Saturday 30 November 2013

Proud Cock



Proud Cock
King of the dung heap 
What have you to say?
What have you to say?
What have you to say
Proud cock
King of the dung . . . 

"Doodle doo"
said the cock


Friday 29 November 2013

Global Warming is Real




Dachstein Glacier alarm! 


I find it hard to believe that there are still global warming deniers amongst us. Here in the Alps global warming is already in full swing.

The real question is: how are we as a species dealing with the problems facing us?


Other than flying celebrities to the north pole to witness the extinctions of the polar bears and other animals or flying talking shop aficionados around the planet to no effect climate conferences the answer it seems to me is not very much.


But I tell a lie. We are doing something. We are busy planning and building higher and higher ski resorts, more and more cars and roads, more out of town supermarkets, more giant cruise ships, and ever bigger airports. And it's all in the name of Growth!


Growth! of the kind the EU's politicians constantly tell us we must have is not real Growth!*.It is an illusion.


A newspaper report I recall reading a couple of years ago stated that if all countries in the world were to reach the same economic level and continue in the same way as here in Austria (and doubtless it's the same in many other EU countries too) we would require the resources of 3 earth size planets to support ourselves. In the case of Britain I believe the figure was 2.6 planets. And in the USA it was nearly 3.5 planets.


The ariel view of the highest part of Austria's famous Dachstein massif, published by the ÖAV (Österreichische Alpin Verein) in 2012, shows the extent of the glacier melt, perhaps 50% of the area of the glacier originally surveyed in 1850 has now vanished.


What the ariel view does not show is the unseen, the dramatically reduced thickness of what remains of the Dachstein's glacier. 





*example 1: 

Government gave people €2,000 vouchers if they sent their perfectly good cars to the scrap yard and bought new replacements. Growth! . 
*example 2: 
Alpine Spring Water is being exported in plastic bottles from Austria to China. I can hardly believe it but it must be true for I've seen the labels printed in many languages including Chinese. 
Water weighs 1 ton per cubic meter. Growth! It needs a lot of fuel to transport it around the world in plastic bottles.
*example 3: 
Motorways are clogged up with slow moving or standing traffic from dawn till dusk - the answer is to build more motorways and bigger trucks. Growth!
*example 4 - a fisherman catches a few fish for the market, his wife collects herbs on the hill at the back of the house to sell to the local doctor, the son carves souvenirs from driftwood found on the beach. Problem? No growth!

Thursday 21 November 2013

haiku double-take (3)


highland visit
 weary already
of rainbows

 - - - John McDonald 

rainbows are memory
- under blue skies
the mountains are clear

 - - - Gwilym Williams






Wednesday 20 November 2013

haiku




)>>>>>>>>>>> 100,000
poems on the way to Mars
one haiku from me.  



_______________
to clarify: the poems are on a cd stuck to the side of a nasa space projectile now on its way to the red planet to  analyse the atmosphere.

Saturday 16 November 2013

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976)




In six days it will be the 100th anniversary of his birth. Born in Lowestoft on 22nd November  1913 Benjamin was the youngest of 4 children. He received his first piano lesson at the age of five from his mother Edith.

By the age of fourteen Britten was receiving instruction from Frank Bridge during the school holidays. This was an important development in Britten's musical education.

The 1937 premier of Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge was performed at the Salzburg Festival.

In 1948 Britten and his partner Peter Pears founded the Aldeburgh Festival.


As one might expect from a musician born in Lowestoft the sea was eventually to play  a great role in Britten's compositions and he included it  in three world famous operas: Peter Grimes, Billy Budd and Death in Venice.

I found the above photograph of Benjamin Britten and W H Auden within my programme at Britten's Curlew River / Prodigal Son which I was privileged to see performed fairly recently at Vienna's Kammeroper.

Quite a few years ago on holiday in East Anglia I took the opportunity to stand at the side by side graves of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears the man in whose arms he died on 4th December 1976 at the age of sixty-three.

I was impressed by the twin rectangles of thin stone, perhaps it was slate, and the absence of adornment. Pompous marble statues garlanded with laurel leaves and hung about with golden chains are here not required.


People who live by the sea know the worth of a life cannot be measured by the size of a stone


In 1945 Britten was giving performances for ex-prisoners in Germany with Yehudi Menhuin and in 1962 his War Requiem was performed at the newly built Coventry Cathedral. 





