Monkey business

Hard to believe it's been a whole year since this little guy first joined us. Especially when I think back to the teeny tiny fragile little bundle who arrived so early - compared to one-year-old Louis, who seems fatter each time I see him. His teeth are coming through at the moment, so his smile looks a little different every few days. It's a smile that gets a lot of use. This kid knows how to work a crowd. It was pretty tough trying to squeeze in a birthday cuddle with him today, all his doting grandparents and aunties and uncles did not want to give him up!

If I knew any other babies to buy presents for, I would totally rip off the amazing book Louis' auntie Carol found for him: M is for Metal. It's an alphabet book of Dr Seussian rhymes, with the common theme of hairy hard rock. From Akka Dakka to Zeppelin, via Gene's tongue and groupies, this book is genius. And it's Aussie! Created by music writer Barry Divola and artist Paul McNeil, you can have a sneak peek flip-through here. My favourite was:

S is for Stones
That just keep on rolling
Most of their fans
Have now switched to
Lawn bowling

Anyway, being unemployed I had little money for presents but lots of time on my hands, so I made the birthday cake. Regular readers will know of my obsession with kids' birthday cakes of the old Women's Weekly stable, but believe it or not they've never done a monkey (Louis' spirit animal).

Luckily all my time spent procrastinating on recipe blogs paid off and I remembered Smitten Kitchen's monkey cake. Deb made a delicious two-layer banana cake with chocolate and buttercream frosting. I didn't really tweak the recipe, except to use half a cup less sugar in the cake and to add some gratuitous smarties. As my friend Reboot wisely said, "Smarties are a must for any one-year-old's cake! Just because they might choke on them doesn't mean we can't pick them off and eat them! Also don't be afraid to cover it with 30-something candles - always a good challenge for the blower regardless of age!"

Meanwhile I have a whole book of Party Animals, cakes decorated like various adorable wildlife, and there are at least six I am dying to try. Starting with the ice-cream cake echidna, with TeeVee Snack spines and a coat of Ice-Magic. So if you know of any little kids with birthdays coming up, or even big kids, who might be up for some novelty cake action: holla!

Summer salt

And this time next week
When planes find their feet
We'll dive and somersault
In the brine, the summer salt
Tasting sun on our skins
Sweet split watermelon grins
Sand, sea, sky - each a line
Fish in paper, lemon, wine
New tanlines will cross backs
Roadtrip mixtapes in stacks
And the flip flop beat songs
Of what you call flip flops
...and I call thongs.

Punch drunk love

Boxing Day is such a random holiday, of the fabulous kind that Australia specialises in. You’d be hard pressed to find an Aussie that can explain the origins of Boxing Day, but we will argue to the death its necessity as a public holiday.

Oddly enough even the internet, usually quick to provide any number of definitive answers to indefinable questions, won’t be drawn on the etymological sources of Boxing Day. It seems likely to have something to do with Christmas season charity – possibly the Church of England’s practice of cracking open boxes of alms collected throughout advent, and distributing the contents to the poor on the day after Christmas. Or it could be a reference to the tradition of rich folks giving a little gift (“box”) often of money to their servants after Christmas.

So nothing at all to do with pugilism then. And yet ‘Boxing Day’ always sends me into a reverie soundtracked by my favourite Cat Power song. Soaring and swooning on strings lifted from “Moon River”, the title track from her 2006 album The Greatest is a sweetly crushing song of defeat.



Just those two words, “The Greatest”, are enough to conjure black-and-white newsreel memories of that most famous of boxers, Muhammed Ali. And while Chan Marshall’s song may be more generally about failed dreams, the very arrangement reels in circles like a punch-drunk old prizefighter. What is that brushed snare if not the shuffling of old feet in soft leather on canvas?

