Fifty Things

sound of rain at night upon the Velux window

taking the first strokes in the swimming pool before anyone else has disturbed the surface

glass. newly-opened bottle of chilled white wine. six o’clock.

Emma running to greet me at 4.30 pm

feeling of having shaved standing in the shower

buying new notebooks & the new notebooks themselves

Amazon.co.uk packages waiting in the post room

being up before everyone else – the quiet. the emptiness. stillness

coffee cup. coffee. a small square of chocolate

discovering a new writer and realizing a whole series of books which now await

starting to cook dinner and the sizzling aromas of onions and garlic

pens which sit well in the hand and flow well on the page (yet still resist)

good uncles and older men who could be uncles

women’s lips of a certain kind

moments of awkwardness and shyness from L and E

the ‘craic’ over lunch

a sudden sharp chill perfume to the air in autumn mornings

imaginative socks

understatement and irony

weekend naps

(good) hotel breakfasts

watching someone absorbed in something

funny and colourful children’s books

baby fingers and toes and smiles

clean sheets and pillow cases on the bed on Monday nights

the Lightness of Being of a good shit

the table laid: knives, forks, spoons, plates, glasses, napkins, a candle

driving. the car moving well. window open. music. sunlight. quiet roads. an avenue of trees

being called Daddy or Papa and knowing one is (now) someone called Daddy and – more strangely - Papa

memories of London in the late 70s. The Thames. The Tate Gallery. Hours out of school. Bookshops on Charing Cross Road. Upstairs on buses.

moments when you feel – deeply – despite a million other possibilities this, now, is how you want it to be

the timbre or frequency of certain voices

Chinese tea bowls. Cycladic heads.

writer’s notebooks, marginalia, drafts, compositional fragments, artist’s sketchbooks

Stan Laurel’s face and gesture of helplessness

being near the sea: walking, sitting, waking up, going to bed, the smell and sound of. wailing gulls. Cornwall. especially Cornwall

valley Welsh inflections and lilt

newly-trimmed fingernails

vigorous hair-brushing or fingers going through my hair

an impending sneeze staring into the sun

chopping onions, dicing carrots, preparing vegetables ... making soup – especially on Sunday mornings

walking through the woods, raining, just rained, leaves underfoot, damp earth smell, leaf rot, bonfires

sun on wooden floors mid-afternoon window ajar. faint breeze lifting the curtains

deft gestures of cafe staff: tug, wrist twist, bang, flick, gush of hot water and steam. bitter aromas.

lightness and poise of the dancer’s everyday movements. a way of sitting

voices on the radio at low volume while dozing

day trips (alone) to unfamiliar towns with the prospect of wandering, browsing, lunch ...

the jumble of dolls, hairgrips, shoes, Lego bricks, paper, crayons, boxes, marbles, girl things in the house

little chivalries

stars overhead on clear nights. Orion though the landing window coming downstairs in the morning


(acknowledgments to Lisa Jarnot & Larry Fagin)

Belgianwaffle invites any of its readers to supply their 'Fifty Things'

The recipe for today

Take two handfuls of onions. Peel and slice into rings. Tip into a large thick-based saucepan and fry in a little olive oil - aiming to brown the onions but not burn them. Add a crushed clove of garlic and a peeled, diced potato.

When the onions have browned, add a tablespoon of brown sugar plus a litre (or more) of chicken stock. Sprinkle with thyme and season to taste.

Cover and allow to simmer for the best part of an hour.

While it is cooking, go upstairs and sort through your winter wardrobe - discovering which trousers now fit, sweaters and jackets you forgot you had, and throwing out any items of clothing which - admit it - you won't wear again.

The aromas from the kitchen will tell you when to descend. Cut the heat and let the pot stand while you go out for a relaxing coffee with the wife & kids.

Once more at the stove, lift out several ladles of the onions and set aside. Blitz what remains in the pot. Return the set aside onions. Light the gas and bring up to heat.

Serve with chunks of hearty brown bread.

