Passed

 

Objections have been raised in past days on social media to the euphemism ‘passed’. The Collingwood legend passed last Saturday. This sentence means something quite different from he kicked the ball quickly into the forward line. It means he kicked the bucket. ‘Passed’ appears to be an abbreviation of ‘passed away’ or ‘passed on’ or more flowerily, ‘passed to a better life’, or greener pastures. It is not shorthand for saying he ‘passed the baton’, though this can be appropriate in many cases. Nor ‘passed the buck’, though the intense concentration surrounding a last will and testament could leave you with that impression. When precisely this verb came into present day usage, where, why or how, are questions that elude, requiring the kind of online search for data that could keep us here till our dying day. Life is short and research is long. There are better and more productive ways of passing the time. These objections to ‘passed’ seem to be caused by irritation at not calling a spade a spade. They have crept into daily use and there seems no end to it, if you are an objector. It is unlikely that we will read a notice saying “The Prime Minister with Five Portfolios has popped his clogs,” or “The contentious Governor-General has carked it,” neither statement carrying the dignity expected when speaking of such eminent figures. Replace these verbs with ‘passed’, however, and everything is a bed of roses. Surprisingly, for those whose English extends back into the last century, we have read in recent weeks that the Queen ‘passed’. Vulgarly, we may catch ourselves thinking, I did but see her pass, and yet I love her till I pass. These passing thoughts are more common than we suppose, especially amongst commoners. Or we may ponder if it means she passed with flying colours. This is not in dispute, it must be said. ‘It must be said’ being itself an expression open to query in many contexts. Why must it be said, really? However, it is a common expression and close to a universal truth to say the whole world mourned her passing. Millions went up to the City to witness the fact, while millions more watched at home. It was more than a passing moment for all involved, with complaints from some objectors that it was going on far too long for their liking, as days passed into weeks. Somewhere along the way ‘passed’ has become detached from that collection of euphemisms denoting death as a journey. Instead of conjuring sober thoughts about passing to the other side, whether of the Styx or the Jordan or just in general the river, it prompts the thought that they must have passed out. To have ‘passed on’ does at least suggest that the departed has indeed departed, to introduce another euphemism that has fallen out of favour lately. While ‘passed’ risks being construed as a dysphemism, as on a report card where the teacher reports that the departed “needs to work on their expression”, “hasn’t done all their homework”, but nevertheless “shows sign of improvement”.

Braque

 I am a rainy day in Paris. Anywhere you like. But Paris will do. The clouds are the same. Edged with grey. Shaped roundly shading from grey to white. When they aren’t the deluge before us. Crowds of rain and a sudden hundred umbrellas. White is so much of grey in the rain. I am a woman. Don’t be fooled by appearances. The caption is explicit. I am straight as an easel. From top to toe my form is all front. Front, sides and back and all front. A portrait that is a still life, no mean feat. A still life that could be a cityscape of rain slowing and ceasing. When the light enlarges, you might gaze upon hillsides of white houses, square and glistening. My adjusted lean into space could bear a large canvas. Signed by someone or other in a corner. One foot seems to be for a chest of drawers. Shapely assuredly. My other foot resembles a plinth, sturdy for the task, or a catafalque. It’s something to do with the fall of shadows. I am a sounding board for a revolution. My guitar has a strong back story. Things they say about me fill books. Their words remind us of bygone years in upstairs salons and barndoor ateliers and sculptural wine-bars. Print nowadays, their words that were scintillating, capital letters and outdated fonts in faded newspapers cut up and pieced together. Enigmatic in its silence. Like the eruption of the guitar, its breezes and snaps. Its eloquence and melancholy. Silent now and huddled against newsprint, the context lost. I am more or less what Georges had in mind. His mind was vivid with ideas. Him and Pablo, they talked for years every day. What language. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. That’s Georges. Or he would say: In a painting, what counts is the unexpected. Decades pass, each pursuing their own lines of enquiry, he his and he his. Vivid ideas using a neutral palette, for Georges. The wars did something to his mind. I am listening with my eyes half-closed. To all the generations of comments made by those pleased to be fooled by appearances. To the rain desisting, resting in downlines of gutters and rhombuses of roofs and puddles of grey sky. To the Frenchman and the Spaniard enthusing in the half light for hours over effects. My eyes face on and side on and listening. To the fragments of guitar that humans will contrive. I am waiting out my time inside my frame. It’s the deal I’ve been dealt. If not for photography I would not exist. Which is a start. A ticket to fame is my role, you could say, depending on your angle. A ticket at right-angles to experience or perspective, copied and pasted. You arrive in your orderly queue, let someone in to have a squizz, at me. Silence is a common comment. Occasionally someone like you enthuses. Some read out my caption, have another look, then move on.  

