Monday 30 September 2013

ANOTHER 2 BRICKS IN THE WALL







WHO CARES ANYMORE


The artist Shu Yong asked thousands of his fellow Chinese citizens for their favourite phrase or saying. He then had their words translated into English and copied these onto a wall of acrylic bricks of the same dimensions as the bricks of The Great Wall. I photographed 2 of Shu Yong's bricks: "spy culture" and "social jet lag".  The question is mine, the future is yours . . 


One in ancient woodland deep




One in ancient woodland deep 
in space 
and silent still

perceives the spirit 
of 
the lights 

these lights 
that grow 
and touch 

and light upon these trees 
these 
trees much cracked 

and old were born 
to fall 
and rise again

and 
grow 
forever 

tall
and
small

and sometimes 

never grow
at all





Sunday 29 September 2013

Venice Protest (3) Visions in Venice


The man engrossed in his newspaper in the below detail from a large painting by Zhong Biao highlights a disturbing trend. 

There is a so-called boulevard zeitung which I look at not so much for what's in it, for what's in it I already know from the internet; I scan the rag for what is not in it. 

And what is not in it interests me far more than what is in it. 

What is not in a newspaper is a clue the true agenda of a paper and the politics and financial clout behind the paper. 

All too often we are reading propaganda presented as news. 

Many are living, as curator Gary Xu titles Zhong Biao's Visions, in a Universe of Unreality




In my photograph of the lagoon we can see the kind of damage being done to Venice on a day to day basis. One of the contributing factors is the large number of giant liners sailing back and forth through the shallow waters of the lagoon and the Giudecca Canal which is where the picture was recently taken.

A universe of unreality, a kind of Disneyverse, is being created in Venice. And the whole unreal business is probably unsustainable.

By the time the Venice lagoon barrage MOSE is completed in 2016/17 the overcrowded town may well have become completely unreal; a Venice totally overrun with cruise ship passengers, forever scurrying through the watery town's narrow alleys like plague rats.




In the spirit of unreality I took a vaporetto to the Giudecca and discussed the problem with Marc Quinn's tattooed man in bronze. Bereft of tattoos myself, I wore my Leonardo Da Vinci t-shirt for the occasion. It features one of Da Vinci's inventions, the bicycle.




We looked at the universe of unreality from our different angles and perspectives. I decided there was little I could do. And what little I could do I did. I went to the Biennale at the Arsenal dockyards and looked at a working model of Venice sinking.




There was now only one more thing left to do:

With a Campari at my elbow I sat alone outside a bar and contemplated the sun going down.




Friday 27 September 2013

Venice Protest (2) Just Another Day


After the protests and the departure of the troublesome ships 

daily life was soon back to normal, on the surface at least








and folk went about their normal business . . .


Venice Protest (1) Save the Lagoon


There were protests 

in Venice recently




and they were to do with the amount of pollution

and structural damage to the city's foundations

from these giants of the seas.
It was claimed that these giant ships sailing through the lagoon

produce more cancer causing chemicals than all the cars in the city of

Milan. The source of this terrible news was an independent* German

study group I was informed.

It could be true. On one of these giants of the seas I counted nine

giant smokestacks.


One ship was so big I had to walk almost a  hundred meters away to

to view the thing

with my camera.






The protests took place a few days after the raising of the infamous Costa Concordia.






Many of the ships are bigger than any of Venice's hotels, museums

and churches. Here's one approaching Saint Marks Square
on its way out of the lagoon.

*extract from handout: 




Thursday 26 September 2013

Kites




breeze off the sea

 the seller of kites 

tries out his new line 


photo taken on Venice Lido
September 2013

Wednesday 25 September 2013

The Shell Seekers





Marc Quinn
and
Zsolt Asztalos

. . . these are the shell seekers 
seeking the truth 
in the curve and the lie 
of a shell

I found some 
of Marc's
by the Venice lagoon
where they gleamed with the fire and the glare 
of the sun -
an explosion of light 
on the quay 
of San Giorgio 

and Zsolt's new collection 
in the Magyar pavilion 
over the water 
singly and lined up in rows -
these were dud shells 
which had failed 
to ignite after 
firing . . .





Monday 23 September 2013

Glory takes Time - a sonnet for Vladimir





Glory takes Time

One opened an Oxo cube tin
and showed me the medals 
and ribbons and papers
and said they were trinkets
and no longer shiny 
and glorious; his old decorations 
they were. And he told me  
again of a war 
and of days in the fog 
and the trenches 
and of some of their boys 
he had shot
(or maybe had not) for the whore 
of ribbons and gongs.


Wednesday 18 September 2013

Gran'ma



One day I takes Gran'ma to see Ol' Doc
an' he says: What's wrong?

an' she says: Oh! Like, I cut my finger

!

an' he looks at it, an' he says: Oh! You can't be serious . . .


an' then she like sings: O' gimme a home where the buffalo roam  . . .

an' he says: You want, like, a place to live where there are these, like, big cow things . . .


an' she says: Like, groovy, wow, yes, 

like yikes!

. . . an' so it was
the two of them were like happy-ever-after, 

like.


______


Monday 16 September 2013

postponed subject



in apodictive mood   

with modifiers dangling  

and genetives elliptical 

outwith the verbless bar

one function group 

abessive and disjunct

its object not effected 



Wednesday 11 September 2013

three ways




there's the way 
I see the truth

and there's the way 
You see the truth 

and there's the way 
Nobody sees the Truth



Thursday 5 September 2013

The Fukushima Olympics - No thank you!


Resettlement in Chernobyl area can begin in 148,029 days (i.e. 400 years)


The spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 contain 14,000 times the amount of radiation released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Those concerned this weekend with selecting the venue for the 2020 Olympics would do well  not to vote for the Tokyo bid.*

Emptying the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 and storing the rods in a safe place, an urgent and extremely risky operation, is scheduled to begin in November, and will involve thousands of workers and a small fleet of cranes.

