Life against Death

Della, Everything you say makes me feel you will enjoy LIFE AGAINST DEATH all the more when you finally do have a read! It is not what you think, and as for the "psychoanalytical meaning of history" and all those heavyweights, don't worry, Brown is very articulate and quite down to earth about EVERYTHING. That's one of the book's many appeals, at least to me. A suggest once you find a copy, you needn't read it straight through, just look at the chapter titles and start with one you find interesting. That's the way I read it last Spring, and it worked better than previous attempts where I started on page one. I hope my enthusiastic recommendations do not have the adverse affect of making you expect too much and be too easily dismissive of what he writes before having a chance to absorb it. Anyway, even to search for a book can be an adventure! Keep me posted. I'm rereading it at present so we can talk about whatever whenever. I finally have a few days off but extra energy did not arrive with the holiday I'm afraid. If you send me an address where you'll be I can mail off a copy of WORDSWORLD to you in Vancouver and you can read it down by English Bay or in Stanley Park! Enjoy. Allen

September in Chengdu

Della! FINALLY am once again online, first time since returning a month ago. ANYTIME you want to come to Chengdu will be great, I'd love to see you. I'd also like to visit you sometime in Brisbane, I'm getting the "see other places" itch pretty seriously. Of course China itself is a world I have not yet seen much of, strange to say, so I'll begin HERE, but definitely would like to travel 'Down Under'. Now that my computer is again "connected" I hope to get back into my own work and to explore with you some of those "latencies" suggested at various times last winter Did I send you a copy of WORDSWORLD? (My chapbook, most recent?) I think not, so I'll send it too... What about your own writing and your own blog aspirations? Let's RESUME somehow, despite the many lapses and interruptions and impossibilities! I'll start, by sending you something shortly. I'm planning on inviting one of my classes here October 8 for a Thanksgiving party, we meet on Monday afternoons anyway. My best class, this term. I have lots of things it would be interesting to talk with you about, if we ever can resume any regular exchanging. Did you look for Brown's LIFE AGAINST DEATH…?

And please check on this disturbing report for me: someone told me the May Wah had burned or been burned to the ground. I'd like to know, sad though any confirmation would be. If you're at Main and Hastings, go into The Golden Horse (also known as the Marilyn Restaurant) and say hello to Eva, who'll be at the cash, one of my best friends (she and her whole family) if you say Hello for me she'll give you a Hong Kong tea free, I betcha! Wish I could visit Vancouver with you… Allen

Song of the Car-Tire-Swan

I’m an icon of Australiana, more famous than the big banana, a monument on all the highways, I even snooze on forgotten byways.

So the revolution goes on and on, but not for me, I’m never gone. I’m just stuck here on these eternal verges, a prisoner of my carnal urges.

You see, I spied a girl swan down the lane, she looks quite pliable and not too plain. She could be a Bridgestone, Dunlop or better, if she was a Michelin I’d send a French letter.

I’d like to fertilize an egg in her 14 inch belly but with my kind of luck, we’d hatch a Pirelli. So here I loll in unrequited lust as deflated as the day my inner tube bust.

As for that 50’s wannabe, the plaster duck, us Latex brotherhood reckon they suck. If they were out here where the rain doth pelt, the chalky bastards would probably melt.

Not sure how I got into this situation, probably a case of over inflation, Guess I just happened to be down on my tread, back in the day when petrol had lead.

Thus we sit here like rubbery figures, impervious to the traveller’s sniggers. Inscrutable guardian of things kitsch and homely, never dull, but by God its lonely.

© 2006 Fred Olsen

A Harem? No way...

My friend, AV, from Brisbane has a visitor from Vietnam, a beautiful young woman named Lan. I asked how goes it? And he replied:

Lan is very quiet, I find it hard to know what she wants or how she feels. It is getting me ready for living with Asian women. They are different to western people in some ways. You probably guessed I have issues communicating with women as I am usually on a different wavelength. I also have issues communicating with men but they tend to be a bit more transparent.

Me: “Asian women??? Do you mean a harem???

I wouldn’t mind a harem but it probably is not worth the downside hassles. Maybe????I was thinking along the lines of serial relationships which are more the normal practice in western society and also as a generalization about a group sharing - hence the term used. I had not given it a lot of deep thought. I do value freedom a great deal. My life may not be great from everybody's point of view but I do have enormous freedom, freedom to me represents great and reasonable resources. I don't have to worry about living my life to keep someone else happy or to live by their judgments. I am a person who does not want much but freedom, different experiences and ideas. I also want to live in my perception of - in harmony with nature - whatever that is.

Contributed by AV

The Harem Servant by Paul-Desire Trouillebert 1874

Just Because I'm Blonde...

Dear Diary,

Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with the expensive double-pane energy efficient kind. This week, I got a call from the contractor who installed them. He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I hadn't paid for them.

Hellloooo, just because I'm blonde doesn't mean I am automatically stupid. So I told him just what his fast talking sales guy had told ME last year ....namely, that in ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!

Helllooooo? It's been a year! (I told him.) There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up...He didn't call back. Guess I won that stupid argument.

