Disgruntled Last Words.

Grandson opened me a gmail account  because I was teed off with yahoo, then google refused to acknowledge I had any blogs at all.  After a day of anger and frustration I have access to my dashboard again but as I closed the gmail account in irritation at some point when that strikes home I shall probably lose it again. I have several blogs, only this one open to the public, but useful places to store writings in. The universe is evidently telling me to get everything out, probably down on paper would be safest, and give up adding to the clutter in the collective stratoculture.

So that's it. It's been fun.

Oryx & Crake

I’ve almost come to the end of my readathon; four books in four days. While Sanders is staying I can’t focus on my own writing (there’s always an excuse!) and when I let myself down into one of these bulimic guzzles of new-to-me novels I definitely can’t write so it seems like a good moment. I say  ‘bulimic’ because they are usually the books I forget just as quickly, whilst remembering enough of their atmosphere to avoid reading them again, even if I can see they have literary merit. I’ve yet to isolate the formula that causes a book to splice with my hippocampi (I looked that up - it’s the bit of the brain that stores memory, for those who like me had only half stored that information.)

This morning I finished ‘Oryx & Crake’ by Margaret Atwood. She’s released the third of the trilogy that started with this after-the-disaster romp. She was described in the Literary Review as ‘One of the most brilliant and unpredictable novelists alive’ which is a worthy accolade but also the reason I stopped reading her books years back when I noticed the unpredictability was troubling me too much.  I don’t appreciate unpredictability in the authors I take a shine to. I like to settle in to the cosmology of their creations but in M Atwood’s there are too many worlds I didn’t care to find myself in.’ The Handmaids Tale ‘ notably got so stuck into my brain that I would have rather liked my hippocampi to take a few days off. I have a signed copy of ‘Surfacing’ that I haven’t yet finished several years on because - oh dear - I got bored with it. 

With these in mind, the approach to ‘Oryx & Crake’ was along the ‘should’ path rather than the ‘I’d love to’ road.

I do fear for M A’s psyche. And I do envy it. She has such a facility for imagining future situations and making those imaginings credible by extrapolating from roots visible in present day trends. It must be hard to sleep nights. Or rather, it would be hard for me. I suspect it’s not for MA.

By the third or fourth chapter I liked the geeky survivor He is intelligent but with romantic and sentimental wiring that held him back from pursuing the crazed idealistic ambitions of his genius friend Crake who caused the obliteration of almost the entire human race.  I liked his bumbling clownish attempts to do the right thing; he made me laugh enough to want to ride along with him and hope for his best outcome. 

I’m also a sucker for the fantastic. After I saw Dennis Potter’s ‘Cold Lazurus’ I longed for a future where organic and inorganic materials have been spliced to form intelligent buildings that grow themselves and chairs that mould to the form of the human sitting in them, picking up wish signals from the brains of that human so it moves to where its sitter wills it. Surely this is going to happen one day. In ‘O&C’ there are lots of wild inventions, some sounding acceptable. Also some endearing animal life along with the scary pigoons bred for transplant organs, and chicken blobs that grow the more delectable parts of chickens without actual having any consciousness.  Shudder.

M. Atwood claimed, in an interview, that scientists like her novels because she is the only writer appreciating their work and taking what they do seriously. I might be misquoting a bit here, (have lost the link) but from this I understand that scientists, rather worryingly, admit they have the power to shape the future, for better or for worse.  

Mobile phone etiquette.

I see Debretts has taken up the challenge of teaching mobi users manners. I wish I could have had this up on the wall when I was in the shop - either of them1 people would answer their phones after asking me a question and leave me standing like an idiot until they finished. Or halfway through the till transaction even when there were others in the queue. Sometimes I sat down and took up my crossword puzzle if the conversation dragged on.

9. Don't carry on mobile phone calls when in the middle of something else

Don't carry on mobile phone calls while transacting other business - in banks, shops, on buses and so on. It is insulting not to give people who are serving you your full attention.

And some of my family need to read this:

8. Step away from the phone at meal times

Don't put your phone on the dining table, or glance at it longingly mid-conversation. 