It is a Sunday full of October sunlight. A chill is in the air.

It is a day for onion soup.

Down in France

Meaux (France). Sunday.

Early morning standing next to a river flowing down past the mill. Eight o'clock or so. Mist coming off the surface of the water. Sunlight swirling in the eddies of the current as it flowed over the rocks in the river bed. Thinking about the full moon last night low above the trees. Thinking about the Shamanistic practice of projecting the mind into the contact between elements.

Suddenly four young deer run out from behind the trees on the opposite bank.

***

Get home mid-afternoon eager to hear yesterday's Radio Four 'special' on Frank Zappa using the 'Listen Again' facility. Dreary & predictable. A scissors & glue effort from the archives with Germaine Greer making it all seem rather respectable (now there's an irony).

"A Smooth Operations Production" is credited with the programme. There you have it - there was nothing 'smooth' about Zappa. Lumpy gravy gets it about right.

And again

Sat on the (still unfinished) terrace in the October afternoon sun reading - again - 'Periplum and other poems' by Peter Gizzi (the Salt reissue).

Why do I keep opening up this volume again & again? Well ...

Why it matters

Going to the car to drive home - after what has not been one of the more enjoyable school weeks - a mother of one of my ex-students winds down her passenger window and says: "You know, he still talks about your classes - he's so grateful for what you did. Have a nice weekend!"

The timing couldn't have been better. Thank you.

What could be better than ...

... this afternoon watching Laurel & Hardy (the saw mill episode) and Charlie Chaplin ('The Champion') with Emma laughing her little white socks off?

That's what Sundays were made for.

"For words alone are certain good"

Reading ... well, re-reading after twenty-odd years W.B. Yeats ('The Tower' & 'The Winding Stair' as well as miscellaneous essays) looking for ideas on poetry & cosmology. Also seeing interesting points of intersection with George Macdonald. No coincidence, either, I suppose that Duncan is photographed before an ascending stair on the cover of the New Directions 'Selected'? Also easy introductions to the human brain in an effort to relate macro & microcosmic systems of energy (solar wind, magnetism, electrical effects, synapses ... ). Stumble upon Marlow's remark (Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness') concerning travel in both hemispheres: psychogeography indeed!

Listening ... sonatas (Beethoven, Schubert) after catching part of Daniel Barenboim's masterclass on BBC4. His thoughts on sonata form, repeated motifs, the use of the keyboard all wonderfully suggestive in terms of poetic form.

Seeing ... Venus (I think!) above the roofline of the houses as I come downstairs at 6.30am.

Enjoying ... Ricky Gervais' 'Extras' and Mitchell and Webb. The repeated Fall programme on BBC 2 was good, too.

Cooking ... cod with lime & curry & rice. And I've decided prawns are viable, after all, (high in cholesterol but low in fat).

Swimming ... in the open air down in Waterloo on Thursday afternoon and early mornings in Boitsfort when - at a certain angle - the sun catches the water.

When Belgianwaffle met David Thomas

Yes, it's that time of year again - and always a sense of a missed opportunity. Not wishing to be a killjoy ("oh really?" I hear) but wouldn't it be nice to have no cars AND no bikes - and just give the roads over to walking?

My reasoning is as follows - the car-obsessive person simply transfers their four-wheel behaviour onto two-wheels. The 4x4 driver mutates into the grimacing mountainbiker prepared to carve you up as you cross the (now car-free) road. Add to this a sense that the normal rules of the highway are no longer applicable - and you've the recipe for some nasty incidents.

A couple of years ago I had a run-in (verbal) with David Thomas of Pere Ubu - he was in Brussels at the Botanique with the Two Pale Boys. I like David Thomas - rather, I liked David Thomas - and I still like the music. However, I couldn't believe his attitude towards the one-day ban on cars. He saw this as gross intrusion by the State and extolled the joys of getting drunk and taking to the highway. Encouraging yells from the audience many of whom - I suspect - didn't quite understand his US-accented English and would be most alarmed if anyone smashed into their BMW on the Ring. (In any case, everyone now yells at concerts no matter what. It's the thing to do.)

