Odyssey

August 24 Word of the Day: Odyssey

 

Will he ever get to the Ithaca Theatre, its promises of fulfilment and money well-spent? He could kill for a good night out, but the enticing translator Calypso says the story’s all told wrong. This, and old wounds, do his head in so he drops a couple of lotuses. The one-eyed screen keeps him enrapt until poked off with his finger. Reviews are a Scylla and Charybdis of whirlpool opinions, cliched toppling towers here, comely cameos there. A week spellbound by the new Sirens release, he almost forgets the Ithaca, its friendly doggy smell, unsuitable clientele, and bygone matinee repeats. 

Century

 August 23 Word of the Day: Century 

Letrilla: The days of his century were numbered

 

[15^th]

She composed visions botanical

Their print fate pressed mechanical

Their colour butterflies’ capers

Their fade into cloth-head paper

The days of her century were numbered

[16^th]

He took words from everyone’s larder

Scarcely noticed the Armada

Saw how we want and let sin in

We are double inside a twin

Made light of dark with feathered wands

Joked he was more lasting than bronze

Dropped manuscripts upon the floor

Left friends to complete the restore

The days of his century were numbered

[17^th]

He ate the fruit and changed his suit

Kept changing sides and staying mute

All things to all men women too

Thought a pioneer of the zoo

The days of their century were numbered

[18^th]

He spelt out an all-mind God

Rhymings even but he stayed odd

His arguments made perfect sense

Based on assembled evidence

Versions went through ten editions

Deity through mass revisions

Back home his wig got a brush-up

Revolution the gig was up

The days of his century were numbered

[19^th]

She went to Paris, went to Rome

Somehow neither of them was home

Married once but it all went wrong

Married again and got along

Landscapes floated by like subplots

Loose ends then were tied up in knots

Her garden of azaleas

Her brother in Australia

The days of her century were numbered

[20^th]

She enumerated rewards

For all the objects she adored

The Moon that once was walked upon

Telephones that were talked upon

She marvelled at brisk energies

The sights of electricity

And for the persons she revered

Or at least that’s how it appeared

Portraits made of wishful thinking

And the levels she was drinking

The days of her century were numbered

[21^st]

He made sentences it-and-a-bit

Bitten off and chewed by an It

A cud of suddenly phrases

Without readers or their praises

Still he composed against the tide

Going along for the next ride

The days of his century were numbered

 

 

Source of the letrilla line: Osip Mandelstam, quoted from a critical essay about Aleksandr Blok, ‘Blok is described as a man of the nineteenth century who knew that “the days of his century were numbered.”’ In, ‘A history of modern criticism 1750-1950, Volume 7: German, Russian, and Eastern European criticism, 1900-1950’ by René Wellek, Yale University Press, 1991, page 296.  

 

 

Careless

 August 22 Word of the Day: Careless

 

Times arrive, moments and days, when careless is accepted, the lack of notice people have given to care. Careless occurs and how an individual will find out is their test of awareness. To pay attention to the daily news is to experience high levels of carelessness, that being an implicit element of any news item. One notices a complete lack of opinion pieces addressing the matter of sins of omission, papers being in the business of telling us things that must be noticed, not that could have been avoided. Except, do they? Articles go on for pages itemising sins, the prime cause of their existence, but can also direct attention to sins of omission; if only someone had done what they ought, this would not have happened. The author has asked about the root cause of their news items, unstated but their reason for being, that cause being not just the given of sin, but also the sin of omission. We tut and scapegoat, we judge and complain, we turn the page. Sin is very popular as a subject, it seems, of interest to an average reader, especially while there is someone to blame, someone who should have done better. Such overload of news about people in the world leads to the disagreeable condition called indifference. Can indifference be quantified? Its presence could be accounted as anywhere between plethora and almost zero. Editorials never headline with Sins of Omission. But the existence of carelessness is such, it may as well anyway be the subtitle of most editorials. There is a requirement amongst editors to keep the terms simple and name the sin. The exhausting experience of witnessing carelessness daily may, by chance, even prompt one to greater awareness of our own. This can lead to guilt, doubt, neurosis, everything and sundry, regardless of immediate need and even one’s own well-being. People in well-paid positions are available to help deal with your carelessness, your sins of omission, their job being aid at a price. Relentlessly many people refuse to visit such well-paid people, choosing instead to join the rank-and-file of the indifferent. This carelessness may be indulged, becoming widespread, with the cure being remorse, or simply learning how to stop. But how? Love your neighbour as yourself, as they say, starting by learning who is your neighbour. The commandment is quite explicit, five words, while the words needed in each case may expand into books and lifetimes. The need to be paying attention is the first step. To address carelessness requires one to notice that the person is there, with needs, a task that itself is an act of care. Added to which one must have the preparedness to see the needs and act upon them. In most cases this does not involve payment of any kind, and may result in reactions and rejections that may discourage and even cause loss. Sin is so tiresome, it’s stupid. Yet times arrive when the demand to overcome carelessness cannot be put off another moment. We must do what we must with that which is at our disposal.

Image: St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne.