A Time For Change

Tonight we’re sleeping our second night in our new incomplete house. The first was the day we bought the house. Since then we’ve been “camping out.”

We moved out of the flat we were staying in this afternoon, a day early. Our daughter is going on holiday tomorrow . And our son returns from camp tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow we begin house sitting for two weeks . We hope to move from there to the new house. On Monday the builders start the final stages of the work at our house.

I’ve booked the removers for the twenty ninth of August.

One Hundred Weary Words

Tired. At first it is the shop, inconvenient, under staffed and lacking variety. I’m feeling hot and a little claustrophobic. I want to leave, give up and go back to the car. But the car feels miles away. So I trudge on and find a wall to perch on for a few moments. It is too bright. My legs feel heavy, a strain to lift each one. I’m walking slower. The camber of the pavement is awkward and the road feels as if it is rising – slow tortuous gradient. And then the head pressure – continuous drilling, a dizzy, numb, incoherent fumbling.

One Hundred Cohen Words

Listening to good music makes me want to write.

Tonight we are staying with friends. After dinner while my wife showed Lucy round our new home. David played me Leonard Cohen – a concert recorded in 88. He often plays Cohen to me. And again he knocked me out.

One song I remember – an old one I’ve known for years - but touched me in a new way was ‘Who By Fire”. What struck me was the depth of his lyrics. Like his voice the words have the texture of seasoned wood. They are finely wrought worked over slowly and resonate.

One Hundred More Fragile Words

Once I wrote ‘ how fragile I stand upon the earth’. It was written at a time when I had leg ulcers that made walking difficult. When my legs were amputated last year I had thought that my fragility would be no more. But I am mistaken.

My artificial legs also have problems. On my left leg I have a sore. My skin is red along the scar line and there is a graze developing. One reason perhaps, I had a fall the other day and may have damaged my stump. Or my socket is new and needs some tweaking.

One Hundred Fragile Words

Sometimes I forget how fragile our life is at present. I build routines for us that help give an impression of stability and permanence. But then something happens like an earth tremor. The day before yesterday my wife wrapped our second car round a lamppost. She was not hurt – just a little shaken for a while. We are waiting for a response from our insurance company but it will probably be a write off. The crash reminded me again what a narrow path we tread. Thinking about it does not help. All the possible problems and disasters loom up close.

One Hundred Wet Words

Today it’s raining. The milk was off. My wife crashed our car. The builders didn’t turn up. We’ve lost our internet connection twice. My wife lost her work and my son lost a battle he was fighting.

Sometimes it’s like this. And I wonder if there is something bringing about these problems. Maybe our minds are tuned into disasters and block out the other possible narratives of the day. Like the flowers my daughter presented to my wife. Or the neighbour who came over from the bus stop to greet me, or the lunch my family shared on our laps.

One Hundred Post Move Words

The holiday stretches out before us. And we are not in our new home. We are camping out in a borrowed flat in Surbition. We’ve also been staying with friends at weekends. In mid August we will be house sitting for two weeks. After that we hope to move into our newly repaired and adapted home. It still feels like a long way off. We are fragile and feel vulnerable and stressed. We have reached a stable state though. We had lurched from crisis to crisis on a daily bases but we feel that we are reaching the home stretch.

One Hundred Stressed Words

There is too much in my head. I zoom in and out of thoughts, they come up close, to horrific proportions, then they fragment, dissolve and fade, replaced by urgent more disturbing thoughts this time clawing at me with sharp hooks that draw so much pain it feels like blood flows from my head. I’m reeling, my thoughts lurch from children’s lunches and picking up times to building works and plans. People talk and I can barely listen. I swing from tragedy one minute and victory the next. Our life is changing. It feels like an operation with eyes open.

Quick Before The Connection Fails

Life feels very fragile and our patchy connections to the web are a symptom of how things are now. So while the connection is holding and a computer engineer is sitting beside me here I go with a blog.

Yes we have moved. Well our boxes and builders have moved in. We have moved out and are sort of camping in a flat on the second floor of an Edwardian house about three miles away.

Strange. Transitional. Change. Turmoil. Juggling money, builders, computers, homes, children, book clubs, work, class preparation, admin, teaching, utilities, gas connections, dinners, washing, showers, security, the list seems endless.

How long can we keep going like this?

We need to be set up at home as soon as possible.