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned you to dust...
Once I wanted to be the greatest
Two fists of solid rock
With brains that could explain any feeling

A natural companion song is Ben Folds Five’s “Boxing”, from their self-titled debut album over ten years earlier. The songs’ similarities are surely no coincidence, with Folds’ song told directly in Ali’s voice as he considers retiring from the sport. The “Howard” he addresses is, according to Wikipedia, a famous sports announcer known for commentating the era’s boxing matches, Howard Cosell. Weariness seems to come naturally to Folds, and his words need little embellishment:

Howard, the strangest things happen lately when I
Take a good swing at all my dreams they pivot and slip
I drop my fists and they’re back, laughing
Howard, now my intention’s become
Not to lose what I’ve won
Ambition has given way to desperation and I
I’ve lost the fight from my eyes

In both these songs the boxer is a battered metaphor for the toll time takes on us. The knocks taken in stride in youth can send one reeling in old age. Thwarted ambitions puncture youthful invincibility, leaving frail forms shadowboxing at fears. Both songs question whether there’s a loss of dignity in not knowing when to bow out of the fight. Quite the opposite of Mr Thomas’ urging to not go gentle but “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. The age old question of rock & roll, the words Neil Young sang and Kurt Cobain quoted in his suicide note – is it better to burn out or to fade away?

But back to the boxer. Inevitably he winds up just past his prime but chasing that one last big win. Whether driven by pride, love, revenge or material need/greed, it’s a trope we all know well. After all the build-up, the trash-talk, the weighing of odds and the warnings of doctors... it all boils down to a man and his opponent on a square of roped-off canvas. Sweating under spotlights, despite the hoopla outside those ropes, all that matters is the two men within. Flesh and bone and skin. Who can deliver – and who can take – the most punishment?

Not that the talk surrounding the fight, and particularly the fighters, isn’t important. More than most sports, boxing embraces narrative, elevates characters and thrives on invention and reinvention. In any other arena, could Cassius Clay have floated fully formed from his chrysalis to become Muhammed Ali? Ben Folds cleverly considers how Ali might feel about all his machismo many years later, even working in a pun on his original name:

Howard, now I confess
I’m scared and lonely and tired
They seem to think I’m made of clay
Another day, I’m not cut out for this
I just know what to say, I say
Boxing’s been good to me, Howard
Now I’m told, ‘You’re growing old’
The whole time we knew
A couple of years I’d be through
Has boxing been good to you?

That centrality of narrative – both organic and manipulated – explains why boxing movies work so well. From Rocky to Million Dollar Baby, the arc never really changes; boxing movies are nearly as formulaic as dance movies. Because here is a skill that transcends class or money or opportunity. The result of a fight is indubitable, and it can’t be purchased. Not in an ideal world, anyway. So this most primal pursuit can be a means for a man, or a woman, to pull himself up from humble origins with little more than some self-belief and hard work.

Closer to home, Boxing Day is really just about one thing: the reassuring drone of cricket taking the edge off your Christmas hangover. After today, the Aussies are stunned on their bums on the canvas, with little cartoon Ashes urns circling their punch-drunk heads. Let’s hope they’re not out for the count just yet.

The Climber

Her virtues have been the subject of previous accolades here, but I really am bursting with pride at the amazing job my sister has landed straight after graduating from uni. It's not luck; she worked really hard to reach this point. Nor should we be suprised - her talents have always been easy to spot.

Case in point, the real reason for the breaking of a blogging silence. I give you, my sister, the poetic prodigy - and one of her finest works, just unearthed from the piles of debris in our shared childhood bedroom in St George. I believe it dates to around 1998.