Dominion and Lilly Aphrodite

After a long spell of re-reading (I always find that satisfying and comforting to know what I’m letting myself down into) I am now having a blitz of reading new-to-me stuff. There was ‘Dominion’ by C.J.Sansom which upset me. That’s the first time I have read a ‘what if’ novel. Robert Harris’ ‘Fatherland’ didn’t appeal although now I think I might give it a go one day. I think there’s another name for them but can’t be bothered to look it up right now. The re-write of history; the Other Path. In my terms the ‘What If’ book. Dominion left me a bit shaky with my pacifist outlook. A capitulation treaty with Hitler containing the promise that Britain wouldn’t be invaded avoided the loss of life in war, but it meant a gradual nazification of the country. The deportation of Jews continued and people grew increasingly aware of  their eventual fate. It spawned a Resistance movement and subsequent loss of civilian life along with a substantial loss of freedom at every level.  

What I’m slightly ashamed to say pleased me most about it, because I have  been increasingly aware of the Scot's dislike for the English and the martyr complex that has stood them in such good stead for nearly 500 years, was Sansom’s postscript to the book in which he declares his dislike of the growing trend for Nationalism in the world, specifically in his own country, Scotland. He points to the Scots who, refusing to fight with the English in WW2 left for Ireland; they were to become the core of the SNP that is now fighting for independence and were essentially fascists. He clams Alex Salmond is a man without policies except those that look good, promise much and are likely to swing emotions next year. Whether he can follow through with them if the time arrives is really not important. Independence is the magical New World Scotland in which all will be very, very well.

Of course, if they get independence and it goes belly up they will still be able to blame Westminster so that’s OK. Nothing lost.

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin came my way accidentally. I wouldn’t have picked it up in a bookshop because the choice of cover and the title signal chic-lit to me quite loudly. I suppose the publishers thought it stood a better chance of selling to the unwary who actually wanted a nice restful cheery read. It’s a first novel. . Anyway, I’m very glad a Writer’s Group member brought it along to use for an ‘erasure’ exercise. For this form of self expression a newspaper, magazine, or book that can be destroyed is necessary. Across a chosen page most of the text is blacked out leaving a few carefully chosen phrases. It’s effective and satisfying but as with most of the exercises I get distracted and this time it was the book itself that I picked up with the intention of willfully defacing that held me so, as usual, I produced nothing to read out at the end of the hour. 

Yesterday and today I've read it between mundane tasks and spending time with my grandson. It kept me awake fro 3.30 this morning so I’ll be useless by 3.30pm. that’s the plus side of old age and retirement. Doesn’t matter.

Set in Berlin, the protagonist Lilly Nelly Aphrodite is born as the new century starts. For two thirds of the book I was slightly troubled by how little I knew of Lilly who at three is standing outside an orphanage with her suitcase. She leads a rather terrible life in grey shapeless clothing, a cot that looks exactly like the other sixteen or so in the room, cold institutional housing and cold nuns who treat their charges with indifference if not harshness. through it all Lilly drifts, becomes the ‘perfect orphan,’ makes one mistake which  results in the closing of the only shelter she and a growing number of parentless children have ever known. She makes one friend, equally wounded by life but harder and brighter, at least to begin with. This friend, Hahnne, I could visualise much more clearly than Lilly.  I’m not saying Lilly is two-dimensional, just that she remains insubstantial for me until later when, to get the grumbling out of the way, her face is her fortune. How interesting it would be to have a novel in which the heroine was not beautiful with perfect skin (her hands remain delicate even after all the laundry and scrubbing she has to do as a servant from the age of twelve. Not so convincing that.)

The real protagonist is perhaps Berlin itself in the 1920’s, after the defeat of WW1 and the terrible consequences of total financial collapse. By the last third the walls of propriety and social form are falling away fast. Sickness, poverty, decay, are dissolving reality into an Escher nightmare. People run from the madness in the streets to the fantasy world of cabaret, stage, cinema. This part is about cinema. It gives some satisfying insight into the vision of the earliest cinematographers and the new art form. It could, they thought, give people a new way of communicating and a new insight into their own emotional lives. They saw it as genuinely influential and they were right.

There are some memorable lines: 'the silence that listens to itself' was one. And I understood better what Lilly means to the novel when I read what one of her admirers says about her:

'There was something about her that was arctic. No, that's not what I mean at all. She was warm: she had this way of looking. a kind of animal. no, sexual intelligence. It's hard to explain. It was as if she was both very young and very old, vulnerable and yet aloof. If I sound confused, contradictory, then I am. I don't know what she had, but as soon as I saw it I wanted her. She was the face, if you can imagine it, of Berlin at that particular moment in history.'

'Unravelling' in 'From the City to the Saltings' Poems from Essex.

