries are thine
while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green for
Autumn's gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the
great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks, and you
have looked on Hippogriffs.

O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to
Osiris knelt?
And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union
for Antony

And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend
her head in mimic awe
To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny
from the brine?

And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon
on his catafalque?
And did you follow Amenalk, the God of
Heliopolis?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear
the moon-horned Io weep?
And know the painted kings who sleep beneath
the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes which are
like cushions where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories!

Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered
with the Holy Child,
And how you led them through the wild, and
how they slept beneath your shade.

Sing to me of that odorous green eve when
crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian's gilded barge the
laughter of Antinous

And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and
watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with
his pomegranate mouth!

Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-
formed bull was stalled!
Sing to me of the night you crawled across the
temple's granite plinth

When through the purple corridors the screaming
scarlet Ibis flew
In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the
moaning Mandragores,

And the great torpid crocodile within the tank
shed slimy tears,
And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered
back into the Nile,

And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as
in your claws you seized their snake
And crept away with it to slake your passion by
the shuddering palms.

Who were your lovers? who were they
who wrestled for you in the dust?
Which was the vessel of your Lust? What
Leman had you, every day?

Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you
on the reedy banks?
Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on
you in your trampled couch?

Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward
you in the mist?
Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with
passion as you passed them by?

And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what
horrible Chimera came
With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed
new wonders from your womb?

Or had you shameful secret quests and did
you harry to your home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious
rock crystal breasts?

Or did you treading through the froth call to
the brown Sidonian
For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or
Behemoth?

Or did you when the sun was set climb up the
cactus-covered slope
To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was
of polished jet?

Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped
down the grey Nilotic flats
At twilight and the flickering bats flew round
the temple's triple glyphs

Steal to the border of the bar and swim across
the silent lake
And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid
your lupanar

Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the
painted swathed dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned
Tragelaphos?

Or did you love the god of flies who plagued
the Hebrews and was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had
green beryls for her eyes?

Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more
amorous than the dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the
Assyrian

Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose
high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with
rods of Oreichalch?

Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and
lay before your feet
Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-
coloured nenuphar?

How subtle-secret is your smile! Did you
love none then? Nay, I know
Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with
you beside the Nile!

The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when
they saw him come
Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with
spikenard and with thyme.

He came along the river bank like some tall
galley argent-sailed,
He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty,
and the waters sank.

He strode across the desert sand: he reached
the valley where you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day: then touched
your black breasts with his hand.

You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame:
you made the horned god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne: you called
him by his secret name.

You whispered monstrous oracles into the
caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers you
taught him monstrous miracles.

White Ammon was your bedfellow! Your
chamber was the steaming Nile!
And with your curved archaic smile you watched
his passion come and go.

With Syrian oils his brows were bright:
and wide-spread as a tent at noon
His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent
the day a larger light.

His long hair was nine cubits' span and coloured
like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment's hem the
merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of
new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure
of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and
threaded with thin veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were
broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was
too bright to look upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous
ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of
the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves and
carried to the Colchian witch.

Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed
corybants,
And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to
draw his chariot,

And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter
as he rode
Down the great granite-paven road between the
nodding peacock-fans.

The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon
in their painted ships:
The meanest cup that touched his lips was
fashioned from a chrysolite.

The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich
apparel bound with cords:
His train was borne by Memphian lords: young
kings were glad to be his guests.

Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon's
altar day and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through
Ammon's carven house--and now

Foul snake and speckled adder with their young
ones crawl from stone to stone
For ruined is the house and prone the great
rose-marble monolith!

Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches
in the mouldering gates:
Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the
fallen fluted drums.

And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced
ape of Horus sits
And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars
of the peristyle

The god is scattered here and there: deep
hidden in the windy sand
I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in
impotent despair.

And many a wandering caravan of stately
negroes silken-shawled,
Crossing the desert, halts appalled before the
neck that none can span.