The Climber

I’m an expert tree climber
I’ve climbed every tree there is, that is except
The tree in my back yard
That to climb is rather hard.
All my goals lie in that tree
And the ultimate wish for me
Would be to climb that tree!
I’ve wanted to climb it since I was three,
That rotten rascal of a tree.
And though I try with all my might,
It always seems to win the fight!
One day on November 2nd
The tree seemed more and more to beckon me to climb the far apart branches,
Although I didn’t have many chances.
I ventured up in my teddy socks and climbing shoes,
(I’m going to win not lose)
And navy T-shirt and shorts
(This is like climbing the playground fort)
Apart from that I was rather bare
Except of course for my PINK underwear!
Still on the ground I jumped as high as I thought I could,
And to my amazement felt solid wood!
I reached up high for the next branch.
“At last,” I thought, “I’ve got a chance!”
Although that chance was rather slim
I hung on for dear life to that limb
So that’s how i got to the top of the tree
Just the branches, leaves, trunk and me!
When suddenly at the tip top
I thought that I ought to stop
I moved around to find a place to rest,
I thought to myself this is the BEST!
But I felt uncomfortable, I felt stiff,
It got me thinking – what if?
Undoing mum’s knots that are safe as locks,
I pull off my favourite teddy bear socks.
As I lie there longer and longer,
My courage is getting stronger and stronger!
The heat is IMMENSE!
But no offense!
I think what the heck,
I feel the tight collar crawling up my neck
And, oh, I am so cool,
But I feel like a fool.
In my singlet pink,
Oh, I need a DRINK
And then.....

My toes are curling,
I’m losing my grip,
I’m feeling wobbly,
I’m starting to slip.
My shorts are caught
The denim starts to rip,
A stick catches my zipper,
And Zziipppppp!
I’ve been dacked by a tree!!
Yes, you heard correctly, yes, ME!
I climb down that mongrel tree
As fast as my legs can carry me
I run flat across the back yard
I run as hard as hard as hard,
I don’t care about the neighbours staring
I just care about what I’m wearing.
I am practically bare
Except of course for my PINK UNDERWEAR!!

---

Does anyone else think this would make for an exceptional children's book?

A day on the green

Many athletic pursuits claim status as "the sport of kings", but for the lazy there's one sport that takes the crown. Lawn bowls. Traditionally the domain of the retired - snowy-haired old ducks and elder gents with their shorts pulled up to their armpits - lawn bowls has enjoyed a renaissance among the young in recent years. A number of factors could account for this revival - the dapper all-white dress code, the popularity of the movie Crackerjack, clubs relaxing their previously draconian rules to attract a younger clientele. But mostly it would have to be down to the fact that uni students will always sniff out cheap drinks, and the prices at bowls clubs are straight out of the 1980s.

Bowls always held a special place in my heart. Dad's promise as a footy player was cut short by injury, so he took up lawn bowls. He was the youngest club member by at least a decade or two, but embraced the sport with gusto. There is, after all, something rather zen about a sport you can play while holding a beer. As a result my sister and I spent quite a few childhood hours running around the St George bowls club high on "red drinks" and the acid fumes of salt-and-vinegar chips.

There's something really calm and dignified about the expanses of lawn (don't talk to me about the new, neon "supergrass" greens) and players doddering about all in white. Of course, some of that dignity evaporates when you head to a club like Toowong, deep in University of Queensland heartland. On Sunday my sister threw a surprise 25th birthday party there for her boyfriend, complete with themed cake:

It was a fantastic day out - the rain held off, everyone dressed up in op-shop finery, by the end of the night everyone was singing and dancing in the club-house. And it's not every day you can buy drinks at the bar while wearing no shoes....

These are old as the hills (or, at least, my own uni days) but here are some haiku about lawn bowls:

Saturdays with dad
Softdrinks while he worked the bar
No shoes on the green.

Scolded by ladies
Sharp faces, white hats; great towers
Of varicose veins.

The men grew old
Pants pulled higher, more empty
Stools, pokies chirrup

Now I too wear white
With pride and cheap-drunk joy and
Only a little irony

Happy birthday Shed!

Mermaids are fishy but are people too

Keep getting distracted clearing out three-plus years of work emails. Just lost an hour on old personal correspondence, but it was all worth it to find this exchange:

________________________________________
Subject: RE:
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007
From: Clare
To: A
Hello lovely. Thanks for booking splendour now we just need to get tix!! Lemme know when you need $$. Sorry I didn’t call last night – went to this spoken word/performance poetry thing… so weird. It was in this random surry hills warehouse decked out like a forest, full of people with costumes and fake accents. I thought it would just be middle-aged women reciting poems about mermaids (there was only one!) and dykes shouting about the injustice of menstruation (none!!) but instead it was silent po-faced bitches sliding around in bathtubs and dancing choirs and harp players. ODD. I only had a cup of goon but it sounds like I was rocking acid or something; a Hunter S Thompson night on a Bukowski budget. Humph. Anyway, gotta finish up and get outta here!
Talk soon
xx
C
________________________________________
From: A
Sent: Friday, 23 March 2007
To: Clare
Subject: RE:

