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I'm starting to notice that every time I go out to lunch with Cos I end up taking at least two photos, if not, several shots of the same thing until I'm happy that I've exhausted the possibilities. (Within reason, of course.)
Today's photos: this, this and this. No, I haven't got a proper home for them yet. I'm slack.
Posted by sniffles at 03:11 PM | Comments (2)It's the holiday season, and you don't have to check the calendar to know. The streets are empty, the train stations are deserted. There are no cars on the road and the air is the freshest it has ever been.
Sun splintered through the trees, softly scattered through a poor excuse of a morning fog.
There are two other men on the train. They look just as lost, staring into some undefinable space beyond the dusty windows. I read my book, turning the pages tenderly when words run out, cradling it as it if were a lifeline.
Posted by sniffles at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)I don't fare well watching films with any measure of violence, and I suffered from a bad coughing fit after seeing "The Fellowship of the Ring". Not that it was terribly violent, I'm just a wimp. I see what Dan meant by the seemingly gaping holes in the plot too - some bits felt like we'd been fast-forwarded. Otherwise, it wasn't bad. :)
Of course the special effects were good - can you think of any films these days with special effects that aren't? I was wondering whether it might have been more work to make lots of dead dwarfs - all dead in different ways - than to have made some of the sweeping scenes. Does anyone know?
Every time I see a film heavily laden with graphics, I think of the evening some years ago when I watched as a 3D-graphics-head-of-a-friend demonstrated his work that night. He did Quake models at the time, and he had been designing all nine different ways a monster could die. Cool eh?
Posted by sniffles at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)Once again, I discover that housework is a good remedy for restlessness. There is something about doing boring, menial tasks that simplifies thought processes into a kind of contented peaceful plod, and one finds temporary happiness in the lack of complexity and the vapours of cleaning agents that kill your sense of smell.
I seem to have so many clothes that I never wear - and not surprisingly, most of these I didn't buy for myself. Kind of ironic, looking at a wardrobe full of clothes and trying to decide what to wear to a friend's wedding, thinking that I have nothing I want to wear. Time to solve this silliness, I think.
Posted by sniffles at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)New Antipasto entries: Letter and Christmas Eve.
Some time spent shopping yesterday morning, and some hours spent in the garden in the afternoon. I've decided I prefer English lavender to French lavender - the English version is visually more delicate. I dug up some flowers which I'd forgotten the name of and transferred them into a pot because they were getting in the way of my purple daisy-like flowers - I have forgotten their proper names too.
Have yourselves a pleasant Christmas, won't you?
Posted by sniffles at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
Hours and minutes running together and into each other, as if sprinting the 400 metres without a predefined finishing line - the cycle of days become confused and I forget which day is which, which day has been which, and which day is supposed to be which.
It doesn't feel like Christmas. There is a Leunig cartoon in the paper edition of today's Age showing two people sitting on a park bench. Behind them are some city skyscrapers, one of which look vaguely like the NY Empire State Building. There is a tall building on one side with a plane heading towards it from the left, and another plane approaching it from the right. Above the two people, are the words: "All I want for Christmas is Christmas ..."
Leunig always manages to say profound thoughts with such simple elegance.
A visit to the family. Dinner in the city, a city devoid of souls and life. The holiday season seems to have robbed the streets of people. We didn't have much difficulty finding a place to park the car. Most of the shops were shut, but our favourite restaurant welcomed us with familiar warmth and simple, familiar food. We sought dessert at another restaurant nearby, whose waiter seemed to be disappointed that we only wanted ice cream and sorbet.
A man walking down the street was singing "King of Pain". His tenor rich and mellow, smooth as the caramel of his leather jacket. As he crossed the road and disappeared out of earshot, I picked up the verse and went on singing until I forgot the words.
Karl said to me last night that the word "amateur" comes from "amato" in Latin, which means "love" (or "amator", meaning "lover").