Three Hundred Words - Moving Pains

Wednesday, 15 June 2005

This is the first half hour when I got home. I’m arranging for the gas people to connect us to a gas pipe. This took ages – hanging on – listening to Vivaldi. My wife started telling me about her meeting. A knock at the door, my sister-in-law and her dog distributing presents to the children – their birthday, and a moving in present – we move on Monday – stress, and she wants to talk. My son wants to play outside. A phone call invites my daughter on holiday this summer – decision time. Another call about canoeing and lifts there and back this evening.


Tuesday, 14 June 2005

The tensions are growing. We feel we have achieved and done a lot of packing. My wife’s instinct is to relax and slow down. Mine is to work harder as the moving date approaches. I’m beginning to feel the burden of the physical work is falling onto me. My wife is going out to meetings and having long family phone conversations. I was desperate to get days off work so we could move but now I’ve decided I won’t bother. We talked about it and she seems to understand - although she’s having another one of those conversations right now.


Monday, 13 June 2005

After I dropped the children at school I drove to Richmond Park and sat on my favourite bench looking out over woods and grassland towards Ham. I sat still, back straight, eyes closed, breathed in slow, counting, breathed out slow, counting. I named and welcomed all I could hear, a sudden gust of wind in the trees, the cars on the distant ring road, the sound of a dog passing and women talking as they walked behind me. And of course the birds, crows in the oaks behind me and parakeets squabbling close by. Fifteen minutes, deep rhythm flowing, survival.

Growing Pains

Silence. A yawning gap appears between us. It’s not always there. But my questions deliver just mumbled one-word answers. I have to strain to hear. I ask him to repeat himself but his reply seems designed to destroy conversation, it seems to suck meaning or purpose from the air. My thoughts feel flat and meaningless. I glance over to him to read his expression. It is neutral, a sort of impassive indifference. Maybe I ask too many questions. Maybe he thinks my questions are interrogations. Perhaps my self-consciousness puts him off. I just want to get closer to my son.

The Chauffer Years

Yesterday I left college at two thirty and picked up my daughter from school at three thirty. At four thirty I drove back to pick up my son – he had football practice. We drove on to pick up boxes so we can carry on packing. We got lost but managed to get my daughter to her ballet lesson for six thirty. While she was there the rest of us dashed home to get changed and pick up her dancing shoes then picked her up at seven forty five. We rushed to Kingston for dinner at eight at a local restaurant.

Four Hundred Words

I found this website I thought looked interesting. What do you think?

Friday, 03 June 2005

I woke early to the sound of car engines driving through my sleep. Then the rubbish lorry pummelling down the street. Then clattering of metal on kerbstones, metal on the metal lip of the lorry and men shouting instructions above the roar of the engine.

Then hard sunlight pours through the blinds.

I’m restless. So I turn over again. My wife is asleep beside me. She had a bad night. She struggled with a sleeplessness for two hours. Put the light on and read for a while. Turned over and over.

We are waiting. Our days slip by.


Thursday 2 June 2005

There is an uneasy restlessness. A tightness that fills the air, it’s been here in the house, hanging around our lives for weeks now. It is unsettling. The children feel it too. My daughter will cry about something unimportant but won’t be able to stop, not for ages. My son has developed lots of routines – little things – like the way he wraps his bathrobe tightly around him and ties it with a cord it looks a little obsessive.

I often wake at four and slip uneasily in and out of sleep till six. I’ve had a few headaches recently too.


Sunday, 29 May 2005

This Sunday my daughter is in a Gymnastics competition this morning and my son is at a football birthday party this afternoon. I’ve just heard my daughter has won joint first place for her age group. I feel very proud and have dashed out to buy her flowers, a card and cake to celebrate later.

But I feel heavy like lead. I’m burning inside, something is eating away at me. I could give myself up to tears but if I do that I won’t be able to pick up my son from his party or my daughter from the competition.


Saturday 28 May 2005

I said goodbye to some students yesterday. It was the last time I’ll see many of them again. They were a great class. I felt good and excited every time I closed the door behind me and began to take the register. I’d look up to friendly, smiling and attentive faces and for three hours every week of the academic year we’d just play with words.

We played with Hamlet and an anthology of American poetry in the first year and this year we played with Othello, The Tempest, Translations by Brian Friel, and lots more poetry. I’ll miss them.

A Book Review Spies by Michael Frayn

Lots going on but difficult to write about in an orderly way. So I'll just hand you over to a book review.

I'm hopeless. This whole Conjuring Sunlight blog is a testimony to my superfical and very limited little life.

Today I've been working on two poems, I'm trying to get my head around the General Election and I've been working on two book reviews. Out there we are trying to move house, buy a car and I'm trying to keep up with a job that at times feels too much for me - even though I'm not doing full hours. Somewhere among all the day to day stress and busyness are my wife and children.