Two photographs: ‘Femme à la guitare’ (‘Woman with a guitar’) by Georges Braque, autumn 1913, oil and charcoal on canvas. Centre Pompidou via the National Gallery of Victoria.

Picasso

 

Visitors line up for selfies in front of ‘The Weeping Woman’. Young children interpret the Dali with curiosity according to their own experience, innocent of surreal preconditions. Adults rest on benches before context films, Paris aflutter with light and hope in 1910. Grand Final Day was the ideal time to go to the Picasso show at the National Gallery; foot traffic was light, few mobs in front of classics. Overload, as always with this artist, was the norm and how you view with satisfaction hundreds of works in the scarce allotted hours, anyone’s guess. My approach is to size up the rooms relaxed initially, then return to the favourite impressions at length. We played the game of which painting would you take home. Carol thought about Gris’ cubist still-life with book, but finally left with Picasso’s ‘The Reader’, pictured, a portrait of Olga reading a letter lost in the words, a sign of this the shoe having slipped from her foot. I thought the garment hanging on the chairback was angel’s wings. This painting though has a sadness, she says, when we consider it is a letter from Olga’s separated family living in Russia. Seriously did I covet Bonnard’s self-portrait in the bathroom mirror but it was Braque’s ‘Woman with a Guitar’ that ended up on our wall, in order that a poem can be written about it, forthcoming. Cubism is the crunch, isn’t it? Picasso is still playing with its lessons sixty years later at his death, it’s the one constant as he moves from one moving movement to the next, exploring and exploiting the possibilities of each. His collaborations are exposed in the show as a combination of conversation, creative extension, and copying. The lines between discovery, sharing, and ripping off are never clear, but then is he ripping anyone off or just making things to see how they look, using his immense natural gifts? We see in turn Braque Picasso, Léger Picasso, Giacometti Picasso, Matisse Picasso, as the decades pass, each pursuing their own lines of enquiry, and he his. Found this time that I am so over surrealism and think it now a symptom of 30s Europe, the social illnesses and multiple neuroses come into the light through surrealism’s own unquestioned violence and misogyny. Wartime Paris paintings come as some sort of relief, artists once more living on little, nowhere they can go, all day with the brushes, in search of a possible world that is quietly governed. Overload effect soon separates our viewing into the so-so Picassos, the properly picked Picassos, the out-there Picassos, reserve-our-judgement Picassos, fabulous Picassos, and then the OMG Picassos. These last are the ones where, whatever the style and subject and other factors, his line and colour and form and daring are happening, seemingly effortless, all contributing to the subject itself, which speaks to us directly, anew, as though innocent of any preconditions.

Spring

 

The spring starts in June. Leaves that leave, increasingly, decreasingly, unceasing. Months linked with J for jonquils in the mind, June and July. Jaune French for yellow. These little occurrences are an assurance, something is predictable. Mornings might be bright yet the clock’s gone back an hour some time now. Evenings crowd with grey then rain. The mind is cooled, choosing the things to do.  The lungs fill up till they are full, then let go. The spring starts in August. Down the side streets wattles prove they’re wattles, different wattles as weeks pass. Bold as brass, sun rich, or as faded pastel in the air. Cold that pulls close the collar, twines firm the scarf. Mould along those old fittings, lichen with a new lease on life. And camellias, more than they can handle, falling like fluffy planets on wet footpaths, abundance of instant mush. Their pink is red, or their red blush pink, the words fall about themselves. Touch the untough petals browning down, rake them under the violets. Everything is flesh out here. Magpies create a temporary stir where territory’s blurred, the outcome all good. That’s official. Day is minimising difficulties. No going out at night. Tawny frogmouths about the place somewhere, that much is certain. The spring starts in September, plum blossoms pink little flecks on cold branches. Too late to trim the branches. Another year. Grass will have its day, its month in fact rain-absorbed when homebodies stay inside reading their Moscow novel and computer bad news. Home beautiful battens down the hatches as hail thickens, bouncing upon driveways, hillocks of ice. Leaves have ceased as leaves seize the day with tiniest little prods at air. Other days find freeway hum is feint and that motor-mower a blasted intrusion. The spring starts in October for underground animals, warmth enough to know the time’s now upward outwards. And a possum pendulums on a branch at the night window at midnight in the daytime memory. Warmth fills the morning that trickles down windscreens from frost of night before, the pull into summer, its yellowest certainty. Mind balances the meaning of heatwave with La Niña rains. Incipient signs the body imagines. How much the blood can sustain, bones endure. Clocks must have gone forward again, or back, or whatever they do at this time of spring. Time for a cup of tea. And the cherry blossom overnight, white and getting whiter, overtakes the tree in daylight, stems, sepals, petals, and stigmas hundreds. Quiet is the word. Next week the tree will be a cloud.

