When shall we three meet again?

Well, I don't know about the witches, but the weather was perfect for a setting of Macbeth. Thunder, lightning, rain and unbelievably strong winds; folks, today Melbourne had it all.

Has anyone noticed that it only takes one thing to go wrong before the whole day starts to fall apart? Today, I came home to burn some photographs into a CD for a friend who's leaving for Kuching tomorrow. And Nero refused to work.

Then I discovered that my camera USB cord was missing.

After I made all the necessary calls and determined that some other friends had memory card readers and the requisite equipment necessary for burning the CD, I then tried to leave the house.

Bad idea.

Bad bad idea.

The wind literaly blew me back into my apartment building. I didn't get more than ten steps away before I fled back into the building. I swear that the rain was hitting my face horizontally and every step was a struggle against the damned wind.

Shelter never seemed so important before.

So here I am waiting for a friend to pick me up, listening to the wind howl and thinking some very dark thoughts about Macbeth, witches and computer screwups.

Hopefully, if bad things do come in threes, my three are done for awhile.

Tristefemme

I was watching the events unfold with some sadness. But towards the end, I mainly grew annoyed. For all those who haven't been following the saga, go read this blog and then the subsequent reactions and replies at this one.

Both parties involved seemed to be determined to behave as badly as possible. At first I felt immensely sorry for the girl; it is after all a terrible situation to be in, pregnant and alone. But there have been many others in her shoes who have handled themselves with a great deal more dignity and courage. I refer particularly to Loveris in particular who was still in her teens when she had her daughter. Some of my own friends have been through similiar situations and I respect them a great deal for their strength and courage in facing up to the truth and having to inform all the relevant people involved.

I am old fashioned. And in some situations I believe in the maxim of not washing one's dirty laundry in public. Informing the whole world of the predicament, to the point of describing individual encounters and providing personal details of both parties was absolutely disgraceful. The argument that the blog was only for the consumption of her and her close friends( 15 of them!) just does not wash. If she absolutely needs to keep her friends up to scratch about what is happening she could get a blog that is password protected or with privacy settings. In any case, one fails to understand why she needed to let that many of her friends know the intimate details of the situation.

The same goes for her rash and thoughtless actions in emailing everyone on her erstwhile boyfriend's social network. Why let the whole world know about the awful fix you have gotten yourself into? This can only reflect badly on you, especially in the eyes of the father of your child and eat away even more at your own self respect. I don't blame the editors of Tomorrow.sg for posting her blog up; if she doesn't try to protect her own privacy, why should they protect it for her?

The final straw must have been her action in emailing the guy's superiors and Minister in a fit of anger. It was probably the most stupid and self destructive thing she could have done. A vindictive act such as that closes off the possibility of a reasonably amicable resolution to the whole matter. Even if the guy could not be persuaded to come to terms with the pregnancy, he would at the very least have less cause to resent her and her child. In time, after the birth of the child, he might even come to accept it; babies are cute for a reason after all. This last action can only serve to alienate the guy and his family irrevocably.

Let me put it this way. From now on, she will be known in his family as the One who Destroyed his Career and Shamed him. Since he comes from a pretty traditional family, I'd say that she's just shut out any possibility of their help and support. Which, given her circumstances and their resources, she's probably going to need some way down the line. Pissing them off will just about make her life even harder and I really don't know why she doesn't see that.

Frankly, I neither of them are ready for a child. Both lack the maturity and TF in particular, lacks the self control.The sad thing is that the kid is practically a miracle baby given her fertility problem and the fact that she was on the Pill.

To the both of them: Grow up. You have a kid now and it needs you to be calm, semi-sensible and rational. This is not the time to freak out or hide behind your mother's skirts. And for God's sake, stop with the posting retorts online for the whole bloody world to see.

Musical: The Lion King

It was abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. There was NO attempt to recreate the movie which meant that the musical had an ethos and aesthetic of its own.

I wasn't taking notes, although I will if I get to watch it again but the best parts were probably the inventive use of puppetry and the breathtakingly gorgeous costumes. Oh, and Julie Taymor deserves a medal just for her lighting design.

Go watch it if you can. It's worth every penny. It's not just some lighthearted song and dance; theatre is rarely so life affirming, particularly modern theatre.

Some Light Entertainment

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

The Female of the Species

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

My First Neruda

XVII (I do not love you...)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


Translated by Stephen Tapscott


By Pablo Neruda

Neruda has this way of fusing images and ideas in a way that goes straight to the heart and essence of the thing he is trying to ecapsulate. Most of his poetry goes straight to your heart and mind and you just have to catch your breath at its perfection.

The world is filled with things I did not know. I stopped posting up poetry earlier because I was morbidly afraid of copyright infringement. But having since come across a few more poetry blogs, I've realised that everyone seems to be doing it. I suppose it must be perfectly normal then.

Silly me.

All the same, I think I won't be putting up any poetry written by modern poets. At least, not the ones still alive. They might mind.

Everyone needs a happy place

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

By William Butler Yeats

I guess this must have been his.

The truth is, when it comes to poetry I like reading the traditional kind. With rhyme and meter and proper stanzas. I recall reading somewhere that Gilbert Kohdidn't really take to traditional poetry as opposed to the more modern types of free verse and blank verse. He once listed a whole bunch of poets as his favourite and I recall not recognizing alot of my own favourites in that list. This was starkly opposed to another friend who declared that English poetry after WWII wasn't really worth reading.

I posted this up because I was having a particularly sad day a few days back and this cheered me up enormously. I've always loved that line "for peace comes dropping slow" and I really love the way it sounds when this poem is read out loud. Although I'd be the first to admit that the bees didn't really appeal to me; somehow the thought of all those buzzing sting laden insects gives me the creeps.

There are a few other "happy place" type poems that I have an especial fondness for. This wasn't really one of them because I've really only recently started reading Yeats. Most of them do have one thing in common which is to transport the happiness of the place with you, in your heart, in your mind's eye. So instead of fleeing to another place to find happiness, sometimes its a good idea to look inwards.