The November 2013 issue of the Austrian theatre and culture magazine Bühne carries a three page tribute to Benjamin Britten titled The Pacifist and the Sea and a two page article under the heading Britten's Musical Universe which is all about Decca's new 65cd/1dvd boxed set: Britten, The Complete Works.

You can find a special musical treat to celebrate the 100th anniversary here. 


Friday 15 November 2013

another stormy crossing



the air
is clear as glass

and our dragon
guards the dune

where once we came ashore

a plastic bottle
of disinfettante 
rolls over a bed of shells
- its narrow neck split open

the wine
enclosed will sour
in its jade green stoppered bottle

almost buried in the sand
the rusting shotgun cartridge
also green
but used

by a hunched grey
pigeon nodding

and dragging
its broken wing

the can of spray
is rose bouquet

the plastic glove
is surgical

the slip on shoe
is without its sole

the squeezed out tube
of mayonnaise
has flavoured its final dish
of fish 'n' chips

the lifebelt's rotted ring
with short frayed rope


it was a decent blow
someone may say

with no reports
of tragic deaths

this time

the odd dead crab
or jellyfish
a roaming dog
or a cat perhaps

but nothing of any consequence

a boat lost far away unseen
and not picked up on the coastguard radar

the breeze down here is fresh
and clean


'our dragon guards the dune' 


Wednesday 13 November 2013

down at the beach



casual men
down at the beach 
dismantle summer 

the snack bar
and the palm tree 
on the truck

the native hut 
is last 
unscrewed 

how hard 
the sand blows 
on the point of view 


Tuesday 12 November 2013

I wouldn't join any club that would have me. (Groucho Marx)



   At the outset I have to say that unlike Groucho Marx I'm in a club. It's a running club I'm in.  

But I take Groucho's point and it is a serious one, for clubs have rules and uniforms often and meet on special days and special anniversaries and have special songs and traditions. 

Being in a club means going along with the wishes of others. And these wishes may not always be desirable. 

The 'Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung' of 23rd March 1939 published a feelgood publicity write-up on Germany's Secret State Police. 

The title and subtitle of the article contained seductive and familiar words which we are heard again today in other places.

'For the Protection of the State and the German Volk Community - The Secret State Police. In Accordance with the Führer's Intention, the Police is the People's Best Friend and the Most Ruthless Enemy of all Criminal Elements who Abuse the People.'

Hitler's bone crushing handshake in this official photo of NSDAP Member 555 handing control of the German Police to Heinrich Himmler NSDAP Member 14,303 is telling.


The conspiratorial handshake of power?




The need for secrecy was swiftly promulgated. Communism was an obvious enemy and Hitler was featured on the front cover of Time Magazine as their Man of the Year. 

In the schools an Orwellian scenario unfolded as teachers were replaced by NSDAP instructors. Children were told to eavesdrop on their parents conversations and then report what they heard to their instructors. For school assignments the children composed poems and essays in praise of the Führer. 


A poem after reading C P Cavafy's "In Alexandria 31 B.C."




War News


From a village over the hills to the south

 His bicycle covered with grime from the ride
The seller of chestnuts arrives in the town

And dismounts; he unfastens his sack on the square:

 Chestnuts for roasting! he shouts. The crowd
Is excited; speakers are playing the music of Wagner.

Gestapo are marching an old man away. It looks like 

 The priest, he hears someone say. There's a roar 
From the crowd, and from the high windows paper rains down

In a Gothic script strange to his eye. What does it mean? 

 He yells to a girl with a sheet. The youngster comes near:
Our Führer is winning in Russia! she screams. 


Monday 11 November 2013

pre-Christmas haiku




Sunny November morning, 

the city hall Christmas tree 


early to rise 



Sunday 10 November 2013

Crystal Night - 75 years on




"Someday we'll look back on all this, laugh
nervously and change the subject" (anon)

The Joker


 after
all

the passing of years

the 
witness
now 
states


and the listener 
now hears 

the  gaps

and the other  odd   s
paces


 when memory fades 
to recall

 the heron-thin men 


and the chosen 
thin men 


of 

 the hardest of times



when it didn't go well

(and again the next time 

it will not

for who are the victims 


when silence is truth


 a shattering of glass
and a thud


as now it's recalled) 

,
small shards of hope  -
clearly gone


no work 
for clear heads 
or clean hands. 