 

 

Image: the cherry tree at our back door this morning. This poem is inspired after reading Shane McCauley’s much shorter and very different poem ‘Monsoon’, with its epigraph from Madhur Jaffrey, “The summer starts in April”.

Cakewalk

 D. J. Williams. 'Lawrence "Lardie" Tulloch, Captain of Collingwood, 1902-04.' Drawing.

Cancel culture chooses to overlook Claude Debussy’s composition ‘Golliwogg’s Cakewalk’, even as the word golliwog cancans into archaism. Written between 1906 and 1908, it is a standard of classical solo piano. Debussy enjoyed strolling like a musical flaneur. The title reflects Parisian connections with French America, the South, and its nascent jazz culture, the composer possibly thinking himself at the time the height of political correctness. The cakewalk was a strutting or strolling dance performed by African Americans in the period, the best dance winning the cake, and I’ve always wondered if it was fashionable in Melbourne at the turn of the century. Cakewalk became ragtime. There is an aural similarity between Golliwog and Collingwood, making one wonder if there isn’t some connection, some reason why ‘cakewalk’ walked its way so easily into the club song, though its lyrics are said to have been made up in 1903. Other club songs are innocuous (‘We are the Navy Blues’), ludicrously cheerful (‘We’re a happy team at Hawthorn’) or philosophically postmodern (‘It’s a high flying flag, it’s the emblem for me and for you.’). Deconstruction is not on the agenda here. Collingwood’s song has edge, it cuts to the chase by bragging that Grand Finals are a walkover, when you’re Collingwood. In fact, only if you’re Collingwood. This is because cakewalk already had a second meaning, probably derived from the first meaning, anything that is achieved with ease, an accomplishment that’s in fact a complete pushover. Significantly, it is the only club song that acknowledges its multitudinous fans: ‘See, the barrackers are shouting, as all barrackers should, for the Premiership’s a cakewalk, for the Good Old Collingwood.’ Understandably, such an openly declared certitude will get up the noses of other football followers, even if it happens to be correct; the attitude could be described as Debussyan. Claude Debussy was known for his egocentric hauteur and opinionated arrogance, further reasons why he fits right in at Collingwood. He knew he was right all of the time, as we find in his one-eyed music criticism. But indeed the hubristic sentiments in the song have served to define the club, resulting in difficult emotional dramas and soul-searching when Collingwood happens by chance to not win a Grand Final, as occurred incredibly during the traumatic Colliwobbles period (1970-90). Things got so bad that some people at the club argued cakewalk should be removed from the song to save embarrassment. However, this minority view was only a temporary aberration, an unexpected loss of nerve, and after a brief reality check ‘cakewalk’ was soon reinstated by unanimous acclaim.

Point

Arthur Streeton. ‘The National Game’ (circa 1889)

That there is all the time in the world, springtime and its rite, then summertime blues, to recover simply by reflecting on other phenomena, experience itself, upon the difference that is made through the difference, either way, of one point. That this season of multiple tactics and strategic breakouts, of inflated bladders and projectile egos, enacted with purpose from early and very close to perfection in daylight and nightlight, a time warp in which every day is a Saturday, now more literally than ever, should come down in the dying moments to a difference of one point. That the hopes and fears of all the years since first the promise of September victory entered the childhood perplex, are met in the turmoil and sponsored highlights and unstoppable pattern of run and snap and tap and knock leading to an exceptionally close thing one straight kick could change forever from down one point. That they would do it in that devil may care fashion, not just before, but now in the preliminary, not give in but take it up to the chancers in a furious spectacle of miraculous coordination, only to know it in the nerves, the seconds ticking to the siren, and that the gap, people, is one point. That the fantasy contests of boyhood, colossal scoreboards and towering marks of desirous dream, translate into a lifetime of reckonings with record book margins, their close alliance with the truth of experience, the closest of contests short of a draw, in which two forces of remarkably equal excellence must scramble in the final shadow stages to be the one on the winning side of one point. That hyperbole, all those slavish enthusiastic columns week-in week-out home-and-away to say they climb the heights, they stacks on the mill, they blind-turn the pass, they play the four quarters, they never surrender except for a patch there where they for a moment lost control slightly of the narrative, in spasmodic adjectives and limited verbs and select clichés, would come an end with but one point; not a summary, or even an ellipsis, but after all those delirious deadlines, those heady headlines, one solitary point, one effing point, can you believe it mate tell me I’m dreaming one point. That it takes but one panting pent-up player, pint-size or pontifical, to put one punt between the big sticks, is a far far better thing to do than not kick the big six: do it please, for all of us, just one straight as a die punt to pass by that imminent defeat by one point. [Part 2: ‘Point’ of the two-part poem ‘One Point’.]

Image: when Sir Arthur Streeton exhibited this work at the 9 x 5 Impressionists Exhibition at Buxton’s Gallery in Swanston Street, Marvellous Melbourne, in 1889, Australian football had been going over 30 years but the Victorian Football League still hadn’t been invented. It is therefore a matter of local chutzpah for Streeton to title his small painting ‘The National Game’, given the game had only just started infiltrating across colonial borders. The painting is historical proof that at the time only goals counted; behind posts and therefore the counting of behinds (aka those make-and-break single points) was introduced in 1897.

One

 

 Charles Blackman. The Barracker. (1965) Oil on canvas.

That that swirling and bifurcating surge from the centre determined at every duck and swerve and flick and roost to move the oval object inexorably forward for a timely goal, whichever goal face at the time; that same dashing attack that is the best form of stalwart defence; (the proposition in the minds of all participants here today, passive or active) will avert a loss by just one point. That these tidal teenage minds speaking throaty cockatoo to those trained-up twenty-something minds, hot chilli peppers and cool cucumbers the lot of them, and those thirtyish traditional minds too, spent every second (observers are keen to believe) of their speaking careers and handballing panache intent on getting beyond at all cost an end by one point. That it is on point to remember the better team does not always win, a truism of three-quarter time orange munching, as the world watches on with scant regard while dodgy umpiring, unscrupulous behind-play maulings, unsavoury sledges and other misdemeanours too minor in themselves to deserve more than cries of shame and ball it up, leave in their wake the better team within cooee of victory but for one point. That this titanic twenty bursting their boilers for four solid quarters, come hell or high water could avoid or overcome that immovable object on their close horizons, and closing fast, iceberg side of twenty capable of freezing the blood and sinking hopes by so much as one seismic collision (so the thinking goes), just a single hit and disappearance at one very direct point, for only one point. That legendary walkovers are recalled, massive margins leaving the impression only one team was playing, bloodbaths of bone-crunching consequence, and even results that left no margin of error or element of wrong-foot or doubt in players and spectators alike, goading each other on with goal scores galore, leaves still the existential end (turning reluctantly towards the scoreboard) that that is not 100 or 50 points difference, but one point. That that fervent belief in one colour of guernsey not another, that mascot not another, that obscure working class suburb not another, leads into still greater fervour, a mindset of partisan memory, a fountain of continuous star statistics, a retelling of their most balletic ballistics, their most hardened hard-earned heart-warming teamwork, that leads towards the almost splendour, the nearly total glory, the so near and yet so far summed up by the hyper commentator at the last bell near the last post his avid laconicism, a blast from the past, now present again very very loudly: one point.

Kick

Roy de Maistre. The Football Match. (1938) Oil on canvas.

