Post-Valentine musings
Wednesday, 18 February, 2004
Following Ben's promptings, I am putting my sonnet online. I must warn you, however, that I totally mucked up the rhyming scheme and did abab instead of abba:
Should pens lie dry or printer ribbons felled
By such long spells of museless dreaming go,
When minds go blank and faceless pages spelled
To white and clean and gleaming howls of woe?
Why must we write of love or battles held
in far-off lands where valour seems to show,
when, in our hearts of noise, our feelings weld
to form great gaps where trash and cliches grow?
But here on in a subject seems to rise
which context prods to shuffle to the fore.
We sit amongst a scribing bunch of words,
Quick-fashioned by dull minds whose souls are wise.
The ticking clock thus causes ink to pour
Out rhythmed streams and lumps and bumps ... and curds.
First sonnet I've ever written and I feel absurdly proud of it.
I'm far too busy to blog but you must understand that this is not a complaint; it is a fact. Next week is Week 1 and, before then I must:
- Put together the ECU folder;
- Do the Week 1 main meeting poster lettering;
- Do the Week 1 main meeting outline;
- Do the ECU Reloaded poster lettering;
- Make a slideshow for main meeting advertising ECU Reloaded;
- Write an article for The Page;
- Think up a fun game for Sunday school;
- Put together info on the Hribars, Sheads and Novaks for Sunday school;
- Rest (perhaps during the Lazy Arvo).
The session has crept up awfully fast!
Meanwhile, I have been enjoying george's Polyserena and Stone Temple Pilots' Shangri-La Dee Da (belated Valentine's Day presents from Ben) and Ani Difranco's To the Teeth and Revelling/Reckoning (borrowed off a friend). It's nice being busy to good music.
Especially when one cannot read all the books one wants to. I'm still in the middle of Cryptonomicon which I still find intimidating (it's got a Perl script in it and an essay on cryptography and Solitaire!) but on my bedside table, I have the latest Briefing, the latest CASE news, Smoke and Mirrors (Neil Gaiman - borrowed), Sandman: Book of Dreams (Neil Gaiman - borrowed), The Lives of Christopher Chant (Dianne Wynne Jones - thanks Deb!), The League of Extraoardinary Gentlemen (borrowed) and The Watchman (borrowed again!). Haoran was all set to lend me all his Sandman but Volume 1 hadn't been returned yet so I will have to wait for our next writing meeting to see him again. Methinks it would be nice to take a reading holiday.
Had a nice dream last night that we were at Moore College and staying in a room upstairs. The lessons, however, were very odd—almost Harry Potter-ish. What I remember most about the dream was feeling happy to be among all these wonderful people. George was there and I waved to her in the dining room. I know that Moore College won't be like this in real life but it's nice to dream.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is showing tomorrow for FREE! at Unimovies. Kere and I are planning to go together which means that I will miss out on a significant portion of what ECU is doing for Market Day but I will be spending the rest of the day photocopying and collating stuff for the folders so I figure I'm allowed this treat.
We saw Love Actually at Unimovies last week and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be hugely disappointing because everyone told me how unspectacular it was. But I liked the fact that it was kind of meditations on love. I thought that the stories were done well—you never got the characters confused, it was fun working out the connections between them and you even felt sympathetic towards most of them which is quite a feat, considering the size of the ensemble cast (and I wonder why they weren't able pull that off for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where I felt that I didn't care about ANY of them). I also liked how they were depicting different aspects of love—from the schoolboy's crush to the inarticulateness of foreign language and the juxtaposition of meeting someone for the first time on the set of a pornographic film—the beginnings of affection contrasted sharply with the most intimate act of love (not that I am endorsing the nudity of the film; I just think the idea is rather poignant).
But I ramble.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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—Waves back—-
I thought I posted a long reply to this entry…did it disappear??