And many a bearded Bedouin draws back his
yellow-striped burnous
To gaze upon the Titan thews of him who was
thy paladin.

Go, seek his fragments on the moor and
wash them in the evening dew,
And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated
paramour!

Go, seek them where they lie alone and from
their broken pieces make
Thy bruised bedfellow! And wake mad passions
in the senseless stone!

Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns! he loved
your body! oh, be kind,
Pour spikenard on his hair, and wind soft rolls
of linen round his limbs!

Wind round his head the figured coins! stain
with red fruits those pallid lips!
Weave purple for his shrunken hips! and purple
for his barren loins!

Away to Egypt! Have no fear. Only one
God has ever died.
Only one God has let His side be wounded by a
soldier's spear.

But these, thy lovers, are not dead. Still by the
hundred-cubit gate
Dog-faced Anubis sits in state with lotus-lilies
for thy head.

Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon
strains his lidless eyes
Across the empty land, and cries each yellow
morning unto thee.

And Nilus with his broken horn lies in his black
and oozy bed
And till thy coming will not spread his waters on
the withering corn.

Your lovers are not dead, I know. They will
rise up and hear your voice
And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to
kiss your mouth! And so,

Set wings upon your argosies! Set horses to
your ebon car!
Back to your Nile! Or if you are grown sick of
dead divinities

Follow some roving lion's spoor across the copper-
coloured plain,
Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid
him be your paramour!

Couch by his side upon the grass and set your
white teeth in his throat
And when you hear his dying note lash your
long flanks of polished brass

And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber
sides are flecked with black,
And ride upon his gilded back in triumph
through the Theban gate,

And toy with him in amorous jests, and when
he turns, and snarls, and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise
him with your agate breasts!

Why are you tarrying? Get hence! I
weary of your sullen ways,
I weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent
magnificence.

Your horrible and heavy breath makes the light
flicker in the lamp,
And on my brow I feel the damp and dreadful
dews of night and death.

Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver
in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances
to fantastic tunes,

Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your
black throat is like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic
tapestries.

Away! The sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying
through the Western gate!
Away! Or it may be too late to climb their silent
silver cars!

See, the dawn shivers round the grey gilt-dialled
towers, and the rain
Streams down each diamonded pane and blurs
with tears the wannish day.

What snake-tressed fury fresh from Hell, with
uncouth gestures and unclean,
Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you
to a student's cell?

What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept
through the curtains of the night,
And saw my taper burning bright, and knocked,
and bade you enter in?

Are there not others more accursed, whiter with
leprosies than I?
Are Abana and Pharphar dry that you come here
to slake your thirst?

Get hence, you loathsome mystery! Hideous
animal, get hence!
You wake in me each bestial sense, you make me
what I would not be.

You make my creed a barren sham, you wake
foul dreams of sensual life,
And Atys with his blood-stained knife were
better than the thing I am.

False Sphinx! False Sphinx! By reedy Styx
old Charon, leaning on his oar,
Waits for my coin. Go thou before, and leave
me to my crucifix,

Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches
the world with wearied eyes,
And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps
for every soul in vain.

Research = search plus re-search

The agency cat is unstinting in his hunt for the source of the errors in the 'historical record'. Quite plainly he smells a rat.

Happy birthday to the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Learning gravitas

The Tabbyssinian is learning the grown-up cattitude.

He used to only have two speeds,

on, or off.

Now he is learning to stare like a sphynx.

In a New York state of mind

Kiwi Poets in New York

A poem of Janet Frame's really did light up Times Square on a giant billboard, and a bunch of New Zealand poets really were let loose in the Big Apple and had a fabulous time!

Does my bum look big in this?

Those little furrowed brows always make the Tabby seem a bit anxious.

Tuesday Poem: 'Daniel' by Janet Frame

Daniel

Janet Frame can be heard reading some of her own poems - now online at the UK Poetry archive!