Today’s game has been reduced to kick-to-kick, the simplified choice of flat punt and torpedo. Lamentable is the vanishing of classic kicks. I sometimes think that the place kick is the missing link, a clue to the origin of the game, dug into the earth. Those old men, young then, they’d line it up and boot it through, out of the ground. Dead now, who were kicking back then. Whether from a mark or free, the player placed the ball in a small divot made with his boot. The skill was to meet the ball with the toe at the best angle for height and accuracy. This process today would be called a delaying tactic, as well as bad for ratings, and it was due to this slowing of the flow that the kick phased out of use after 1910, together with lace-up guernseys and knickerbockers. Contra Blainey, it is sensible to keep an open mind about adaptations from Indigenous sport, though given the game’s perceived hybridity, the place kick may have been borrowed from rugby. Its demise suggests that 100 years ago players and spectators already relished a faster game. Closely allied to the place kick is the drop kick, point of impact being at ground level as the ball lands from the hand, or bounces. Some of the most spectacular kicking in the modern game was drop kicking, made by men with nous and bravura. Which is why it’s inexplicable that the term has come to be an insult for a stupid or hopeless person. I note the term’s similarity to the insult ‘dipstick’ and comic legend ‘dropbear’ as clues to this irrational connection. Erasure of the drop kick came about when nervous coaches forbad it as too risky: for every awesome flight trajectory there was another that bumbled along the ground, the term here being grubber. There are many who remain unimpressed by the grubber defence, especially those who remember players whose drop kick was their most natural form of play. The drop punt is nothing but an excuse for a drop kick, disregarded with contempt by those who lament the golden age of kicking. Unsurprisingly, there were also major practitioners of the stab pass. This low, fast kick was once a feature of any game, especially as delivered by a rover, itself a team position that is disappearing like the Cheshire Cat. Dainty little punts between players are nowadays a charming way of passing the time, but will never match the incomparable stab pass. The name describes the action, a moment that in a flash changed the tempo of the game, lifted the spirits and the roar of the crowd. Alas, this ghost of the past has given way to an age in which teams play up to the easily gobsmacked with variations on the banana kick, or check-side, a farcical new term that seems to have been lifted from snooker.    

Coping

 

Seeking support is one of the best adaptive coping mechanisms for a Magpie barracker. Grouping together during finals season with likeminded supporters confirms the concrete view that Collingwood is bound for glory and gives respite from the nagging fear that some bunch of clowns (Sydney, Geelong?) could cheat you of what is self-evidently yours by right. Relaxation is recommended, spending your afternoons devising Greatest Collingwood Teams of the past hundred years: Billy Picken fullback, the Richardson brothers wings, ‘Fabulous Phil’ Carman interchange, &c. Setting realistic goals is part of the coping mechanism known as problem-solving. A five or six goal victory in the Grand Final is more realistic than a 20-goal win. Keeping this in mind helps steady nerves and better focuses the barracker’s mental game plan. Maintaining a sense of humour is well nigh impossible if you’re Collingwood. Finding a sense of humour, however, is a good practical exercise that can occupy hours of your day, if only as a distraction from the confounded business of what is the right angle for wearing a black-and-white beanie and scarf. Physical activity is a mechanism tried and true. It can involve pinning club photos around your room, regularly checking where you are on the League Ladder, and may extend to walking down to the local oval and doing something you haven’t done since you were a kid: kick a football. Maladaptive coping mechanisms, unfortunately, are very common amongst diehard Magpies. Escape into daydreams, playing all the positions in fantasy matches of the mind, are on the record. Self-soothing is a slippery slope. It sounds therapeutic to watch Collingwood replays 24/7 with the aid of large bottles of Jack Daniels, but this is a false friend, leading to deepening delusions of grandeur and disconnection from the central nervous system. In fact, can lead onto numbing, a coping mechanism that critics claim is the normal state of homeostasis for people who barrack for the Pies: what else do they think about? Isn’t it “their very being”? This is unfair. Collingwood people are capable of doing more than one thing at a time. Scattered evidence is available if you wish to know more, just message me. Compulsion is common, especially during the winter season if the Woods look like a chance. Online tracking verifies that Collingwood sites get more hits per minute than any other football site, with computer hermits asserting, or perhaps that’s indulging, their existential belief in visions of Victoria Park. Some analysts have likened this to religious behaviour; others say it’s just tragic. Or comic, depending on your point of view. Risk-taking must be factored in, at the very least, dangerous driving, hooliganism, extreme vulgar jokes often being explained with the off-hand judgement, “Must be a Collingwood person.” Most serious is self-harm, for example getting a tattoo of the club crest on your bicep, the names of the 2010 Premiership team down your calf muscle, or (worst case scenario) going the full Dane Swan and covering yourself in glory from head to foot, black-and-white and read all over.  