My prayer life is nil. My fairtrade/debt/aid/green concerns have fallen to the ground, let alone my parenting ideals and practice.

It's not because of my legs. My head as always is full of dust. Simply. I do not seem to be able to apply myself.

I feel quite pathetic.

Spies

By Michael Frayn

A good book. Beautifully written at times. It evokes an English suburban childhood during the second world war years. It reminds me of L. P Hartley’s The Go-Between. There are so many parallels Frayn must have used The Go-Between as his starting point.

Two school boys aged somewhere between eleven and thirteen hit upon a new game. Or is it a game? Keith declares one day, his mother is a German spy, and so the two set about watching her every move, at weekends, after school, during the holidays.

But the game becomes serious and has tragic consequences for the main characters in this mystery novel, heavy with nostalgia, raising issues of memory, childhood, loyalty, betrayal and friendship.

Keith’s mother is not a spy but does have a secret and the novel tracks Stephen’s agonizing, cowardly and humiliating search for a truth he eventually discovers and becomes unable to escape from – trapped by a code of honour, his youth and an overwhelming sense of guilt and personal responsibility.

On the brink of adolescence he witnesses and is exposed to a raw, dark and brutal adult world from which he has no defences.

The narrator is Stephen, Keith’s sidekick. Who returns fifty years later to The Close where they lived and played out this little drama.
There are a couple of weaknesses for me.

Firstly the narrator. It is a strong confident voice that unfolds the story to us. For me it is too confident. I can see Michael Frayn ringing his hands with joy, knowing Stephen has a good story to tell. There is just the whiff of self satisfaction in his highly accomplished, glossy prose.

Secondly unlike Leo in The Go-Between Stephen’s life does not seem to have been damaged by his experience. He returns to The Close because of a long forgotten smell and at the end of the novel Stephen says he wants to find a scarf he buried all those years ago.

Whereas Leo’s return to Norfolk many years later represents his hopeless and pathetic search for his life that he has squandered and wasted due to the events that took place there over fifty years ago.

So much of the two England’s are similar. An England bound by strict class codes, inscrutable adults, distant and unapproachable father’s that can barely communicate with their sons. Innocent childhood’s that are wrecked by frustrated adult desire and selfishness.

Well I do seem to have written a lot.

Poem in the rain

We've been away for a while to Spain. But here is a finished poem that began life as part of a previous blog. Written in colder and bitter weather. See the blog entry for the 12 February.

All at Once

Today in the high street
bright winter sunlight,
low in the sky,
ricochets off pavements
and windscreens, blinding.
And a bitter gust
picks at me, thinly wrapped.

Then an ambulance passes
its siren blasts out,
clogged all the way
down the high street,
and my wife
and children yelling
urgent instructions
above the roar.

Suddenly I’m in pain.

I retreat to the railings
in search of space.
Rain so cold
it seems to cut
like broken glass.
Sweat is dripping
from my nose.
My glasses steamed up,
and full of rainwater.
I take them off
and draw in deep, cold air

thinking, this is my life
and I'm still not ready for it.


© David Loffman

Here I am writing or editing Slaying a Dragon 

Cygnet Committee (lyric). Album: David Bowie, 1969.

There was a sale at HMV last week. I bought four CD's for £20.00. They were discounting music from the past so it was an opportunity to catch up on turning my LP's into CD's. It took a long time to choose my four and to be honest the CD's I chose were not the most important ones on my catch up list.

They were Joni Mitchel's Hissing of Summer Lawns - I should have bought For the Roses is a better album, less polished, folk, raw and more personal. But still HoSL is one of my favourites.

Secondly Crosby, Stills and Nash and their Crosby Stills and Nash album - I would have preferred to have bought Deja Vu with Neil Young - CSNY but they did not have that one on offer. However it did inspire me to buy Deja Vu on Amazon. That should be here tomorrow. There are some good songs on CSN, Judy Blue Eyes and Wooden Ships to name two.

Thirdly I bought Miles Davis's The Birth of the Cool. I have a tape of it somewhere. I don't know this at all but I've enjoyed A Kind of Blue, Milestones, In a Silent Way and Sketches of Spain - so we will see.

Finally Space Oddity by David Bowie. I was hoping for The Rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust but it was no where to be found. I already have a few on CD collected over the summer, Low, Hunky Dory, The Man Who Sold The World, The Best of David Bowie, Heroes. I can wait for Ziggy, Young Americans, Aladdin Sane - but not too long I hope. Anyway I remember what hooked me in to Bowie back in1971. And that was words. The earlier the album the richer the lyrics. Space Oddity has some strong lyrics - Unwashed..., The Wild Eye Boy From Free Cloud, Memory of a Free Festival and of course Cygnet committee. Here are the lyrics for your pleasure. Cygnet Committee (lyric). Album: David Bowie, 1969.