Including the delightful 'Daniel' (written for my son Daniel when he was just a lad).

Janet recorded this poem not long before her death at the age of nearly 80 years old.

For more about all things Janet Frame, please see my "work" blog:

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz

Felis domesticus

Just a cat. Licking, looking, and snoozing.

One year on, the agency cat is feeling pretty secure.

It's in the bag

Honestly if there is a bag or a box, he is in it.

Any breaking news?

Nope. Still asleep...

The Birds

Hitchcock springs to mind naturally when the seagulls come after you.

Kiwis can fly

Looking forward to this!

Feline good

And in the cat news: nothing much to report.

First we take Manhattan

If you are in or near New York please come along!

More info: Kiwi Poets Live in New York

Season change

The first breath of autumn sends the cat back under the blankets.

Cul de Sac

Mysterious little byway hidden away on the Otago Peninsula. Photo by Schroedinger.

Where did February go??

Too busy, in a good way... I would always rather have something to do - even if it is too much to do...

Can't believe it's nearly a year since the agency sent us this magnificent Tabbyssinian.

New Year Resolutions

Get more exercise. Lose weight. That's what the vet told the Tabby yesterday. So he is now on the 'Catkins diet' (high protein, low carb.)

"You do know that Atkins died young, don't you?" says Schroedinger to the vet. But the vet lectured us about the danger of diabetes and so we agreed to try the neutered male, stay-at-home variety of the expensive cat biscuit.

Meanwhile the Tabby was exploring the consult room, found a box of doggy treats, fished one out and ate it.

Of course he has put on weight over the holiday period. He ate the Xmas tree.

The Year of the Dragon

Happy Chinese New Year!

Yes, I am still here, I just worked through Christmas and then took a trip and then came home and I'm still working.

But it's all good. What a year the Dragon has for me. Hang on tight, we're taking off!!

Peace and Lovejoy

Happy New Year!

2011 finished for me with a delightful flourish - the unexpected survival of Comet Lovejoy after passing through its proximity to the sun. In our Southern Christmas skies those who rose early for those few festive days were treated to a gorgeous yuletide display of the fading comet with an incredibly long tail flaring high above the horizon. Glorious.

Here's to more unexpected survivals for 2012. Hope you have a good one.

Xmas Card

Season's Greetings

This is the dear departed beloved Old Tabby who lived to the venerable age of 20.

We wouldn't risk trying to get New Tabby to dress up like this!

Wishing you a happy holiday

and peace and joy for the New Year.

Cultural Exchange

Wrapped monument resembling a Presbyterian stupa

The Exchange, Dunedin

They voted with their feet

New Zealand held a general election and the turnout was the worst ever, the worst since the Victorian era. Why are people disenfranchising themselves? For an increasing number of New Zealanders, their 'bright future' is in Australia. Abandon ship!

Cat Science

It is a scientific fact that a cat will always be on the wrong side of the door.

There is a story that the brilliant scientist Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat door, because his cat was for ever pushing open the door of his attic laboratory at just the right time to spoil his light experiments.

If the door was locked the cat would howl and scratch to be let in and Newton being a cat lover, cut a strip off the bottom of the door and attached some dark fabric so that the cat could sneak in under it without contaminating the experiment.

100% KIWI REAL-LIFE STORIES

There's a very good feature in this week's NZ Woman's Weekly giving the background to the new book about Janet Frame.

No really, it is an excellent article and not out of place given that Janet Frame is a loved NZ icon, and that this new book is very readable and enjoyable.

Here's to the demotic forum!

My only regret is that the Tabby sloped off and missed out on the photo shoot.

Postscript: A link to the article online.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Lunar eclipse 11.12.11

Image from stuff.co.nz

I managed to watch about 20 minutes of a beautiful progressing total lunar eclipse early this morning until heavy cloud obliterated the view just before the shadow had almost entirely obscured the moon at about 3 am NZ time. It looked to me like a most exquisite pearl button - with delicate indescribable shifting colours - with a shiny edge glinting in the light, and the 3D effect was breathtaking. I was watching through binoculars although the spectacle was also very pretty with the naked eye.