Oh Honey - am in stitches - I love your emails. Maybe your goon was so mediocre it had become a hallucinogen. I knew those silver pillows were really little labs. I hate it when I am right but by the time I tell people it is too damn late - Why God Why?? I am inspired to write a poem about mermaids: Ahem

Mermaids are fishy but are people too
Some of them get grumpy on trips to the zoo
Splash is a movie starring Daryl Hannah
Chopper is a movie with Eric Bana
Fish and not people yet people can be fishy
this is a word meaning a bit mysteryishy

I love you
A

________________________________________
Subject: RE:
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007
From: clare
To: A
That’s it, you’re coming to the next “token word” evening. I was even considering getting up myself, guess I just wasn’t drunk enough. This is the slowest Friday afternoon I have ever had (that’s a big call). I have been thinking about beer since around 11am. Keep the poems coming – you are a genius.
________________________________________
From: A
Sent: Friday, 23 March 2007
To: Clare
Subject: RE:

OK:

This is to further whet your appetite for the delicious amber nectar:

Beer - you are not made of frogs
Yet I often drink you in togs
Beer - You are made of hops
I wish they sold you in pet shops
Beer - Sometimes when I spill you I cry
and when I drink many of you, I cannot lie
Beer - When there is is sunshine you are ray
I think I will have a beer bath today.

I am giggling at myself
A

Dance while you can

Sad news this week, as Christopher Hitchens has written in detail for the first time about his cancer: "In whatever kind of a “race” life may be," he writes, "I have very abruptly become a finalist." In his piece "Topic of Cancer" for September's Vanity Fair, Hitchens speaks candidly of his illness as a new terrain. Known as much for his unapologetic love of booze and cigarettes as for his mammoth published ouevre and coterie of literary friends, Hitch's tone has always been worldweary. But now it seems the weary is winning out.

In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.... To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

Of course, knowing Hitchens, it's a painfully well-written piece but as he says, even his trademark irony is little comfort. There are writers who you can feel you know intimately just from reading their work, and Hitchens is surely one of the strongest writing personalities of our generation. His opinions aren't for everyone but he will happily share them nonetheless, and with erudite style, flintily logical argument and linguistic grace. Personally I will always gravitate to writers who embrace humour rather than shy from it, and in that regard Hitchens has always been a delight - check out any of his work for Vanity Fair and revel in his wit.

A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to see Hitchens interviewed. He was in Sydney for the Writers' Festival and shilling his latest book, the memoir Hitch-22, and I joined the studio audience at ABC as he recorded a special episode of The First Tuesday Book Club with Jennifer Byrne.

Somewhere along the line I lost my copy of Hitch-22, before even getting far beyond the opening chapters on his childhood and education. I found his ego and name-dropping a little grating but the writing sharp and witty enough to carry the reader through. Hitchens' relationship with his mother Yvonne is one of the formative relationships of the book, and his account of learning about her suicide, while he was studying at Oxford, was very sad. That said, there is always something a bit unsettling about hearing a man in his middle age refer to his "mummy".

Can I just say what a lovely interviewer Jennifer Byrne is? She's always impeccably researched, intelligent and articulate; but she's also got a bit of a twinkle in her eye, conveys a real interest in whatever's being discussed, and isn't afraid of having a laugh. Nor is she afraid of asking the tough questions, or of having an opinion. The latter of which isn't always appropriate in an interviewer, but when talking about books and ideas tends to work.

She was visibly shocked at Hitchens' attitudes toward women (CH: "no Mrs Hitchens will ever need to work; but if she wants to I'll allow it." JB: "how generous of you"), and cheekily wrapped the interview by thanking "the charming, but sexist, Christopher Hitchens". Byrne seems like she'd be wicked fun to have a few glasses of wine with; can you even imagine the level of conversation at hers and her husband Andrew Denton's dinner table?! I hear she'll be fronting a new current affairs show on Network 10 at 6.30 weeknights.

