SPEAK, MEMORY

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness... Nature expects a full grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between. Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life we should not enjoy it too much. I rebel against this state of affairs.

Vladimir Nabokov

LOVE



"Yeah, I heard a funny thing
Somebody said to me
You know that I could be in love with almost everyone
I think that people are
The greatest fun
And I will be alone again tonight my dear."

Right now, I feel I know what Arthur Lee was getting at. People, friends, when you seek out the right ones, are inspiring ("the greatest fun"), connecting you - as they do - with some kind of life force, giving you feelings of warmth and hope for the whole world ("almost everyone"). And yet, here I am writing this at five minutes past midnight, all alone ("Alone Again Or"), and not minding that fact at all. Arthur Lee, bless you, RIP.

OX BELLY STEW

Spent five days over Easter in Hungary and a couple of days cycling through the countryside. Just collected the photos, sadly blurred because I only realised the camera shutter speed was wrong, unfortunately at the end of the roll of film. Anyway, I remembered a silly incident that I'd kind of forgotten about. At a restaurant somewhere away from the city on the banks of the Danube (Neil? Where?!) stopped for lunch. I ordered the above from the menu, envisaging the flesh of the animal - I'm so ignorant, though. I AM NOT A BUTCHER! I thought 'belly' meant a soft, tender cut of meat, something like tenderloin (which I know now is nowhere near the stomach). When the meal came, it looked very strange. It took a few minutes to figure out that it was tripe. Honeycomb tripe, at that. The "meat" (if you can call it that) was cut into strips, and it had odd, hexagonal-type 'gills' on it. God knows what function they serve. Probably to 'waft' the half digested food through the innards of the ox, towards the large intestine, or worse.

It was offputting, but hey! mussels don't look great if you look at them too closely but they're delicious, so I wasn't about to let the look of it put me off. I didn't want to be the kind of person who orders an ommelette at an Indian restaurant, so I was gamely trying to trick myself into liking it. Also, tripe is, or at least, has been, a staple of people in that region for centuries. A continent of people can't be wrong. And out in rural Hungary, at least it would be cooked properly. It had lots of tomatoes and the right seasoning, so I was confident it had been cooked right.

It was irredeemably foul in every way: in taste, texture (especially that) and appearance. Not to worry, at least I know what it's like now.

HUMAN CONDITION - THOM GUNN*
*Further to 'Staff Room' entry, which reminded me of this...

Now it is fog. I walk
Contained within my coat;
No castle more cut off
By reason of its moat:
Only the sentry's cough,
The mercenaries' talk.

The street lamps, visible,
Drop no light on the ground,
But press beams painfully
In a yard of fog around.
I am condemned to be
An individual.

In the established border
There balances a mere
Pinpoint of consciousness.
I stay, or start from, here:
No fog makes more or less
The neighboring disorder.

Particular, I must
Find out the limitation
Of mind and universe.
To pick thought and sensation
And turn to my own use
Disordered hate or lust.

I seek, to break, my span.
I am my one touchstone.
This is a test more hard
Than any ever known.
And thus I keep my guard
On that which makes me man.

Much is unknowable.
No problem shall be faced
Until the problem is;
I, born to fog, to waste,
Walk through hypothesis,
An individual.

DAVID BYRNE



Back in the 80s, there were some good bands. It wasn't only Kylie, Stock Aitken and Waterman, 'NOW! THat's What I Call Music' compilations. I love the film of this gig ("The Citizen Kane of the concert movies", according to The Face). And David's so sexy. Look at his odd maneouvres!

STAFF ROOM

Lying on someone's desk: a well-thumbed copy of Sylvia Plath's Ariel, which contains one of my favourite lines from any novel/poet/pithy moraliser. Particularly since it's also an opening line, and pure declaration. Here it is:

"THIS IS THE LIGHT OF THE MIND: COLD AND PLANETARY" (said of the moon).

I love that. And yet, in the department staffroom, I felt I shouldn't mention this. They don't seem to get excited by their subject v often. Perhaps that's not entirely true... it might be more a case of them looking askance at me for "being weird". So I kept quiet - seems to be for the best.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD'S MAXIMS

'The bitter and pessimistic philosophy expressed in this work was to contribute greatly to the taste of seventeenth-century France'. It strikes me as excessively cynical. The writer doesn't trust any outward behaviour whatsoever. He's always looking at the dark possibilities lying beneath. Here are some of his nuggets of wisdom:

We are never as fortunate or unfortunate as we suppose

We have no more say in the duration of our passions than in that of our lives.

Often we are taken in ourselves by some of the tears with which we have deceived others.

Love may be delightful, but even more so are the ways in which it reveals itself.

A neighbour's ruin is relished by friends and enemies alike.

Little is needed to make a wise man happy, but nothing can content a fool. That is why nearly all men are miserable.

It is far easier to stifle a first desire than to satisfy all the ensuing ones.

Some people are so shallow and frivolous that they are as far removed from having any real faults as from having any solid virtues.

The vivacity that increases with age verges on madness.

It is impossible to love for a second time anything that you have really ceased to love.

The man who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks.

The glory of great men must always be measured against the means by which they have used to acquire it.

The vagaries of our moods are even stranger than those of fortune.

No fools are so difficult to manage as those with some brains.

We are almost always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.