Click HERE to read Reuters' report of 14th August 2013.


*strange to say but the Tokyo bid was the one chosen in preference to Madrid and Istanbul

Tuesday 3 September 2013

The Ice Wall of Fukushima





You now can click on the line of text above to get the latest 4 minutes of expert assessment regarding Fukushima. The danger of a strong earthquake affecting the integrity of the more than 1,000 tanks holding the highly radioactive water stored on site is one of the problems discussed.

The Japan Quakes Live graph which can be found via my A-Z Links shows a worrying trend. The red daily release energy line resembles a tightly coiled spring.

Here's a question: Who or what is preventing an international response to this catastrophic international incident involving a multiple meltdown, maybe the word by now is melt-through, and the leakage of radioactive water which is entering the Pacific food chain on a daily basis? Is it TEPCO? Is it the Japanese Government? Is it pride? Is it obeisance? Is it the IAEA? Is it the IAEA's bedmate the WHO? Is it the UN? Is it GEC? Is it you or me? Or some unknown? Or is it some or all of the above?

The latest TEPCO idea, you'll be pleased to learn, is to construct an underground wall of ice "to stop the highly radioactive water from the tanks entering the less radioactive groundwater".

Mmm.


Update 4th Sep: During the night an earthquake measuring 6.5 to 6.9 off SE coast of Japan.

Monday 2 September 2013

Danglers


detail from a very large canvas - possibly by Roy Lichtenstein 


they hang

on their strings
on the screens
of their 'chariots'
parked for the day
in the heat 
of the street
down from the war 
crisis centre

the henna haired woman
reads her long book
and her wheel-chaired mother
clips her long nails
at the head
of the queue
waiting for someone
to come

the result of one count
( killing some time )

car-freshener 5
prayer-beads 4
fluffy toy 3
sunglasses 2
shell casing 1


Courage and coincidence




   I recently posted on the blog a brief biography, a thumbnail sketch you could say, of the life of Stephen Crane the author of this book. It's to be found under the heading: Stephen Crane's creature in the desert. 

The story in the novelette, The Red Badge of Courage, concerns the events surrounding a young man, Henry Fleming, fighting on the side of the Unionists in the American Civil War. At one point he receives an injury in unusual circumstances. 

The bloodstain from the wound becomes his red badge of courage. And so the story progresses. Both Fleming's and mine. And its mine I go to now. It concerns a strange event that duly unfolded. 

Two days ago I found myself  in the Austrian town of Bad Vöslau, a place famous for its mineral waters, and since the weather was fine I took the opportunity to go swimming in the special waters of the Bad Vöslau mineral baths. The sun was shining and the place was relatively busy. 

There were many people sitting at the poolside cafe. They looked so relaxed that I decided to join them. And so after toweling off I donned my t-shirt and flipflops and made my way there. 

Arriving at the cafe terrace I was surprised to see an open door behind which was a large room full of books neatly arranged on shelves along three of its sides. Needless to say, I entered. 

After some diligent searching I spotted a shelf on which was a small selection of English books, mainly second-hand paperback novels (perhaps 20 books in all). 

Several of the books were obscured by a framed notice on which were written words to the effect that most of the books on the shelves had been donated by previous visitors to Bad Vöslau and that the person reading the notice was free to take and a keep a book, or books, of his choice. 

I decided to move the notice so that I could examine the books behind the notice, the few books on which it was leaning.

As I gently moved the notice to one side a pane of glass fell suddenly from the frame and sliced into my thumb before clattering loudly on the hard floor. I glanced around; there was no-one else in the room. 

I peered at my thumb and saw blood oozing from the joint below the nail. I staunched the flow of red liquid with a paper tissue I was fortunate to have with me. I then wrapped the tissue around my thumb and held it in place with my index finger. 

Having picked up the glass, by some small miracle unbroken, and the frame also undamaged, and placed them on a small round table together with the printed notice, I turned to the shelves. And there revealed, where the sign had been, was Crane's book, The Red Badge of Courage

Naturally I took Crane's book to keep and to read; my own red badge of curiosity and the recruit Henry Fleming's Red Badge of Courage were united in Bad Vöslau. I wondered about this strange turn of events; had some divine force been at work? Or was it all purely coincidence?


Sunday 1 September 2013

"We don't need no thought control . . ."


XXXLutz Pokerkarten 


"In a functioning theocracy it is almost inevitable that the symbol of religion becomes confused with the symbol of state . . . " - Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)

There's a lot of fuss from some sections regarding the latest Pink Floyd protest balloon because of the star of Israel thereon. Other less controversial symbols on the balloon include the crucifix, the crescent, the hammer and sickle, the Shell logo, a dollar sign, and a Mercedes sign. Pink Floyd have been launching pig balloons for years; there were some with references to Bush and the Iraq war for example. In the spirit of free speech and "we don't need no thought control"  here's The Big Red Chair.


The Big Red Chair


In a semi-theocratic 

petrodollar place 
of old thrones 
and high chairs
the big red chair 
is a modern high chair 
and a symbol

Der mit dem roten Stuhl 

is an XXXLutz Joker 
an outlet symbol 
and stands 
like a jest 
neatly framed on long legs
by an Asfinag Autobahn 
somewhere between 
McDonald's and Shell

You can readily spot it 

from the Mercedes 

after you blithely drive by

whether your rearview 
mascot be 

teddybear 
star 
cross 
or 
crescent 

But of course 

we must judge 
what we see for ourselves
in our mirrors

The Lutz Pokerkarten  
for now disarranged 
have nothing to say 
and soon 
they'll be back 
in their drawer 
with the rest of the games