Tuesday 22 October 2013

Black October (Zentral Friedhof Vienna)



Arnold Schoenberg 1874 - 1951
Now soon the days 
of fog 
and ice   
when folk arrive 
by trams and cars 
to join the crowds 
of graveyard crows 
and crowd to bend in fallen 
leaves by graves 
of friends. My hope:
ride out the fog and ice 
the pumpkin thing
and see those clouds 
of crows 
flying north 
in spring. 


Franz West 1947 - 2012

What is it?
A monster sausage waiting to be cooked?
A giant worm emerging from the ground?
An inflatable finger pointing into space?

It is made of aluminium. It can be found in the Artists Section at the Zentral Friedhof in Vienna. It marks the grave of the artist Franz West whose artistic philosophy went something like this: What art looks like is not so important as what one does with it. 

to me
it is pink
and a naked
statement of fact

high
is the church
with her great mausoleum
but not any higher


Max Weiler 1910 - 2001

Most graves have some variant of the words Rest in Peace on them.

Regarding the idea of 'REQUIESCAT IN PACE' I am with Max Weiler in that I believe that we are all part of nature, and that being so there can be no eternal rest, peaceful or otherwise, for us. We must all, as he points out, remain forever in the energy field in which we have our natural existence.

On his stone, also in the Artists Section of the Zentral Friedhof, it is written: I will not enter an eternal peace but an eternal energy.

If we want eternal peace 
we must enter a different universe, 
a universe of -273°C 
or absolute zero i.e 0°K 
a cold place where nothing can move 
and therefore nothing can exist. My idea of hell.

The subjects of Max Weiler's paintings include: The Good Garden, The Large Flower, and The Euphoric Hills. 


Ernst Jandl 1925 - 2000

Austrian poet Ernst Jandl is another to found in the Artists Corner of the Zentral Friedhof. To learn more about this amazingly eccentric character just click on his thumbnail image in my sidebar and you will be taken directly to his memorial website featuring some unique sound-bites.


Saturday 19 October 2013

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis



I have finally finished it. When I say finally I mean it has taken me over 20 years to get round to reading it. I don't mean that reading it was a chore. On the contrary I fairly flipped through the pages for it is written in the main with great skill and artistry and the text flows smoothly.

I am wearing a short-sleeve Raffles 100% silk shirt (from Singapore Collection) with beige jeans by Modisto and injection technology sandals made in Italy. The watch on my wrist is an old friend, an Animal. On my arm a red merino pullover by Burberrys. 

That second paragraph was me trying my hand at writing like Bret Easton Ellis. It's a contagious style that he has.

First I must confess to skipping 20 or so of the book's 399 pages. I'm not into sado-masochism and I would have been uncomfortable reading them. These were the pages in which some of the most violent and sadistic scenes were described in great detail. But my missing all that hasn't spoilt my enjoyment if I can call it that.

So what's it all about? I see Bateman the Wall Street psychopath as a metaphor for the inherent dangers of a financial system built on greed and the lust for power.

There are outside of this book real victims of high finance in the real corrupt world: unsafe factories killing the slave workers inside, boat people drowning off European shores almost daily, soldiers (many only boys) raping or mutilating their prey . . .

Maybe money is really the root of all evil. 

The book starts with a chapter headed April Fools and this heading may be the key to the whole novel. I think it alerts me to the fact that all may not be what it seems to be to the narrator Patrick Bateman.

It could be that the main character, I hesitate to call Bateman the hero,  is a full blooded psychopath and takes great delight in torturing and murdering dozens of people in the City of New York, maybe a hundred people, ranging from tramps and beggars, to prostitutes, to guards and policemen, to children, to his fellow investment executives without arousing any suspicion, with the exception of one taxi driver who apparently  steals at gunpoint Bateman's sunglasses, $300 and a Rolex.

Bateman supposedly leaves clues and bodies lying around New York and even makes a  confession of sorts to his lawyer who, knowing Bateman's character,  treats the whole business as a preposterous joke.

Clear it is that Bateman is unhinged. But that fact alone is no crime. Many executives on Wall Street are probably unhinged. Their world, as we have seen from recent scandals, is one of unreality.

The question is: Is the psychopathic nightmare real? That the mounting toll of horror, like the rat in the shower, is real to the narrator is all the reader can ever be sure of. 

"Bateman you're nuts!" friends and colleagues say, and they say it often but always jokingly unaware that Bateman is not playing the fool but is actually cracking up in the worst way. 


Ambition, money, drugs, whisky, clubs, sex, insomnia, porno, platinum credit cards, are parts of the Bateman monster model. 

Will Bateman will become the incarnate monster of his own nightmares? Can he find an exit from the labyrinth of his madness? How can he know the difference? 

Three things I think I can say with some degree of certainty having now closed the book and thought about it: I am 100% sure that Bateman is mad, I'm 100% sure that his hero is Donald Trump,  and I'm 90% sure that he has bought a new Rolex.

