Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

"The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage."

Today the
postman brought
me the periodic
table to go
with the other
periodic furniture
we have around
the house.

Logic table: or why doncha do write?

I don't write about things I don't write about.

I do write about things I don't write about.

I don't write about things I do write about.

I do write about things I do write about.

Lunch poem

Yesterday it was almost
Autumn in New York
&, putting a logical
footprint on a flight
of fancy, I suppose
today is also. Here it’s
coming into spring
but there’s not a
flower to be seen
& the paparazzi are
reduced to polishing
their camera lenses &
taking bets on which
way the river will
flow next. My nose
is filling in for a
broken traffic light, the
rest of the clownsuit is
at the cleaners. Once
more that same old
sandwich & double
espresso routine &
no longer funny when
you're out of drag &
they've heard it all before.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri: Warlugulong 1977

A painting by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, described as one of the most important Australian works of the 20th century, more than doubled the record for Aboriginal art on Monday night when it sold for $A2.4 million.

"Possum's painting is considered an icon of contemporary Aboriginal art. In it he tells stories of the desert. The central narrative takes place in Warlugulong, 200 miles north-west of Alice Springs. It was here, according to legend, that the two sons of Lungkata, a blue-tongued lizard man, killed a kangaroo. Instead of sharing the meat with their father in the customary manner, they ate it all. In his fury, Lungkata started a bush fire which engulfed his sons.

In the centre of the canvas the fire blazes, while to the right, two skeletons lie surrounded by clouds of smoke. Around this scene are woven separate sacred stories, or "dreamings", with footprints marked to signify the journeys of their protagonists. The painting was the first in which an Aboriginal artist attempted to depict several stories in a topographical manner like a Western map."

From the days before Jagger became the Queen of Botox

Please allow me to introduce myself.....

a / random fact / a six-word story

Ferrets are highly susceptible to botulism.

Lunch poem

If you took small
things out of
context, could
probably assemble
a tolerable landscape. Talis-
men in yr tote bag — the
post office clock
tower, customs house
cupola, some birds, a
measure of hills. Arrange
them where/when
ever you might come
to rest, lean back,
contented or at least
a semblance of. Lasts
for a minute. What
then?

Day three hundred & thirtysix

Midday raga. Long queues
form at fuel pumps, another
homosexual has been
executed in Iran, rumors
of total, not limited, war
abound. One does not have
to be devout to be
excited by it, to want to
be a part of it, even if it's
only selling enchiladas
to the disciples of Chicago
economic liberalism who
have all lined up to watch
the statues weeping blood.

Today the
postman brought
me my
contributor's copy
of Haiku by
Serial Killers. It's
the first in a
number of
volumes. The
subsequent
ones will be
published at
ever-decreasing
intervals.

not quiet ear

elsewhen

In an-
other place the
clouds
             might hint
at snow;
     but
            here
     calligraphy
hasn’t been
            in-
vented.

under the new tear/roar lores

We are guilty
until proven
guilty.

No
such thing
as innocent anymore.

Today the
postman brought
me the terror-
rising news
that the Thought
Police are alive
& well & living
in Australia. The
smallest thing, not
even tangible…..

Today the
postman brought
me the last
episode of Marcel
Marceau. Finally
he's all mime.

another fandom wracked

I
love the
sound of Tamla-Motown.

seven more not-so-random facts

Canaries are yellow.

The Beatles’ submarine was yellow.

A lot of words rhyme with yellow including some great ones — e.g. violincello.

More words rhyme with red. It’s the other pole. He’d rather be dead than seen playing a violincello. It’s why orange was invented. Compromise.

Banana skins are yellow except when they’re dead. Have you ever seen a banana playing a violincello? I’m just wild about saffron. They call me mello cello.

Jaundice is yellow. Sometimes jell-o is too. E-lec-tric-al banana. About the same time as Electric Ladyland. Hey Joe, where you gonna go with that cello in yr hand?

Yellow isn’t yellow. Except when it’s dead.

a not-so-random fact for Jordan Stempleman

Jordan Stempleman has tagged me to provide / produce / proclaim eight random facts.