I've been writing. Three poems slipped out over three or four days - almost whole in the first drafts. I've been tinkering with them a little - but not there yet.

Katy is selling booklets and I've been distributing them to people. It is quite awkward really, especially in church. Some people I want to give booklets to and it feels odd that some will buy from Katy and others will receive gifts from me. Ummmm!

I've still got some to post - Pam and Simon in France, Neil and Lesley - Birmingham/Canada, Steve and Tammie - Portland US. I've got to get my act together.

See you. Driving tomorrow!!

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | There's a first time for everyone

Well I've linked to a number of sites recently and not really posted any thing myself. Here I have yet another link from The Guardian but an interesting article all the same. I particulaly liked this section by Charles Chadwick from London aged 72

"So why go on writing with little or no hope of publication? Svevo once said: 'Write what one must. What one needn't do is publish.' Is it that one has to learn to do it for its own sake? There's nothing odd, and certainly now in the least heroically tenacious, about that. There are millions of people out there who weave tapestry, make furniture and pots, write poetry, paint watercolours because that is what they enjoy doing and want to get better at. The creative imagination seems to have a life and persistence of its own. Another imperative is to take trouble to do things properly. When you see someone having a shot at painting a few houses and trees and clouds or whatever, you don't feel like tapping them on the shoulder and saying: 'Why bother with all that detail; you'll only shove it away in your garage or give it to Uncle Frank and Aunt Ethel who won't know the difference?"

For me the pleasure of getting the right words in the right place is my most important ambition for my writing. I've been able to hold that in balance with the way people respond to the poems. My first pleasure is getting it right. As Plath puts it "Like a well done sum."

I've begun to distribute the booklet. I've even sent the booklet to The Poetry Book Society. We'll see if they promote it at all. Not much feed back yet from my colleagues although my two main poetry mentors have both made quite positive comments about individual poems and the project as a whole.

www.andynewberg.com

http://www.andrewnewberg.com/books.asp And here is a summary of a book connected to the previous blogs.

www.andynewberg.com

http://www.andrewnewberg.com/ here is one of the links from Guardian Unlimited thsat refers to the previous blog.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Tests of faith

Guardian Unlimited Life Tests of faith I thought this looked an interesting article. Thought I ought to consider it's ideas and come back to it with reasoned Christian response.

Sonnets and Short Poems of John Keats, audio readings by Walter Rufus Eagles

Sonnets and Short Poems of John Keats, audio readings by Walter Rufus Eagles Here is a reading of the sonnet. It is not an easy poem to read as much of the first eight lines is a list that does not give much time to pause. However this reading is fairly true to the sonnet.

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Keats's last sonnet

Guardian Unlimited Books Review Keats's last sonnet

Crumbs I'd almost forgotten about this one. I read "The Last Sonnet" at The Troubadour on Monday 21 February. My first visit back for over a year. It was a very enjoyable evening celebrating Valentine's day with a poetry reading bonaza of love sonnets. Each reader just one sonnet.

I spend some time ploughing through an anthology of love poetry and eventually was drawn to this one. I didn't know who wrote it at first. Once I'd worked out the poet I thought I ought to do a little research on it and came across the above article. Interesting??

Well the booklet is out and safely at home. As always - for me at least - a couple of mistakes but suprisingly less then others in the past. However still frustrating. For example I missed out a whole poem. I don't know how it happened. It was there in the first mock ups of the booklet but totally absent from the finished booklet. How is that possible??

I can think of some fairly good reasons for not including it - for example it would mess up the overall V shape of the collection and I would need another 4 pages, however it really should have been included.

So here is the poor missing poem

In My Wheelchair, Kingston

A late October, Saturday
the first Christmas crowds
gather in the shopping centre.

Rain and early glitter season the streets.

I’m in my wheelchair,
chest height to the tangled crowd
that glance down at me,
disturbed for a moment.
Horror is in the brief flicker
of their eyes
before they turn away.
Except for the children
eye to eye, face on, honesty,
their open stares
full of terror and fascination
at all my scars on the outside.

I zip myself up
against the growing cold and rain.

Looking at the crowd
is like looking into a mirror.
I see in their faces
my own sad and shocked reflection.

It has been a quiet week. A little writing, some time with the family. Keeping warm. Walking in Richmond Park. Friends. Walking the Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern. Reading.