So I finally have a couple of publications with my poems in and therefore am free to post them here. This is the one that went into the Essex Anthology:

Unravelling

The past stood on my doorstep.

Haloed in the soft glow of Once-Upon-A-Time

it arrived and waited, with apparent hopefulness,

on a grey day in the Here-And-Now.

The woman from the Library kindly brought 

the first communication.

‘A man who remembers you rang us.

He wants to get in touch.’

In touch.

It was such loving, young and eager touch.

Laced with Romance.

Sheer pleasure. Laughter. Happiness.

Such happiness I hadn’t known before

and never since.

Laced with triumph.

The biological imperative.

It was glorious.

A wild romp. Carol singing on a freezing night.

Holding hands and snuggling.

Discovering.

The school play; coffees bars; the back seat at the cinema. 

Waiting for the last bus home.

Walking along the empty promenade in winter

swaddled by darkness, mufflered by silence,

we cuddled in the shelters, for the warmth.

The slabby river bed, tidal ooze, silvered by the moon,

disturbing ghosts of Beowulf and his hordes, 

once terrible, now merely tales

fabricated and refabricated,

played, replayed and edited,

as my memories

which on a future day called up to knock.

an unassuming figure at my door.

We talked. His voice familiar.

It should have been a comfort.

Memories flowed from him, as intense as my own, 

shockingly different, equally treasured.

Tainted for him by a loss I had long forgotten,

being rather of a nature to prefer a dream.

Mistrustful of reality.

It should have been a comfort.

So why did I feel an unravelling?

© carol argyris 2013

published:  From the City to the Saltings. Poems from Essex pub. Arts Council England.

catching up.

The last few weeks have been busy. two of them shop-sitting again gave me the thrill of being retired all over again. Phew what a relief! It did sell some local books by local people which was what it was designed to do but I don't think I shall do it again. Then there was Jane's book launch at which wethe writer's group were invited to read some of our work. I chose to read folk tale - more amusing I thought, because most folk have a limited tolerance for poetry.When it came to the day I was so nervous (unike me, I thought I was thespian manqué) that I nearly copped out with asthma or some south trumped up excuse then pulled myself together and enjoyed the experience after all. It sold me four of my little books which was highly satisfactory.

I needn't have worried about the tolerance of the audience for poetry. I'd underestimated the variations i our collective talents and as almost everyone had gone for something light it held them. jane was, naturally the star with her third book, this time culled from her time as a District Nurse. She is a tiny lady with a puckish face and a sense of humour to match.

 I'm not putting Jane's full name here, or the title of her book, because of internet links, which is a shame but I prefer to preserve some anonymity. It enables me to relate jolly snippets like the following:

A beautiful picnic area in woodland has become notorious site for snagging a shag. It has close access to a long, generally deserted beach, where I used to walk my badly behaved Jack Russell because there were no joggers for her to attack (she hated joggers) or children to frighten (she hated children) or woolly dogs to terrorise (she hated wooly coated dogs).

A Irish lady of my acquaintance went to walk her own dog there one evening en route to pick her children up from the school where Sandy goes. As they don't get out till 9 pm it was getting dusk so she was surprised how many cars there were also parked. On her way back from her walk a man approached her and started a conversation about the weather, but at the same moment her mobile rang. She said she was sorry but she had to go pick up her kids. Later she told a friend how unusual it was to sees many cars in that place and that they all had their boots open. With a laugh her friend told her that it's a signal telling other parkers you are up for it. I have no idea what the term is for this. I knew about dogging but my education has a gap. Maybe it's booting.

Another friend, after howling with laughter, said she could imagine sitting in the car, seeing someone approach and closing the boot hastily if you didn't fancy the person. Then all the cars would be having their boots go up and down. Like a car convention.

I know someone who would have been there like  a rat up a drainpipe if it had been happening ten years ago.

On the sad side I also heard, about three months late, that a good friend who went to the USA and married, finally very happily, for the third (or fourth?) time, died of prostate cancer. He had survived for 6 years at stage 4 which is phenomenal. Losing touch at our age is NOT a good thing. He wasn't much given to chatting on Facebook, just set links to Youtube talks on enlightenment which I tended to ignore and when he went silent I just thought he'd given up trying to help people who weren't responsive... and perhaps I didn't think at all, being obsessed with my own life. When I heard I checked out his site and read what his local friends said. He found the enlightenment he had been seeking  for many years toward the end and was wonderful to be with. Hope to see you in the hereafter Barry!