Which is kind of cool, because I always feel that I'm an amateur in just about everything.
Posted by sniffles at 08:57 AM | Comments (2)Dwindling the hours, being passed over like a salt shaker over a crowded dinner table.
I have something to say about art.
Scott prompted me to have a look at Noah Grey's website during a discussion on digital cameras and his remarks on art caught my eye.
There is so much to be said on the topic, and I have to agree with most of his words - the art comes from the artist, not the equipment or the choice of medium he chooses to express by. Yes, there are techniques, but techniques are less than a tenth of the story. Creativity is a joy and a curse that one stumbles upon, that one cannot escape from once it has you in its steely grasp. It demands that you bow to its whims and be imprisoned, be addicted by the small satisfactions it occasionally brings, be drowned by its magnificence, be tortured by its quest for perfection.
And on reading the many comments on his opinion, one draws the conclusion that there can be ever such a large gap between the artist and his audience. We who are slaves to art know only that we try to bridge this gap. It is such a strange, contradictory affair. We would not exist if not for this gap, and yet, we are condemned to wield every axe and sword in our inventory of weapons in order to conquer it.
It is difficult for the artist to explain the "whys" and the "hows" - Noah seems to be frustrated by such questions from some who deeply admire his work. In part, while there are probably explanations for the "hows", and while many of us have been forced to justify the reasons for our creations - usually first and foremost to ourselves - we don't truly know how it happens. In order to explain, we would probably write more poetry, compose more music, paint more portraits, shoot more photographs - because these are our native tongues.
I, for one, believe that the day I cease to create, I cease to exist.
Posted by sniffles at 11:01 PM | Comments (3)New Antipasto entry: Women and dreams.
Where have I been?
I have been everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time.
Posted by sniffles at 11:38 PM | Comments (1)Have you missed me? I have missed you. I'm sorry for not having written, but things have been a little up in the air.
Walking through a field, letting old and new thoughts in my head interweave and intertwine, flowing together like a palette of colours stirred and mixed. Or maybe like soup.
It wasn't much of a field, really, but if I looked down at my feet I could pretend that it stretched for miles either side of me rather than mere metres or so. I could look down at my feet and pretend that the world is very, very large, and admit to the fact that I really have no idea which direction I am truly heading, and that all I know is how to put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time - all the while, breathing in the spring air freshly chilled by rain, appreciating every blade of grass for what it is, every light, every shadow.
Posted by sniffles at 11:38 PM | Comments (2)sniffles says: Zzzzzzz.
cos says: Yyyyyy
sniffles says: Xxxxx
cos says: Bbbbbb
sniffles says: Berocca!
cos says: mm
sniffles says: zz
New Antipasto entry: Scrolling images.
**
Lunch down at St Kilda. I carried my umbrella, resilient against rain. We tracked down a CD I wanted to buy and went soup-hunting. Soup was all I felt I could eat. But soup is rarely found on summer menus, regardless of whether the weather truly feels like summer or not. At length, we settled down in Noodle Box where I compromised with soggy vegetarian noodle-soup.
When in doubt, stick with peppermint tea.
Posted by sniffles at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)The kind of day where dream rolled onto wake without an intermitting breath, stirring reality with a wooden spoon.
I awoke with memories of strange and disturbing dreams, hovering around like a hangover. My head hurt. I operated in three different timezones. I read, and finished my book. I felt like a failure of a friend.
I made someone happy, and ruined someone's day.
Posted by sniffles at 03:35 PM | Comments (1)I've been reading. I was telling Daniel that it's been an incredibly long time since I'd even considered reading a weekend away.
The words off the pages devour me, they devour me softly, taking me apart letter by letter, reducing me to strings of type perfectly spaced on cheap paper.
I haven't really been able to write. I'd written notes - I often jot notes when I don't have time to piece passages together - and most of the time I don't even need to refer to them. But I've learned that when words don't fall in line of their own accord in my mind, it is not time to write.
