Putting it out there

Dear Jemal Sharah,

I would like to use your poem 'Revelation' for a letterpress broadside.

I have looked for you everywhere. I have written to your publishers, who say the rights have reverted back to you. I have googled you, found where you worked a year ago (Dili, Timor), tried to email you (it bounced back), emailed a colleague who might work near you (again, bounced back), so wrote to you via your employer (a very large government agency), but the letter came back with 'whereabouts unknown' on it. I have asked around, since you are very connected to Canberra, even found someone who has rented your house, but they do not know how to contact you directly.

I do not want to give up. All I can do is make the broadside, fully acknowledge you and the volume from which the poem comes, and hope that you surface and contact me to get your rightful dues: a fee, or a copy of the broadside, or a mix of both.

I will try to make it beautiful, and if it's any consolation, I won't be making any money from it, as it's being printed to raise money for a good cause.

Cheers,

&Duck

Postscript:

I love blogging. Jemal found me, we got in touch, I'm printing the broadside with a clear conscience. Results! Thank you, interwebs.

Discuss.

Best Beloved said something interesting last night.

Don't get me wrong, he quite often says interesting things, many of them very droll, but this was especially interesting in a feminist sense.

What is the National Portrait Gallery going to do now? he said. They always ask the Prime Minister's wife to be their patron.

Well. Indeed. Now that there isn't a PM's wife, at least until the election (and hopefully onwards) what is going to happen to all these deeply entrenched ideas about using an assumed time-rich and idle female spouse of an important 'man' to support your institution or charity?

Therese Rein and Cherie Blair put sizeable dents in these expectations -- as did Denis Thatcher -- but how will Tim Mathieson cope with it? Will he even be asked? And how offended should Australian women be if he isn't asked?

Yearning

There are different forms of yearning, aren't there? Some can be wistful, some to do with appetites, others are vague and others still are sharp and pointy.

Here are some of mine:

-- to be less well fed all the time
-- to walk on the beach more than I do (at the moment, annually)
-- to have fewer things I HAVE to do
-- to have a better singing voice
-- to lie on my back in the grass and look at the stars / clouds / trees
-- to read that perfect book
-- to write that perfect book
-- to understand mathematics better than I do
-- ditto for certain sciences, like chemistry and biology
-- to be an effortless housekeeper, to LIKE cleaning
-- to be able to have a complete day without niggling aches & pains
-- to be a man for a week, just to see what it's like
-- to be a child again, just for a week, as well (with an adult consciousness)
-- to be fresh in love again
-- to be able to have a long, whimsical conversation with someone and not worry about time or the topic turning 'silly' (what exactly is 'silly'?)
-- to sleep until lunchtime again
-- to know certain historical characters
-- to see Hagia Sophia before I die or it blows up
-- to eat cheesecake every day and not end up a diabetic
-- to be able to swim like a fish, in the sea (which is very big and scary for me)
-- to be a grandmother
-- to travel the world by myself, taking lots of time to look and think

Bernice has just added to my very eclectic and eternally unfinished list, with a new category (in my experience) of feminity/ feminism.

*sigh*

I'm not unhappy, just thinking about the various little holes in my psyche. Makes it sound like Swiss cheese, but that's just life, isn't it? I'm sure they're very over-privileged white woman yearnings, but that's exactly what I am, so there you go. Many of these things are achievable, if I took the time to do them...

Just last night

I was telling Best Beloved that I want to track down a copy of The Wiz.

Why? he asked.

Because Michael Jackson makes my heart ache when I watch him before all his insecurities erupted in a bodily fashion.



Well, obviously you can.

Oh rats, I always said he'd never make it past 50, and I also made a small bet with BB that he'd never fulfill the highly ambitious (and debt-fuelled) plans for a ginormous comeback tour.

So I guess I was right, but I don't feel smug about it. MJ has always made me feel sorrowful, maybe because I grew up watching him from wee one to weird one.

Poor old Bumblebee is a bit shattered. He's had MJ on high rotation for ages, and it's been vaguely disturbing me that the man had the power to attract 11 yo boys from such a geographical and chronological distance. But now he can stay young forever, and be worshipped from afar, which is exactly what he's always wanted.

I wonder if he wanted to be preserved or something? I guess we'll find out soon enough.


Postscript: Cheered immensely by a lovely silly bit of chemistry thanks to Coconut with a Motor. Absolutely nothing to do with MJ, but just the ticket, nonetheless:

Palate-cleanser

LOLcats refresh. And change the subject.



I've always wondered about messages between feline body parts. Sometimes one of my cats will be inside, and the other will come in from outside, and they'll look all interested at each other and touch foreheads briefly and then suddenly not need to be near each other again all evening. I'm sure they've just conveyed a whole bunch of news between them, either telepathically or whisker-pathetically. What do you think?

Soon -- soon, my pretties -- I will put photos up of my actual cats. Although there are a lot of LOLcats who look just like ours.