Collingwood

 

Collingwood is into the Preliminary Final. This raises the agonising yet ecstatic possibility of finding our way into the Grand Final, with the unbearable chance of winning the Premiership. These prospects, collectively, are enough to keep the anxiety levels permanently in the red zone. What if we lose? Even worse, by one point? Equally terrifying, what if Collingwood wins? The word ‘miracle’ will haunt the mind for the next year, the next finals. People say Collingwood barrackers take the game too seriously, that we lack a sense of humour. What of it? The overriding principle is that Collingwood is the best team, wherever we finish on the ladder. Not only the best team, actually the only team, as other clubs merge into a polychrome cohort of club colours, drug scandals, and bad kicking. That’s their problem! Collingwood’s problem is that it’s a legend, a huge burden to bear, but we manage. The Preliminary Final is a precarious proof of this self-evident fun fact. Which is why Collingwood is perennially accused of hubris, arrogance, and pride, with accompanying disorders of self-delusion, megalomania, and colour blindness. Who’s arguing? When you’ve got it, flaunt it! Whether it’s a wooden spoon or a Premiership cup. It is this supreme indifference to anyone else’s feelings that engenders hatred towards Collingwood. This is not an intellectual proposition but is, so I am told often by those with these feelings, visceral. Hatred that is linked to laughter, the scornful, derisive laugh of those who enjoy watching Collingwood lose the Preliminary Final by one point due to a poor umpiring decision on the siren. Old Four Eyes strikes again! Chrissy Amphlett sings it’s a fine line between pleasure and pain and she’s just your average Geelong supporter. Collingwood, by comparison, is Dantesque. A Preliminary Final is purgatory, a promise of future Magpie misery or magnificence on a scale that, either way, transcends mere mortality. Perhaps this is why slurs are common, for example that the bulk of the Black-And-White Army are alcoholics. This is unverifiable, though there is no question that Magpie fans require a raft of coping mechanisms, especially given we treat Collingwood itself as a coping mechanism for life itself. I say all of this on the eve of the Preliminary not because I doubt the players’ ability to win; this is never in doubt. They are 20 of humanity’s finest. My concern is with the fans, will they survive, given we’re being dangled halfway between Heaven and Hell? You might laugh, but you don’t barrack for Collingwood. They say a Collingwood crowd is the only Earthly sound that penetrates into Outer Space, the acoustic equivalent of the Great Wall of China. It makes sense. Full-voiced expression of our collective psychodrama has no barriers. In space no-one can hear you scream, unless you’re Collingwood.

Colony

 

Victoria is a piece of cake. In fact, let’s face it, the British, not renowned for their imagination, divided up Australia like a cake into a few pieces using straight lines and no effort. Tasmania, which was too small to divide further, sits over there to the lower right of the table, a lone cupcake. The almost desperate homesickness that infuses the name New South Wales blinded its attributor to the untold tributaries, literally innumerable, implied in every unnamed river running into the ocean for the full extent of its edge. Unnamed while they don’t speak the language. It didn’t take anyone long who possessed a compass to figure out how to name South or Western Australia, somewhat longer to ask the local inhabitants what they call this large other half of the cake. Queensland took a little more imagination, which is why it was left to Victoria to come up with a name herself. She did not disappoint, or at least cause any surprises, surprises being something to avoid at all cost. It must have been gratifying to learn that a new colony named in her honour was created using the novel method of border, a river for most of its length. Cartography is a precise art, unless we don’t know what we’re drawing. We wonder if it isn’t time for the whole place to be divided anew following this river method, especially given that it worked for millennia before cakes arrived. It did not take long, a link of the eye, for colonies to turn into states of excitement, garden states, beautiful one day, perfect the next. We say the British, but it’s the mind of British seamen has something to do with this cake cutting exercise. They lived trapped in a worldview of longitudes and latitudes, tropics and date lines, poles and equators. When we think about it, them on a room of a deck of straight lines, if their world was not flat as the ocean doldrums in every direction for days on end, it was a permanent vision of waves on all sides whitecapped, with only clouds for variation. It must have been comforting knowing they were sailing across a chess square of blue ocean, bearings somewhere fixed, rather than the monotony of choppy surfaces concealing unknown depths they could never see. The night sky must have been a relief, as well as a help, in getting them somewhere unknown, star charts naturally being a permanent known. The seamen did not need to rechart the stars. They could rest from their labours, as some other contractor with a protractor had already joined the dots for them using very straight lines. Then it was day again and, with luck, something on the horizon sometime during sunshine, where food may be plentiful and they can have their share. Somewhere more than just new; somewhere familiar. Somewhere with curving lines, with substance, where when they fall they land, not just disappear.   

