Le nuove scarpe

It was Keats who wrote, 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'

This proves that truth is universal, because Keats never saw my new shoes. They were hand-made for me by the Manuka Cobbler. In accommodating my unusually shaped proximal phalanx, I also find my inner dandy is fully satisfied.

The first shot below was taken at the fitting, so there is no sole. It is an RM Williams leather, from a discontinued colour range. The design is based on a picture I found on the internet somewhere, but they are quite extensively modified and thus unique. I like their old-fashioned quality. They remind me of the shoes that the elves kindly made for the shoemaker when he was going through a rough patch. Good old elves.

Sound and fury

Continuing from my last post, I have renounced all attempts to read books on economics. I can not claim with confidence that there is a surfeit of economists in the world, but it does appear there are sufficient quantities available to espouse their fiduciary postulations unencumbered by my ignorance. And now happy we both are.

I did read a book by P.J. Wodehouse named Thank You, Jeeves. I have always been curious as to what lies between the covers of such anachronia. On the front is praise from Hugh Laurie and on the back praise from Stephen Fry. Such opinion certainly signals an escape from the dudgeon of the mundane. Recommended. Not obviously quaint. Properly English. Unflappable. Good breeding. That sort of thing. What.

There was a fantastic program about Iceland on the ABC, er, its economic crisis to be precise. The best part was the really long shots of the scenery. Amazing landscapes. Serene, sublime, supernal clime. Also, knowing a few Icelanders personalised the experience. Foreign Correspondent has the most creative film work. It transforms the story. Watch it. (Probably only if you live in Australia.) Suffice to say that it is a cautionary tale - what happens when a people turn away from a society firmly founded on fishing and the piano accordion (elements of a predictable solid faith) and turn to banking. Doomed from the start really.

The following video is a joy. I want to visit this shop in Los Angeles. The owner is damn cheerful.

Books

I read Down to the Crossroads: On the Trail of the 2008 Presidential Election by Guy Rundle. I had already read some of the content as it was published in Crikey last year, but it was easier to read in book form. It seemed an appropriate book for a flight to New York.

I enjoyed the acerbic wit, viz my favourite sentence: 'It was inevitable that John McCain would talk about prescription drugs to this crowd, this gathering of sun-kissed retirees in a conference centre in the vast hinterland of Florida sprawl, a place whose sense of instantaneous history-less-ness makes Surfers' Paradise feel like Rome under the Medicis.'

I did surprisingly well for a non-fiction book, i.e. I finished it within days. It is psephology of a kind. (The study of public elections; statistical analysis of trends in voting; (now usually) the prediction of electoral results based on analysis of sample polls, voting patterns, etc. see the OED). The great thing is that this word was invented in 1952, although largely defunct relatives such as psephomancy and psephism have been around for a while. Psephos is Greek for pebble, with reference to the ancient Athenian method of voting by putting a pebble in a ballot box.

I am now trying to read Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt. I am not a big history reader, but I enjoyed watching Rome, the TV series by HBO. Funnily enough, last time I came to New York I only got about a third of the way into Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. Perhaps when people rave about how good pseudo-fictionalised-history books are it is best to bear in mind it is all relative. Relative to translating knotted string. No, I will persevere. Having some visual imagery to draw upon will help.

I am also reading How to Argue with an Economist by Lindy Edwards. It is arduous, but insightful in respect of the key challenge of government, in as much as that is determining the degree of market intervention it should undertake to achieve its social agenda.

Talking poetry

It nearly was that my previous post was my last post. Why? A truth once flamed in my breast, afore it paraded through my mind undressed: my best expression of self will only ever need two sentences.

I reap and I sow,
I sow and I reap.
My joy is full of troubles,
My trouble is full of joys.

I remain really satisfied with this poem. Nothing is beyond scope. It is a eulogium to experience and an encomium to existence. Concise, precise, surmise, but tenaciously tenable. Hear and see here my adamantine face.

The truth is simple and anything else is lies.

In the realms of personal epic, significant revelations scar the landscape of our being and change it permanently. Amidst the sturm und drang, new roads fill in the blank pages of life's street directory. Gone is the necessity to travel familiar routes of behaviour when new ways open to us. But the practice of change is no pleasantry. Either we have made the familiar easy or the familiar has made easy of us. In the kingdom of infinite possibility, cities of wonder crumble for lack of the bold. We, the pusillanimous, live in a death-hold.

My heart is calling for a new melody:
A song unknown
That will awaken truth.
Today I am sailing for a faraway land.

So I will continue to exalt in epiphanic verse when it is possible, but tell my plain stories otherwise.

Why do you care for dichotomy?

x
I reap and I sow,
I sow and I reap.
My joy is full of troubles,
My trouble is full of joys.



That about sums it up...

Chiang Chieh

x
Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candle light
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.
Later I heard it on the
Cabin of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds, where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm. Now I
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy – sorrow-parting-meeting
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles, all through the night.

by Chiang Chieh
c.1300
Translation by Eliot Weinberger
From The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

After Hafiz

On a plane a few weeks ago I was reading The Subject Tonight is Love by Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Emerson said, "Hafiz is a poet for poets." I was inspired to write a poem and the flight attendant was kind enough to lend me a pen.

*

The love that gives,
The love that receives,
These are not love.
The love that is,
The love that knows,
The love that goes,
What are these loves?
Who is this love?
Where is this love?
In knowledge not,
But love is knowing
Nothing known.
Why am I telling
What cannot be told?
What better words
Than already writ
In the stars bold?
Go away.
Go pluck them for yourself.
I am tired of words, words, words,
And the stars are waiting.
Now the night is long,
But life is short.
Don’t forget.