This half term week last year the same friends we saw this week came to stay. Last year we were in Richmond Park too. What a year!!

BBC - Thought for the Day, 17 February 2005

Here is a link to the TftD by Giles Fraser. You can read the whole thing here. Thought for the Day, 17 February 2005:

BBC - Religion & Ethics - Thought For The Day

I don't know how long this link will be live but if you get a chance have a listen. I want to believe this - make it part of my own theology but my Christian culture and experience is evangelical and bible based. I don't know how I can fit this in. BBC - Religion & Ethics - Thought For The Day

Walking

Good day. I walked across the millennium bridge outside Tate Modern. I walked across, turned around and walked straight back. I have been wanting to cross it since it opened five years ago. It was closed, I think for over a year, then I felt so lacking in confidence about my walking I never got round to it. If I was ever up on the South Bank I was usually cycling. Well the cycling has come to an end - perhaps for good - who has ever heard of a bi lateral leg amputee cycling - watch this space you never know - there is always a first time.

Any way it was great to walk. I have rediscovered walking, something I have not chosen to do, and something I have found increasingly difficult and painful to do for over twenty years and certainly over the last six years. Suddenly I am enjoying walking, choosing to walk rather than getting a lift. I've even been walking to church - must be a mile and a half, at least.

Any way what has this to do with writing. Loads!! Walking is a way of composing. Walking is active reflection, walking is a re-connection to the earth. Walking is re-connection to the world. Here is a line I posted to www.oneword.com Smudge was the word.

"We drove fast, the country dissolved to a smudge of shapes and colours beside us. "

This was my relationship to the world. A fleeting smudge of colour through the window of a car. What kind of poetry can that really produce? Mediocre at best. No. I hope and pray from now on that walking will become a rich and fundamental part of my life. A creative act - perhaps even feeding rhythm into the poems. Who knows. It may not be as easy as this.

Coming back we picked up the booklets from the printers. All two hundred. So now the tug of war begins with Katy over selling and giving them a way. I'll write no more about this subject again. They look great. The printers did a good job.

Enough!!

Fully Devoted

I found this on someone elses blog and liked it. I thought others might too.

"FUN WITH WORDS "

Once again, The Washington Post published its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for various words.

And the winners are...

1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.

13. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.

14. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.

15. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.


Smile!"

It Will Pass Like All Good Dreams

Okay I admit it. I don't come from Harrow I come from 1975. I was 16 and it feels like everything I am now is wrapped up in that year. The year I left school. The year I went out to work. The year I stopped dreaming and got out of bed and felt the cold hard pavement beneath my feet. The year..... . Okay I admit it. I've just finished watching the last episode of The Rotters' Club, a three part drama set in Birmingham, 1975-77. Three boys at a grammar School, struggling with family, music, girls and politics, you know. Against a constant sound track of The Top of the Pops their little lives are played out. And somehow despite the differences between their privileged, middle class lives and my own lower middle class, I traced my own history in a London, suburban boys Secondary Modern School, built during the second world war. They pulled it down eventually, but long after I left. And my concerns were the same - on a different scale of course, but the music, the appalling hair cuts, flared trousers, brown, yellow spirals, the Bernie Inn and the diminishing echoes of a lost psychedelic dream that had become over ripe and rotten to the core. Did it ever exist? I remember sitting in a squat, bare floorboards, dope being passed round in a pipe and Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets playing somewhere too close. No I think. But that is besides the point. The point is I'm surrounded every working day of my life by 16 year olds and I see in them as well, something of myself. No that is not the point either, the real point is nostalgia, the programme was a sentimental journey. That's all and as I'm alone, and its 1.25 am and have no one to talk to but you, I'm afraid you get it. Never mind it will pass like all good dreams. And it is watching the grains of sand slipping through my hands, half empty now, wondering what have I become - my little life.

Life. I'm Still Not Ready For It Yet.

It is getting late. Things are beginning to change. The house is quiet. Katy and the children are all in bed and I'm up waiting for a programme on the TV. Yes I am beginning to watch TV again after my long fast. Just a little I think. Enough to connect me to "popular culture" but most of it.... I could write about that subject for a while but not tonight, not now.

I have eventually got the booklet to the printers. I could not email it as I thought, so I copied it to disc and took it round on Friday, then met the children and Katy at the school. The walk was about a mile and three quarters. I was pleased with how far I got. I have rediscovered walking. A great exercise a great place to think. But I was exhausted.

I will be going to The Troubadour on Monday 21. My first visit since December 03. Quite an occasion. I hope to read a love sonnet if I can find a suitable one. Katy is coming too and Hugh will be there. So it will be safe.