There are a couple of problems with that. The second is that, once you've produced one random fact, everything that follows is tempered by that first statement, & is no longer random.

The first thing is that, once you've been tagged, that initial fact won't be random anyway. It's not like you've been on the couch for half an hour & your therapist suddenly gives you a word association test. No, it's a formal request; & even if you come out with that first thought that provokes a poem, there's a whole lotta transmogrification goin' on.

So, a not-so-random fact for JS.

slivingin is living in sin

Lunch Poem

& at the re-
maindered book sale
I buy a copy of
michael dransfield’s
lives, the biography
of an Australian
poet who “died
young, w./ a needle
in his arm” 34
years ago. Hard back,
600 pages, $2.99
marked down from
$49.99. There are
stacks of six or
so of the book on
six or so of the
tables in the hall. So
many wasted lives.

In his autumn.
Leaves. Fall
s.

forgt

spoeam

Living — & dying — with Google

1. Living, aka Oops.

Gmail has decided it's an associate editor of Otoliths. Over the past week it's started identifying some submissions as spam, as well as emails from people on my mailing list. I've picked most of them up, but it hasn't been happening long enough for me to automatically doublecheck what's there before I press the delete forever button, & yesterday, the nanosecond after I hit that option, I saw the word submission in the subject line. Too late.

So, to someone called Diana(?), living in Sindelfingen in Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany whose email provider is arcor-ip-net, my humblest apologies, & could you please resubmit. Or if anyone knows who she might be……

2. Dying, aka Oops.

I have long harboured the suspicion that many of those who commit murder regard it as a form of sport. Apparently Google News shares my belief.

Some truth about invasion of Iraq

THE PRIME Minister has proffered many reasons to justify Australia's participation in the American-led invasion of Iraq. Yesterday he advanced a new one: the need to secure a major oil supply. In an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute yesterday, John Howard said the Middle East was crucial to Australia's strategic and economic future because "our major ally and our most important economic partners have crucial interests there".

It has long been suspected that oil, and the United States' almost pathological need to secure reliable supplies for its domestic needs, was one of the main factors behind President George W. Bush's decision to to invade Iraq but neither he nor Howard broached the subject when they began talking up overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2002.

Instead, the US and its allies insisted their motives on Iraq's future were honourable. They wanted to rid the Middle East of a wicked despot, deny al-Qaeda a base from which to export terrorism to the world, and nurture a new democracy that would act as a reforming influence on the region's many autocratic regimes. And if the invasion succeeded in ensuring that Iraqi oil should flow more freely to the US and other customers, well that would be an unexpected though welcome development.

Perhaps because all the justifications for invasion have been largely discredited, the Prime Minister now argues that securing Iraqi oil (not for Australia but for the US and "our most important economic partners") is an important reason to stay the course in Iraq.

At least it has the ring of truth about it unlike the revolving and evolving list of reasons given for invading and occupying Iraq.

from The Canberra Times

The Magi?

Or, at least, the Three Ys Men.......

Lunch Poem

It is perhaps apt
that on the
day / after
Independence Day
& the first day for
several weeks that
the streets have
been empty of
US servicemen

I should end up
sharing the side-
walk space outside
the sandwich shop
with someone who
is the splitting
— spitting? —
image of
Abraham Lincoln.

Tall, Calvinist up-
right despite his
age, chiseled face
Rushmoreing from
beneath a giftshop
drover’s hat, sun-
tanned enough to be
from around these
parts, in polo shirt &
shorts & sandals
that show he isn’t,

he comes bearing
not the Gettysburg
Address but a
handful of tourist
guidebooks that
track the end of
a life that could
quite easily have
started four score
& seven years ago.

Today the
postman brought
me personalized
letters from
Barbra Streisand
offering me her
complete recordings
in the one boxed
set & from Dr Jack
Kevorkian who is
flogging his "Makes
The Difference" Engine
at just-got-out-of-
prison prices. I
did not respond
to either; but have
used the incident
in my new paper
on Cause & Effect.

A reminder

that submissions for issue six of Otoliths close at the end of the month. It's shaping up to be another di/verse issue.