. . . . just ongoing bluff


an historical lack of honest round tables

an
historical
stack 
of
tabus 

?who's laughing now 


a Joker


is named:




and it's 

Hubris


Saturday 9 November 2013

Lewis Niderman Band


The Austrian country & western band fronted by Lewis Niderman celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday. 

The celebratory concert was at the Lehar Theater in the town of Bad Ischl in the centre of the Slazkammergut (the Austrian Lake District).

The Lehar Theater is named after Franz Lehar  the Hungarian composer who composed in Bad Ischl in his villa on the south bank of the River Traun a short distance from the residence of the singer Richard Tauber. 

Using my pensioners rail ticket I made the round trip from Vienna to attend the celebrations. Lewis Niderman and I are of an age. 

It turned out it was just as well that I went. 

Niderman's opening solo was a real surprise. It was a simple thing I'd scribbled down for him during an alcoholic haze two or three months ago at the end of a too long evening in Niderman's own bar The Lafayette

Swizzle Inn Blues is the song's title, but to go into the reasons for the lyrics would take too long here.

Here are some photos I made. Impressions from a lively evening. 














I like this.


Thursday 7 November 2013

Lost in the Amazon Jungle


The idiot. That's me. Or so Amazon thinks. 



I ordered and paid for a book a week ago. It was a copy of Eat and Run by ultra-runner Scott Jurek.

Two days ago I received a computer generated email from Amazon: Your book has been despatched. You will receive it in approximately 6 days.

Today I received a second email, again by computer generated email, to the effect that the book was undeliverable. It listed several possible reasons why my order had not be delivered, albeit there were still 4 days to go before the delivery date according to their earlier email.

As far as I could see none of the given reasons applied to me. I could reorder it via their website if I wanted to they said. But I don't think I'll bother. I think I'll buy it elsewhere. I think I shall place an order for it at a small independent bookshop. I don't think I'll be visiting Amazon again.

I now recall that there were problems at Amazon earlier in the year; something to do with the pathetic rate of pay at the main European warehouse in Germany it was. There was talk of relocating elsewhere. I think Poland was mentioned.

A third computer generated email, ten minutes after the  second, informs me that my money will be refunded within 10 days.

That's very generous of Amazon  don't you think?

Not one word of apology for the inconvenience by the way. Just as well I didn't order any of the other books they have recently been bombarding me to buy.


The Murata Letters - Fukushima is more than a Hollywood movie





Fukushima, like JFK and 9/11 is a world changing event - only more so.

We the common people are now in the loop because of the integrity and determination of one far-sighted Japanese ambassador.

The mainstream media, if they have any integrity left,  should no longer pretend they are unaware of the seriousness of the disaster.

News media and concerned world inhabitants please


click here and here to read the letters

and here to meet their author

The Murata Letters, as they will one day come to be known, are worth a big movie.  Oliver Stone is my man.


haiku double-take (2)



 drunkenly draped 
 frost bitten 
 begonias 

       - - - John McDonald


 old heads bent 
 and withered   
 golden crown roses

      - - - Gwilym Williams


John Cage and the Sound of Venice




The cover of this edition of  L'illustre (from 2004) features one of my favourite composers.

In 1959 John Cage dedicated a composition to Venice. Sound of Venice is 3 minutes of sounds such as bells and ship signal horns, and includes a squeaky toy which makes a curious noise like a cat's meow, or maybe it's the commonly heard squeals from the looped ropes of the vaporetti when they tighten-up on the mooring posts during halts at Venice's floating ferry stations.


The Sound of Venice was performed on the wildly popular television show Lascia O Raddopia and seen by 25 million viewers.


Over a five week period other compositions appeared. One was Water Walk - a composition for piano with five radios, bathtub, watering can, pressure cooker, ice cubes and a blender.


There is a wonderful snippet of conversation from the final show:


Mike Bongiorno:  Mr. Cage, will you now return to America or stay here?

John Cage: My music stays.
Mike Bongiorno: Oh, you leave and your music is still here. But the opposite would have been better; that your music would leave and that you'd remain here.