My mother was a fan of cosmic phenomena, and she infected me with her passion throughout my long childhood of being dragged outside during the wee small hours to see the first Sputnik or a lunar eclipse or a pretty conjunction of heavenly bodies, and in her enthusiasm and by example, she managed to teach me a few things about chasing these elusive wonders:

(1) It's not easy but it's worth it

If you want to see astonishing magical things in the night-time sky you have to to sacrifice a bit - and get up when you'd rather be asleep in a warm bed, and stand out in the cold, and get tired, and get a cricked neck watching and waiting.

(2) You need to persevere

You need patience and stamina, maybe to wait for the clouds to clear or for the moon to rise up behind that hill or for that comet to become visible or before you catch sight of the blinking trail of that satellite. So often it is when almost everyone else has given up and gone off to bed that the floor show begins.

(3) You need luck but you also need to do your research

It helps to be looking in the right part of the sky and from the correct spot on the earth and at the right time of the night and without any obstacles such as bright city lights, your own porch light, the roof next door, a fog bank, or an inconvenient mountain range.

The internet is very helpful these days, and theoretically one is more likely to be able to hear about and see an aurora, for instance. (And if you don't catch it yourself at least you can see somebody else's photo!)

(4) Sometimes the 'experts' are wrong

This precept was very useful when Halley's Comet came by in 1986 and the general public were told when to watch for it. I was so excited and couldn't wait and went out looking every night much earlier and was rewarded with a much better view of it than many others who waited for the official optimum viewing, by which time it had become more fuzzy and less spectacular, and the judgement of many was that their whole effort and build-up had been a disappointment to them.

Also it pays not to believe it when you are told a meteor shower will not be particularly productive, or that the night is too cloudy to see it, because clouds have a habit of suddenly parting and allowing the sight of some dazzling spectacle you will never forget.

(5) Keep Alert and Pay Attention

You need to keep your eyes open. A cloud can drift away and reveal a blood-red fully eclipsed moon in all its glory, or a meteorite or a fireball can whizz by in a blink of an eye and the saddest thing you can hear in that situation is "Did you see THAT!?!" If you're going to stand outside in the cold you may as well make sure you're not wasting your time.

Be prepared to be thought mad and obsessed along with all the other driven people who have a goal and don't mind stepping outside conventional boundaries of behaviour to achieve it.

It will be worth it for the image you can hold in your mind for ever afterwards, and the knowledge that you made the effort, and you saw something rare and special for yourself, maybe in your own back yard.

A Marvellous Year

The giant stuffed toy Moa in the Otago Museum, Dunedin

Allen Curnow, numero uno NZ poet (in my opinion), would have turned one hundred years old this year.

This is my centenary tribute, a joking allusion to his much-cited poem "The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch", which contains the two lines that have inspired many a subsequent generation of literary wannabes:

"Not I, some child born in a marvellous year, / will learn the trick of standing upright here."

So, has it happened yet? Is anybody standing upright yet? Or are we still evolving? Or are we going backwards?

I'm pretty grumpy with Aotearoa New Zealand right now so I'm more inclined to the 'going backwards' point of view...

Anyways Happy Centenary to a great poet, thanks for the words well spoken.

The latest Landfall has some fascinating and informative poems, reminiscences, discussions and other gestures in honour of Allen Curnow, including an amazing tribute poem by Janet Frame (published there for the first time ever), that she wrote after attending an Auckland literary party while she was the first Frank Sargeson Fellow in 1987. She was busy writing her last novel The Carpathians, but took time off to hang out with old chums, and managed to weave a poem out of a seemingly trivial piece of small-talk.

Reaching new heights

The agency cat seems to try to outdo himself in adorableness and this stunt - getting stuck up a cabbage tree - pretty much takes the cake.