In the high street today. Bright sunlight, blinding, a bitter gust of wind, an ambulance with its siren blasting out, deafening, Katy trying to make an arrangement, Iona wanting something, my left leg suddenly in pain, I had to stop and lean against something. My glasses full of rainwater and steamed up. All at once. I felt I could not breath, felt I had no space to move, a moment of feeling trapped, a desperate need to escape. I just turned around and had to walk away til the moment passed.

But that is life. And I'm still not ready for it yet.

A Film Review The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep

a film by Howard Hawkes

When I first watched this film while I was in hospital I lost the plot after the first scene at the Sternwood House. But as I was reading the book with a friend I thought I ought to watch it again. On the second viewing again the plot held me for ten minutes but then I was lost. After twenty minutes I was completely captivated by Bogart and Bacall. I didn’t care what was going on; watching these two on screen was ballet, hearing them was like poetry.

One thing I have learned about this film is not to get hooked by the plot. It is not the most important aspect of this film. Enjoy the dark, brooding, intense and claustrophobic atmosphere.

Censorship must have played some part in the film as it deals with some pretty sensitive issues for its time – 1946. There is the pornographic racket Carmen is involved with, her nymphomania, drug taking and the homosexual relationship between Gieger – head of seedy porno ring - and an employee. Even the book – and I’ve read it all – draws a curtain over some of these areas and hints and makes assumptions at others.

Let me try and get the plot written down before I forget it. There are in fact two strands to this story. At the heart of it is Carman Sternwood a young wild, vulnerable daughter of General Sternwood – a chair bound, elderly millionaire.

The first part of the film involves Carmen who is used as a model for pornographic photographs and the General is being blackmailed. Marlowe is brought in to quietly deal with the blackmailer – he has been before – by a man called Brody.

The second part of the film involves a search for Sean Regan a man employed by the General but has disappeared. We discover that Carman killed him after he refused to go to bed with her. This has been covered up, however Eddie Mars – a gambler is connected to both daughters and is responsible for six of the murders in the film.

Howsat as a plot summary. And I’ve not even mentioned Vivien Sternwood Rutleidge – the oldest daughter of the General’s – played by Lauren Bacall. She is enough to confuse any plot. At first she thinks Marlow is hired to track down her husband who has recently disappeared as well – we later find out he has left Vivien to live with Eddie Mars’s wife who we know has also disappeared.

I think I’ll leave the plot. There is more then enough to go on – much more than the two websites have anyway.

Don’t watch this film for the plot. Watch it for Bogart and Bacall they dazzle with tension and electricity. Watch it for the fast talking Marlow full of wit and love and honesty. Watch it for the gorgeous women that glide through Marlow’s life – including the General’s daughters.
Watch it because in the most unlikely of situations there is love, vulnerability and loyalty and this triumphs over a seedy world or corruption, greed and exploitation and murder.

Shall I give or should she sell?

I returned to college last week. A little work to start, just five hours of class contact time but after half term things will pick up more. It was an enjoyable week. The students were great. We are reading Othello together. It's our first reading so it will be quick - we are just getting the main plot and some key features of character, theme, language and symbolism.

At last I have sent the booklet Slaying a Dragon to be printed. There will be 150 copies. I want to give them away, Katy wants to sell them. Although I've proof read it several times I've already found one mistake - a revision of one line of poem. Typical! They should be ready on Tuesday.

I'm impressed by the Make Poverty History campaign. Christian Aid are building up towards the G8 summit in London, this July. The campaign is working to make poverty history by making trade fairer for developing countries, cancelling their debt and giving more effective aid.

Here is Christian Aid's url. I feel quite pathetic that it is not a link. How do I do that?http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/

Take care

Nelson Mandela's plea to world leaders

Nelson Mandela's plea to world leaders

I thought you ought to know about the speech that Nelson Mandela gave in Trafalgar Square London on Friday 4 February

A Film Review

Two reviews in one day. I must be trying to avoid something. Actually I am. I start college next Tuesday and there will be no time to read books, watch great films and write about them afterwards.

A review of an amazing film.

Dogville


a film by Lars Von Trier

What if God does not forgive us? What if, faced with the death of his one and only son, he decides to judge and condemn rather than forgive? These are some of the key theological issues raised by Dogville a film by Lars von Trier.

These issues are played out among the people of a small, remote and poor town of Dogville. Set during the thirties depression.