Dream

 

It is a known fact that everyone dreams about the Queen. Dim-witted journalists looking for a story ask why we grieve for someone we’ve never met. These writers should consult their dreamlife, their fifteen volumes of dream diaries, their inner self for the last time they interviewed her in an intense five-part series sitting opposite each other on fluffball clouds, no subject off-limits. I couldn’t count the number of times the Queen has shown up in my dreams, but then I’m not counting. Sometimes I cannot remember even meeting her the next morning, which I don’t put down to brain fog, or a temporary lapse, or denial, but the simple fact that we don’t remember most of what we dream, even when it’s a very pleasant conversation about horse racing and whether to put the cream or the jam first on the scone, with the Queen, beside a teeming skateboard rink surrounded by an arrangement of some hundred gold-edged teacups and saucers. There is no reason to have a survey asking have you dreamt about the Queen, even though there have been plenty of them, especially in England, because over a brief lifetime of seventy years the chances of the Queen showing up even just once are statistically 100%. I have found her reassuring since she first entered consciousness, she keeps to the point and is always dressed appropriately and well for the occasion. Heads of state speak of her enquiring mind and innate curiosity and I can corroborate these attributes from my own subconscious world summits, as we gaze (this is in another dream) around the orangery and through its hundreds of well-fitted panes with looks of blank amazement, sipping a very pleasant Indian brew. People who know about these things say that Queen dreams signify feelings of power and being in charge, that we are leading toward some victory in our lives. I suppose that’s right. Apparently these dreams can be about channelling my female energy and well who am I to argue, with the Queen? It makes perfectly obvious sense that someone we encounter every week in some film or newspaper or novel for decades, someone who is a living dream that we but see passing by, would blur in the nicest way imaginable into our own dreams, which is why it’s always perfectly normal (why wouldn’t it be normal?) to have the Queen come around the corner of our already hectic schedule, fix us with a hard stare, tell us we must sit down and have a cuppa and scones with strawberry jam, because truly she has a number of things that need saying right now. Having covered major issues confronting all 56 Commonwealth nations in about four seconds, the Queen departs via beds of daisies saying it was good to catch up, even as a voice can be heard from another part of the house saying Wake Up Australia, you’ll be late for work.      

Queen

 

Every Sunday of my childhood we prayed “especially for thy Servant Elizabeth our Queen, that under her we may be godly and quietly governed.” These were the precise words that we expected of her governing. If the service was Matins, or Morning Prayer, then we had not only A Prayer for the Queen’s Majesty (“…so replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that she may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way...”) but also A Prayer for the Royal Family, in which we asked to “prosper them with all happiness.” Although we never saw these people, they were local in our minds. Their presence was formative, their likenesses known. That Monday we marched past the flag in the schoolyard, eyes right at the vital moment, having just sung ‘God Save the Queen’, the national anthem. Adult conversation took on a different tone when the subject was the Queen; it still does. Entire banks of stored knowledge could suddenly come forth, informing opinions political, social, and cultural about these English people. Contact was made via hefty pictorials that detailed every step of their lives, sitting on silken couches or meeting a foreign dignitary or riding horses through the Scottish Highlands. Sepia annuals made way for something called colorgravure. In my childhood we could see the Queen in most public buildings, her portrait squarely positioned behind post office counter or bank teller’s window or headmaster’s desk. Most commonly, though anything but commonly, it was the Queen in her wattle-yellow gown, the 1954 portrait painting by Sir William Dargie. As with any relationship of length, learning more about a person’s politics, society and culture would change the childhood impressions into formed perspectives. It was not a Prime Minister’s bouquet of “I did but see her passing by” that made me think again, but my mother’s comment of “silly old fellow!” A line had been crossed and it was he who crossed it. The slow realisation that half the suburbs of our city had names associated with the Queen’s direct ancestors started to explain the bigger meanings of power and possession. And by the time I was a young adult, the Dismissal of the elected federal government showed in hard relief the difference between the reality and fantasy of the monarchy, the peculiar balancing act of all our relationships. The closeness that we enjoyed in regard to the Queen was sustained by the established maintenance of a distance that itself is a product of time and history. We all know the story of her reign, having lived through the reign, most of us knowing no other, and while we know about the scandals and such like, it is arresting to ponder the words “godly and quietly governed”, in a world today where such virtues are needed.