Finally, I was very taken with an excerpt from WH Auden's poem Death's Echo which Hitchens used to set the scene in his memoir:

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance's pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop

Here's hoping Hitch has plenty more dance left in him yet - we need guys like him around.

Road less travelled

I Ran The Wrong Way is one of the Surry Hills shops we visited as part of Small Stories Big Picture on the weekend. I figured it deserved its own post since it's such a treasure trove of random goodness - or, as it describes itself, "a trader of good finds".


The owner, Mel, describes herself as a "professional fossicker". She loves nothing more than hunting high and low for special, storied items for the shop. And ain't that the dream - making a living from doing the thing you love most?! From handmade pencils and stationary, to vintage suitcases, old cameras, organic skincare, niche books and wooden toys - you could find anything here, so long as its origins are ethical, sustainable and locally created or free trade.

Mel was also one of the organisers of Small Stories Big Picture - I tip my hat to you, ma'm. When I emailed to apply to take part, and asked if I could blog about it, she not only said yes - she had actually heard of the blog!

When I asked where the shop's name came from, Mel said it came from the way she approaches life. Less about wilfully going the wrong way, than being open to different ways of reaching your destination. Not unlike a certain great poem....

I Ran The Wrong Way is at 378 Cleveland Street, and well worth a visit...

Heartbreaker

My sweet-faced young colleague Miss Al
Is a remarkable bike-loving gal
Pass her on The Heartbreaker
You’ll think you’ve met yer maker
Happy 25 mate! Give em hell!

"The Figure 5 in Gold"

Painted by Charles Demuth in 1928, this is a painting that hangs in the Met, which I adored for its fantastic back story. Particularly as it's about the interplay of inspiration between artists of different disciplines, not exactly collaboration, but a work that wouldn't have come about without the work of another artist. Or, in this case, poet: William Carlos Williams.

Demuth's "abstract portrait" pays homage to his friend Williams' poem The Great Figure.

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

Within the portrait Demuth arranges shapes and symbols related to Williams - the poet's initials, the names "Bill" and "Carlo". And the colours of course perfectly capture that zinging kinetic tension of the shiny red firetruck, emblazoned with its figure five, in gold.


Perhaps Williams' most famous poem is this one:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

It's recklessly simple and so sensuous - it always leaves me craving cold ripe plums, the ones with bittersweet black skin and ruby flesh, that leave juice running down your hands at the height of summer. It also leaves me feeling deep sympathy for whoever the note was intended for.

It must have had much the same effect on Adam Ford, who wrote a great little book of poems called Not Quite The Man For The Job (Allen & Unwin, 1998, tragically out of print - has anyone seen my copy?!). This may out me as the poetry ingrate that I am, but since I found this book in our high school library it's remained my favourite poetry of all time. Except maybe Prufrock, but that's another story. Anyway. Ford did a fantastic poem in response to Williams', along the lines of "damn you, you've been eating my fruit for weeks, now I'm hungry and you're dumped".


As soon as I find my copy of the book I'll post the poem, but for now here's another poem as a consolation prize (in the Phoenix sense of consolation prizes, ie, equally awesome):

Living With An Editor

after fumbling through
the cupboards
i leave a note:
where the hell
is my small
rounded
little frying pan
missing in action
for weeks?

the request came back
with red texta
all over it
& a response
that read:
can't process
the information-
too many adjectives
& unnecessary
background.
targeted audience
doesn't care about
the plot
either.

We're signing off the magazine tomorrow. Things always get a little mental around this time. Right now I'm in bed under a blanket of A3 proofs, covered in scribbled corrections. Proofreading: it makes reading fun-proof. But this little poetic diversion was a nice respite....

UPDATE: Not that this detracts in any way from the magnificence of the last poem, but it is in fact by Alica Sometimes. Sorry! Adam has been kind enough to include his poem in the comments. x