A woman appears after the sound of gunshots to the town. She is reluctantly taken in and given refuge by the inhabitants. She offers to pay for their silence and support by doing jobs for each of them. Gradually each person gives her work to do. These are good days. It is summer and she is highly valued and respected by the town. But when the police arrive looking for her the townsfolk feel she should work harder. This changes the relationship between Grace – the woman – played by Nicole Kidman – and the townsfolk. And gradually she becomes more and more exploited, humiliated and enslaved. The men exploit her sexually, the women become jealous and torment and torture her. And then one begins to realise to be discovered by the police would save her. It is her that needs protection and not as we have been led to believe the townsfolk. We see how each relationship descends into exploitation and corruption. The man who loves her makes the final betrayal. He is the man that persuaded the town to take her in and so they give her up to the gangsters that came looking for her at the start of the film. And it is at this point that the film pulls into a higher gear and changes direction in a surprising, disturbing and provocative way.

So here is biblical allegory played out on a minimal and stark set that intensifies the action. It is not an easy film to watch. However it is brilliantly acted and compelling to watch – almost three hours long – one is riveted to the end.

A Book Review

I've just finished reading this book. I bought it for Katy when it won the Booker Prize a few years ago but she did not want to read it. I started it when I was discharged from hospital in early Decemeber. I'd usually finish a book like this in a week but we've had so much to do I've discovered reading a couple of pages before the lights go out in my head.

I highly recommend it to you.

The True History of the Kelly Gang

Peter Carey

A wonderful book. Carey has taken Ned Kelly’s voice, full of passion and energy, and breathed life into a story that forms part of Australian mythology and legend. This voice is raw and semi literate. It ignores all punctuation – except for the full stop and is littered with abbreviations. And yet Kelly’s voice is at times, richly poetic, full of humour, starkly realistic and emotional.

The novel – a memoir, written in the first person chronicles the main – largely accurate events of Ned Kelly’s life aged thirteen to his death aged twenty-six.

The first part of the book concerns life in the Kelly home. We see the intense relationship between Ned and his mother and the young Ned struggling with his father and later after his imprisonment and death Ned’s conflicts with the lovers and suitors of his mother Ellen Kelly. Here is Ned full of energy and love for his family trying to be a man, trying to make a real honest life and home for his many brothers and sisters by farming Eleven Mile Creek.

However the emotional intensity and stress of life sharing leadership of the home with his mother’s lover’s forces him out of the home and he is apprenticed to one of his mother’s admirers, Harry Power. He is a highwayman, a bushranger and teaches Ned a different way to live. It is this relationship that sets the tone of Ned’s life.

In this second part of the book Ned is drawn further and further away from home and the ties with his mother seem to be loosening. He is a wanted man now and is on the run from the police. He meets and falls in love with a young Irish girl, Mary Hearn. And she becomes pregnant with the daughter he will never meet but to whom these chronicles are addressed. We see him killing one of his mother’s lover’s and eventually Harry Power is caught and imprisoned.

Throughout Ned has dealings with the police. And we see their brutal and corrupt behaviour. It is hard to be objective about the character of Ned. However the people he helps and his friends are extremely loyal to him. He is loved and admired by many ordinary people.
For the book is also about a way of life. That of the poor Irish – those victims of transportation and the British Empire.

The final section of the book concerns the small group of young men that surrounded Ned. He is their ‘captain’ . Mary Hearn leaves him and travels to America to safety and a new life. The police hunt him and his gang. They want him and the gang dead. It ends with the final shoot out at a hotel where dressed in home made armor he is shot in the legs and later hanged.

A strong, vivid account of Ned Kelly’s life. An Australian Robin Hood.

It is about time I updated my website don't you think. I'm in the process of re-writing some of the blurb and changing one of the pages. I also need to add some new poems as the poems have been up since the beginning of the site which may be 2001. Its been so long ago.

I'm not going to change things radically.

The booklet has still not seen the light of day. I've shown the layout to a couple of friends and they like the cover and the look of the pages. I may change the font. However one friend who has become a sort of editor over the years has been and still is rather unhappy with two of the poems. He says I should get rid of them completely. He said that they weakened the whole booklet. So now I'm wondering what to do with them. Shall I leave two pages blank? Shall I try and write something quickly to fill the space?

I do have ideas for poems but I have nothing written at all - no notes or any thing. So I do not feel very hopeful that I can get anything written in time. I have given myself a deadline for the end of January. And there is a lot to do before that. I'm back at college on the first of February and there is a lot of preparation for lessons. Also we are beginning to see people again after our Christmas hibernation.

The Troubadour season starts soon and I would like to go at some point soon.

I've been reading The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams. The children know it off by heart. It is a beautiful poem. As a result I've been looking into the five simple machines. I've come to the conclusion that our whole civilization depends upon a red wheelbarrow.