I can't imagine that anyone has a 1959 recording of Venice Sound but fortunately for us there is another version 



here 

The depth of the audience reaction is delightful and indicates the broad appeal and high worth of the body of the off-the-wall work of John Cage.

 


Today's European Weather Forecast from BBC World: 

". . . we have a wavy wiggling weather front . . ."


Just thought you'd like to know. 




Wednesday 6 November 2013

Egyptian Poem



 A tribute to evergreen athlete Joy Johnson (89) who died on Monday, the day after completing the New York Marathon . . .


A recent birthday card - but I'm not counting! 



Death is before me today, 
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness;

Death is before me today,
Like the odour of myrrh,
Like sitting under the sail on a windy day;

Death is before me today,
Like the odour of lotus flowers, 
Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness;

Death is before me today,
Like the course of the freshet,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house,
When he has spent years in captivity. 


Anonymous


Monday 4 November 2013

A Long Wall of Silence


Narrenturm (Fools-Tower)

I'm afraid I don't know who painted this picture of Vienna's Narrenturm. I wish I did.  

It was not amongst the hoard of 1,500 artworks found in 2011 by the Bavarian authorities at the Munich residence of Cornelius Gurlitt (80) and reckoned by 'experts' to be worth a billion euros.


The works include paintings and drawings by Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Kokoshka, Beckmann, Nolde and other important artists.


We only know about the Nazi-looted and Nazi-acquired paintings being discovered 21/2 years ago because of a whistleblower article in the current edition of the German magazine Focus.


Some of the questions immediately springing to mind are:


Why wasn't news of the find revealed at the time?

Why was an international news conference not called?
What lies behind the strange and unusual delay?
Did the Bavarian authorities inform Berlin of the discovery?
And if so, when was Angela Merkel informed?
Have any other finds been made that people should be aware of?

So far, no answers.


The silence from Berlin is deafening.



The painting of the Narrenturm pleases me. I like the unusual perspective which fits to the subject of madness, the matchstick figures busily going about their business in the street, the matronly figure at the door, and the lines of washing drying in the sunshine. And when I look at it I imagine too the terrible din and panic in the tower at night; the screaming, the bellowing and the howling and maybe the hollow ringing steps of someone hurrying by on the street outside.




Sunday 3 November 2013

Adventure


a youngster atop   a war memorial wall
great adventure playground


Example of a Double Crossed Grave


Be not alarmed! Ghostly image in gravestone is my reflection.


 A million people will visit Vienna's graveyards this autumn. Some of these visitors will find two crosses on the graves of their nearest and dearest. 

In addition to the cross they expected to find they will find a  red cross.  This means they are behind with the rent. If it's not paid soon the stone will either be removed and sold or broken up. 

The plot will then be cleared of debris, the grave will be emptied of it's contents; bones, urns, or whatever. 

It will then be rented out once more and become the resting place for another temporary occupant. Only the well-heeled can afford to rest in peace for eternity.

In the post below is a poem about this almost surreal aspect of the Viennese death industry. 

On Red Crossed Graves


 Death's residence 
 finds a painted cross
adjacent the headstone's 
chiseled name 

Red is the mark 
for financial  gain

When rent's overdue
in death 
as in life 
the business matrix 
is the very same

Should the dead hold out 
(no pockets in shrouds) 
the removal men
will lock the gates 

and like ghosts in the night 
spirit the marble stone 
away 
If common 
stone 
 they'll knock it


down . . .




Dead is dead 
and the dead one's energy 
goes ahead !

Don't take the red candle 
from the slot machine
it   throws its light  
on the smashed up plot

The plot will be empty 
in a small space of time
and rented out 
to the next in line. 





Saturday 2 November 2013

Give that man the cigar!


Poet-in-Residence 2013  Whistleblowers Cigar Award for services to humanity 


Like the child in the children's story of the Emperor's New Clothes,  a man in Japan has dared speak an unpleasant truth in public and has done so, on behalf of the present and future children of Japan, in the presence of an emperor. 

I have no Nobel Peace Prizes at Poet-in-Residence but to the courageous Mr. Yamamoto I present the Poet-in-Residence 2013 Whistleblowers Cigar Award for services to humanity. 

May it go well with you Mr. Yamamoto