I saw him after the show and said I asumed this was a put-on, some kind of showmanship. "No, I wasn't joking" was his reply.

*

Reading this week has been rather strange and circuitous. Graham Foust led me to Robert Creeley who I now see as much more 'in correspondence' with Olson and Robert Duncan. Creeley then led me to J.H. Prynne - via Prynne's exchanges with Olson and Ed Dorn.

I always approach Prynne with trepidation. His volumes seem marked 'Off Limits', circumscribed by his Cambridge acolytes, or bearing the Poodle Shadow of Out to Lunch. It's hard to simply read the poems - in the sense not just of the complexities of words on the page but also free from other people's imposed readings.

This afternoon I read through poem after poem ('Kitchen Poems' and into 'The White Stones') untroubled by (my usual) nagging doubts that I am getting only five per cent or missing some major Marxist theoretical argument. And I realise Prynne is much more interesting than many of his champions allow. And - bizarrely, given my recent readings in astronomy, the calendar, crystals etc - how often these early poems return, time and again, to such concerns. There's something about the tone, too, which is compelling. Hmmm....

*

Q: How do you solve a problem like Maria?

A: Switch off.

*

Lara: "It must be nearly Autumn as people are sneezing."

*

While it is gratifying to have a comment - see previous post - to find it relates to erectile disfunctioning is a bit of a - dare I say it - anticlimax.

Whoever did it: thanks but no thanks.

Lost in translation

Driving down towards the International School of Brussels this morning I catch sight of a new advertisement at the traffic lights - some beer or other - with the catchword: GOUT.

It's only when the lights change I hear the French sense.

Sunday. September.

Up & at the pool by 8am.
Sixteen lengths & playing around in the little pool with the Wafflettes.

*

Breakfast.

*

Emma draws & helps sort socks.

*

Coffee (the Illy cafe).

*

Lunch (mushrooms & Catherine's tiny tomatoes). Outside on the terrace.

*

Siesta.

*

Read in the garden: 'The Shadows' by George Macdonald, another chapter of Hegel, Joseph Cornell book & the Larry Fagin film on DVD.

*

Chablis - a glass of 1999. Read Robert Duncan poems.

*

Chicken & salad & potatoes with last year's Irancy. On the terrace, still.

*

'Maria' programme recorded on the DVD. Siobhan makes it! Lara's pleased.

*

Girls in bed.
Type this.

*

Afterwards - ?

Cuttings (I)

Happen upon a book on Hans Christian Andersen containing his artworks - plenty of predictable pencil drawings, the fairly well-known cut outs, but also - the collages. They could be by Joseph Cornell. A whole new dimension on Cornell's work opens up - did he know of these works by H.C.A. in addition to the stories?

*

Lara is worried about having to go to university - she's nearly seven, after all. She wants to be a supermarket check-out lady - like the ones she sees in Delhaize. Mummy explains you probably don't have to go to university to work the till. Good, says Lara, because then I can have all that money ...

*

Reading Hegel on Art - not quite so forbidding as I'd assumed.

*

It suddenly occurs to me that 'Moby Dick' is a shamanistic text. The whale as Ahab's 'power animal'.

*

Thinking about pi, crystals, stone age man, dolmens, earth stars, divining, ley lines, the Golden Mean - all in terms of 'lines of force' - and whether one can work an Olsonesque geophysics of poetry.

*

It looks as though Tony Blair is nearing his sell-by-date.* I can vividly remember - ten years ago in May - returning to England after my interview for the job in Belgium. There was a tangible carnival mood in the cafes along Whiteladies Road - at last the Conservatives had been ousted! Listening to the 'Today' programme there was an evident sense of relief as politicians answered questions with apparent honesty. New Labour, a New Britain, a New Start...

Today - Thursday 7 September 2006 - well ... it all went horribly wrong, didn't it?

(* in fact, he is well past it - it would be more accurate to say that the label can no longer be faked).