- Contributed by AV from Brisbane -

Patricia's Poems

If you wake one morning early
When the frost is on the ground
And you hear a sound of crakling
Or see diamonds all around
You may be watching Ice Maidens
As over the snow they bound;
Then, look, and listing carefully
For they make so little sound.
If a brightly shining rainbow
Seems to move across your glance,
It could be a flash of tiny wings
Soft shimmering in a dance;
If you're allowed to see them
Its not just "happenstance"
Think carefully, and make a wish.
It could come true perchance!

Copyright1996- Patricia Lamont

Reicarnational Paradox

>© 1987 Patricia Lamont

How well do I know you? That I cannot say, I only know I knew you long before today,

I don't know when I knew you, I only know I did... But where and when - how long ago is very neatly hid.

How long shall I know you? I cannot say for sure, I knew you then - I know you now and I shall know you more!

When you are young and I am old, or the other way about - our paths and fates will inter-wind all around - and in and out.

The upside-down and downside-up of lives are most amusing, we cannot know, when who was who, which I find most confusing.

We really don't know who is whom, or where who was before - but only whom we are now is what we know for sure.

And yet - I know I've known you and that is why I say, I knew you then - I'll know you when... as I know you today.

As One Poem

©1997 Sook Ryeo Kang

a very special poet

Mid – 40’ –
The Decade of No Temptation.
Fighting with the black, difficult days
woman vomits the chaotic words from her heart.
She begins to write, writing wet with teardrops.

in my grieving heart
my pain stays
even though your dying leaves me free
I don’t appreciated
my passion has not cooled
I cannot calm my missing of you
the long night is white

If the sun rises twice a day
can that be two days?

I write, the time goes faster,
so I can go to you more quickly.
I want to fly to you as one poem.

Note: In Korea a - white night - signifies a sleepless night

From Kia-Ora Coo-ee

The magazine for ANZACS in the Middle East
June 1918


OF POETS

Where the tracks are hard and dreary, the tracks are long and dry,
The tropic sun a-beating down from out a cloudless sky;
There's naught to see but sand, at times you'll maybe see a clump
Of palm-trees-it's no wonder that the. camel's got the hump.

A never-ending stretch of sand, to where the sky and land
Meet in line of blue and brown, and poets say it's grand !
But did those blinking poets live as we’ve been forced to live?
If not, then let them have a go, and then their version give.

If poets had to rise at dawn, and feed a blinking horse;
If poets had to eat our grub, plain bully beef, of course;
If poets rode beside us when the way was dry and long;
Arid liked it, let the Poets go and ring their blinking song.

But poets stay at home in ease, and travel not afar
To where the way is lighted by a pale, un­wavering star.
They never scorch or swelter, at the desert never swear;
The reason why's not hard to find, they never have been there.

Now when you hear a poet rave of “ Vast encircling sands,
Whose magnitude is circumscribed by cloudless azure bands
Of Heaven’s vault”, his poesy’s imagination grows;
Just think of all those scorching sands, and bash him on the nose.

Palestine June 1918 By- "TWENTY-TWO".

Aridity of the Soul

Hi Allen

Another month has passed and I am getting closer to nothing at all... probably caused by South-East Queensland's lack of rain. Water reservoirs are down to critical levels and "level 5" water conservation laws came into effect.
Australia Dries me up...

I intended to do some work on my never-successful WEB SITE project, but something always interferes... lately it has been my sister's garden, ( lack of water? ) flower-beds look like abandoned graveyards and the vegetable patch is now covered with pebbles... I would pour cement over the yellow grass... which reminds me that the annoying buzz of lawn-mowers is not heard as often as in the past...

How are you doing? I have read that China knows how to create rain-clouds. Can you send me the recipe??? Love you always, Della


Della,
Aridity yes is not the most fruitful of environments. HOWEVER, if you can "turn it into words" ( as ' aridity of the soul' does ) you might be able to evoke a rain cloud for yourself! Surely the extremes of climate can be a poweful stimulus to verbal mind, creative effort---

I know, I know, " easy to say " such things--- but, what have you got to lose? Take the Arid Season by the horns and make speak! Try translating all those "dryings-up" into word pockets that themselves will be " water in the desert" for future readers or even present day readers.

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," a wise man said. Consider all the extremes, and rate the desert amongst them--is it your least favorite choice? Would you prefer Labrador winter? Siberia? Or monsoon India?

Today is the last day of winter here---summer, there. Hope you get some MOIST relief soon!
love, Adze

No Relief... After a 10-year drought words are as difficult as late, late, late solutions... The eminent PM of Ozland Mr. John Howard himself discovered words don't come easy, all he had to say was: pray for rain... Do you suppose he meant prey to God? God gave intelligeence and then retired above the clouds to observe how long smart politicians take to figure it out... The politicians threaten the farmer's water supply will be cut off if the Lord does not fill dams and replenish dwindling river waters... Meanwhile tons of water are allotted to the constructing of mega -building and city-crossing traffic tunnels, while the icreasing population must flush the toilette once a day, and water the garden with the few drops collected in a bucket while taking a flash shower. Desalination plants are too expensive and citizens repeatedly refused recycled sewage, even if passed through the process of reversed osmosis. But we do not enquire why ten years of drought passed without concrete solution, we do not not talk about the prospect of $10.00 for a kilo of brown onion or a bag of carrots, we talk about the war and sending more troupes to Iraq... We can do without fruit and vegetables as long as there are politicians who serve as heroes for the big guns of other nations...