Book

 

Here’s the modest haul, restraint please, from the St Peter’s Bookroom Book Fair last weekend, $20 the lot. Alphabetically by author. 1. ‘The history question : who owns the past?’ by Inga Clendinnen a Quarterly Essay that addressed the history war before the last one with her fearless signature incisiveness (Black Inc., 2006) 2. ‘The golden rule’ by Irene Cooper, its reiteration in different religious traditions as told in story between a grandfather and grandchild, beautifully illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska, the book itself in excellent condition (Abrams Books, 2007) 3. ‘Wild Australia : a view of birds and men’ by Douglas Dorward, as the title suggests a ‘blokes go bush’ book but interesting today for its paintings and drawings by John Olsen, prefiguring his later big artbook nature trips to extreme parts of the continent (Collins, 1977) 4. ‘John Ford Paterson : a family tradition’ with text by Lyn Johnson, a Scottish artist I was unaware of, who came to Australia and could be called next generation Heidelberg School, Paterson created some very good things ((McClelland Gallery & Sculpture Park, 2010) 5. ‘Churchill: visionary, statesman, historian’ by John Lukacs, which came after a book of his I have read ‘Five days in London: May 1940’, itself a must-read for anyone who still needs to know what Churchill did to avoid capitulation, how much of a close thing it really was (Scribe, 2002) 6. ‘Australian legends of our land’ by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a children’s book for anyone, withdrawn from the Malvern Library Service well-worn, telling ancient stories of Stradbroke Island and other parts of the country (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990) 7. ‘There’s a wocket in my pocket!’ by Dr. Seuss, in very good condition and no texta scribbles, I further soften to Dr. Seuss and this one is great, charming, screwball, mysterious, a house full of zany creatures including the zlock behind the clock and the vug under the rug (Collins and Harvill, 1975) 8.  ‘Elinor Fettiplace’s receipt book’ is an Elizabethan cookbook revived and carefully annotated by Hilary Spurling, it follows the English seasons and brings to life the world of Elinor’s household, planning some testing (Penguin Books, 1986) 9. ‘Political amnesia : how we forgot to govern’ another one of those Quarterly Essays, this one by the reassuringly formidable Laura Tingle, she who when interviewing stares at a politician’s answer with baleful disbelief. (Black Inc., 2015) 10. ‘Dublinesque’ by Enrique Vila-Matas, a Spanish novel in which the main character “sets off for Dublin on the pretext … to hold, on Bloomsday, a funeral for the age of print,” so an add to the large literature speaking to the work of Joyce and especially that kaleidoscopic wonder, ‘Ulysses’ (Harvill Secker, 2012)

Bible

Last month some residents of Florida succeeded in banning a number of books from public libraries on grounds of ‘wokeness’. One of these books was the Bible. It seems a lost cause banning a book that many others say should be in every home. It certainly contradicts those in the same state who treat every word as literal truth, bibliolaters who put the book on a pedestal where conversation ends. Perhaps, as happens when books are banned, this will cause a rush in sales as secret Bible readers search out the ‘woke’ bits. 

Historically, a problem for Bible-banners and bibliolaters everywhere is that the Bible is not a book. It is a collection of books; the Greek word Biblia itself means ‘the books’. Long may it remain so, because it means living with awkward, challenging, creative expressions about God and Creation and humans that cross-reference each other but also speak with their own voice. Martin Luther would have banned the Letter of James from his Bible because it speaks too forcefully for salvation by works, a key complaint in his theology. And presumably those targeting libraries in Florida have their own unfavourite books of the Bible, though which ones is not clear in newspaper reports. As it is, none of these people have any hope of suppressing the canon, or the truth for that matter. 

Christianity is sometimes credited with the invention of the book, or blamed depending on your point of view. The rush for gospels, epistles and other revelations in the early church led to demands for a handy format that improved on the cumbersome scroll. The result was the revolution known as the codex, folded pages that could be stitched together, then turned easily. This revolution in the management and distribution of knowledge was followed over a thousand years later by printing, a revolution that brought all the books of the Bible together into one affordable volume for the first time. Add to this Erasmus’ revolution of translating into vernaculars and the Reformation was bound (literally) to happen.   

The digital revolution of our own time must be a nightmare for the do-badders of Florida, as readers order online or download their favourite book of the Bible, google the latest biblical quote to find and compare in 20 reputable English translations, scroll down to find the tested words of song, prophecy and good news. 

[Reflection for the pew notes on the weekend of the Book Fair, the 23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, the 4^th of September, St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne]

Photograph: we don’t know the exact number of English versions of the Bible, let alone portions of the Bible, but here are a number of them being sorted on the Bible tables at the St Peter’s Bookroom Book Fair, held this weekend 3^rd September 10 am-4 pm, 4^th September 10 am-2 pm at St Peter’s Eastern Hill in the city,