The art of articulating, the act of building thoughts is not unlike making a good soup. It takes patience. Loose threads which first escape your fingers need to sit on the backburner, and simmer, and simmer and simmer, until finally the flavours escape and blend to delicately fill the taste spectrum for one to savour.
Posted by sniffles at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
New Antipasto entry: None in the oven.
waferbaby encourages us to open our eyes and see.
"Macromedia to aid the disabled online": It's all very well. I hope they are truly doing what they claim they will do. The most recent demo of Dreamweaver 4 accessibility features that I witnessed had an incorrect default doctype, and the demonstrator was not practising liquid design principles. We saw none of the CSS.
A year and a half ago at a free Macromedia demonstration - where most of the audience were not well-versed in Web design - a presenter said to avoid using CSS because it was not supported properly across browsers. He taught font tags. I could have biffed the guy. I really, really could have.
Having said all that, I'm glad that the issue of accessibility is being taken seriously.
Posted by sniffles at 10:19 PM | Comments (1)I want to be many different shades of blue.
Sick. Still. Stayed home for the day. Yes, I should have seen the doc today, who will hopefully not feed me antibiotics. I'm fine if I don't move ...
Time spent turning over thoughts like featherdown quilts, dreamy dozing to the frenzied tinkles of my wind chime above the door between the bedroom and the verandah. Weak, exhausted, but I can't sleep anymore. I powered through Philip Roth's "Goodbye Columbus", whose end is in sight. Good book.
He said, "There's no such thing as boredom." Which is what I usually say.
Posted by sniffles at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)We are built like satellites, lost travellers spiralling in seemingly pristine pirouettes along predestined paths, governed by circumstance, by chance, by gravity, dancing around and in between someone else's spotlight. So come travel with me.
**
Upon waking up, I wished I hadn't. Tossing up whether to work from home or whether to go into work, I decided upon the latter. I don't like not being at the office without having given prior warning. Okay, I was sick, but I was not that sick, was I? I dragged myself out of bed. By about 9:30, the nausea had gotten to a stage that felt like dull pain and my head was swimming a bit. So I came all the way home.
Had some lunch and crawled into bed. Out like a light for nearly three hours, missing the first half of the cricket.
I don't know what this is, but I'll wager that if I turn up to the doc's, they'll tell me it's a "viral illness" and to go home and get some rest.
Oh yeah, and we didn't lose the cricket test to New Zealand. Yay!
Posted by sniffles at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)New Antipasto entry: Window.
Her face is an empty eggshell, painted over with dabs of colour, as if lightly decorated for Easter. Her eyes dark, absorbing the world, just as dark swallows light. Her lips twist and smile accordingly. Her gestures gentle, her movements elegant. Her face, an empty eggshell.
**
Art of Fighting played live yesterday, it seems.
DNA Plus.com: I don't get this. Why do some people insist on feeding upon the fear of individuals by breeding mistrust? Channel 9's "A Current Affair" is doing an article on one of DNA Plus' new products known as "Checkmate 5: 5 Minute Infidelity Test Kit". All for the sake of a little bit of scandal to talk about.
Posted by sniffles at 11:23 PM | Comments (2)New Antipasto entry: Flying by night.
The final and deciding Orange Test plays in Perth. Fuzzy voices of commentators on the TV in the background, accompanying images of seemingly meaningless movements of men dressed head-to-toe in white.
Ahh dammit. Ponting's out.
Posted by sniffles at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)I should probably be doing something else, but I'm stuck watching the Davis Cup doubles - Australia vs France. The consequence of brief channel surfing just as Hewitt and Rafter were wandering onto the court, rather than Arthurs and Woodbridge. Aargh.
Tie break on the third set. Aargh.
Someone in the crowd has a really cool sign: "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oui! Oui! Oui!"
Update (17:07): France 2, Australia 1. Doubles: France def Aus. 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-1.
Posted by sniffles at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