I'm afraid I can't recommend Bret Easton Ellis's handbook on how to be an executive psychopath to the next wannabe on the Wall Street Monopoly board. It might just tip him over the edge. A moderate percentage of the rest of us, that is mature and sane adults with our heads firmly in the real world may be able to deal with it. Just about.

I glance at my Animal. Time I was finished.



American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
ISBN 0-330-31992-2
Picador 
1991


Thursday 17 October 2013

haiku double-take (1)



stars 
cooling off 
in the hot tub 
   
 - - -  John McDonald 


orion's belt 
hanging on the nail 
by the door


 - - -  Gwilym Williams


Coffee Break - A Short Short Story




Old car. Not vintage. Just old. Old like the day now growing old. An elongated slice of blood red sun is sinking behind a tall cityscape. I'm driving home on the same old roads. A truck overtakes me. It's closely followed by a motorbike. Soon the first raindrops hit the windscreen. Wipers on. Headlights on. Eyes heavy. Drowsy. Nodding. Snapping awake. Sleepy. Radio not working... pulling in at a neon lit roadside cafe. The odd thing is I never noticed the place before. Perhaps it's new. Or maybe it's an old place reopened. Quiet enough it is. Languidly I stir my espresso, and idly contemplate the Mozart balls on display. Chocolate ones they are. Now suddenly who should drop in but old Uncle Hermann, and on his old motorbike. A black painted backfiring machine. Needs tuning. Otherwise not in bad nick. The one small dent. We have lots to catch up on. "It's jest like the old days," he says, and then he beams me a wide and wonderful smile. .



Wednesday 16 October 2013

Food for thought on World Food Day 2013


Food for thought - Cat on the menu


A judgement or fatwa has been issued that will allow the Syrian hungry, or better said the starving, to eat varieties of meat normally forbidden to muslims on religious grounds.

Cats, dogs and donkeys are now on the menu in areas of Syria where food is scarce.

A spokesman from Doctors Without Borders commenting from Syria on my breakfast news this morning:-

"It is laughable that officials concerned with the inspection of chemical weapons are able to travel wherever they like but aid convoys and doctors are unable to do so." 

Laughable too is the situation at the other end of the spectrum, in the USA, where the ironically named Tea Party has an anti-healthcare reform agenda . . .

And then there's the UN's bizarre IAEA-WHO-pact; the radiation effects, not to mention the escalating financial costs, of the Fukushima disaster being glossed over in Japan . .

And the ever present hunger scandal that is Africa . . .

And . . . And . . . And . . .


It's no wonder so much of the world is hungry and sick.


Greed, ignorance, fear, poverty, and corruption are the main culprits.

I don't know what else to say.




Monday 14 October 2013

Zero Rupee Note





Poverty is the worst form of violence . Mahatma Gandhi 

ZERO RUPEES 

are as ersatz here noted
 
and on   
them   
 is written 

for the bearer to note

zero notes
in your hands
are far from being worthless

they   
empower
and enable   

don't stand for corruption!

fair deal  is your right  
  
and it is mine too

- we just must not fold 



When folded the Zero Rupee note, produced by the organization 5th Pillar,  resembles the 50 Rupee note normally folded when used in India for offering and accepting illegal bribes and backhanders. Due to the success of the note in India the zero note concept has widened to include other countries such as Nepal and Mexico.


Saturday 12 October 2013

Inventing the phoku* form - phoku 1


*the poet creates a label for the latest avant genre - the wordless photo haiku - but comes up with an unfortunate invention . . . the phoku . . .  sadly it's the best he can manage in the absence of anything stronger than coffee . . .

 here's a recent phoku (it should be understood that the brand name/s appearing on packaging/s, sugar cubes in this instance, is merely incidental, and does not imply the author's recommendation or approval or otherwise of or for any of the product/s featured in this or any future phoku/s)




Friday 11 October 2013

A Nobel wake up call


One page in The Wake


I woke up to learn that a short story writer has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her name is Alice Munro and she is a year or two past 80.

Publishers have concentrated for many decades on the novel and to a large extent on the overlong novel and the serial novel to the detriment of the novelette and the short story.

There is in good writing a place for all forms.

It might be said: if there is a place for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake there is a place for everything.


There is a longtime rumour abroad that books, by books I mean real literature, might become obsolete.

True it is that independent bookshops and local libraries have been struggling with shoestring budgets, the unstoppable internet river of books, and the false lure of  High Street, airport and train station revolving rack sameness, but maybe now at last there is a corner of hope.

The cavalry has ridden in timely and spirited fashion if not to the rescue at least to give us temporary respite from the squeaks of those racks of groaning pulp.

My last read book is Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy. It is not a short story. But I highly recommend it.

Literature is broad; has room for all.

Or maybe I'm dreaming.

In case you've forgotten they look something like this -

A GOOD BOOK OF SHORT STORIES:



Friday 4 October 2013

A poem with no words*




__________________________________________
*
inspired by 'haiku with no words' at 'see haiku here'.