Interesting Book

I've just come across an interesting book. Collapse by Jared Diamond. He is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. This new book as GGS did is dominated by social geography and anthropology. This book explores the reasons why civalizations fail and are destroyed. Disturbingly the answer is the using up of primary energy resources. For many of these societies the main fuel was wood. And as you can guess this book takes an unflinching look at our own western/global civarlization. Read the review of someone who has already read the book at The Guardian Unlimited Books - I'd put the link in but it's too long and it messes up the blog.

Collapse seems to present a similar argument to another apocalyptic book called The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Scarey but compelling reading too.

Starting college is very close now and I have to get into shape. Preparation is always the key, not necessarily to good teaching but to levels of confidence - which is helpful to me but vital to students especially if you meet them for the first time a third of the way through their course.

Here is a list of texts and writers I shall be working with over the next few months. I always find that my own writing is influenced by the writing of others.

Plays
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Othello - Shakespeare
Translations - Brian Friel

Poetry
from The Penguin Book of American Verse
Anne Bradstreet
Longfellow
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
H.D.
T.S. Eliot
Langston Hughes
Robert Lowell
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Nikki Giovanni
Ai

This all seems rather optimistic looking at this list now, we shall see.

I went into college today to try and make peace with my fears. Try and get a feel of the place after so much of a gap. It felt as if I had not been away at all. When I start back it will swallow me whole. Take up so much time and energy. And a smiling student came running up to me so pleased to see me, could not wait till I was teaching again. It was good to see her.

Hi Happy New Year. I hope that 2005 is a happy, healthy and positive year for you all. We have had a quiet and relaxing time. There is a time for disease and a time for healing. And since the summer solstice we have been in a time of healing and transformation. I hope this time of growth and healing continues. We need a time of stability - and strengthening as we try and sell our house and move to one with wheelchair access.

Over this holiday time I've been finishing off the poems for a booklet called Slaying A Dragon. It's about the last eleven months when I had a relapse of a disease.

I've also been checking out "Blogging" to see what other people do. And that has been quite a disappointing revelation in most cases. However I have found a huge global network community out there, blogging every day, blogging three or four times a day. Blogging at work, blogging in bed, blogging at home, blogging at school, blogging. What about living? Is blogging a secular form of prayer I wonder?

So I thought I ought to drag my puny excuse for a blog into 2005 with a bit of a make over - a little nip and tuck. Hope you like it. Its in preperation for upgrading the website which needs some serious work on it.

Returning to work is very close now. 1 February. Very scarey. Lots of stuff to do for that as well as get mobile with a hands control car, moving - that means, selling, buying, adapting our new home, practice my walking, day to day children, Katy, the booklet. There is no time for anything least of all posting a blog.

Well here I am at the end of December and I have not finished writing. It has slowed down a little over the last few days but no booklet for Christmas. But writing is continuing and this has been good. There are now over twenty poems for this new section of the book. They explore different moments over the last nine months and the different emotional responses to those moments. What strikes me about the poems at the moment is how the poems can be divided into two sections. Firstly February to June and then June to the present day. The first section can be characterized by decline, isolation and illness. The second section characterized by incline, a sense of people and community and new health. Writing seemed to have its own mommentum, each poem introduced a new poem, each new poem seems to explore more deeply its subject.

Anyway the experience of writing has been positive. These poems are written quickly - then I move on to the next one.

I'll finish this blog with an example.

Amputation

One Monday, early June,
the surgeons finally cut me adrift,
freed me from
the iron like anchor of my legs
that bound me to the earth.

Amputation was the whisper that,
over the weeks,
gathered its own authority
and settled over everything.
Amputation was the obscene
healing they offered.

Afterwards part of me rose into the air
soaring over the heads
of family and doctors,
untouchable and unable to hear
their bad news
falling like grey ashes below me.

And part of me lay,
on the bed,
snapped off at the legs.
My hands and eyes
searching a strange, new,
disfigured wholeness.



© David Loffman

Hello. I meant to write something in November during my weekends home from the rehabilitation centre I am in to help mke walk again. However weekends were very precious times, and I wanted to spend as much as I could with my family.

So now I am home. I am walking again, rather slowly but I hope it will get easier and faster.

My other obsession over the months has been writing. It has been non stop.

In 1998 I collected together all the poems I had written about the experience of being ill with a serious illness. It was in two parts. The first included all the poems from when the disease started in 1976 until 1998. I wrote part two as a reflection on the illness that I had thought had burned itself out. I printed these out as a Christmas booklet, dedicated to my consultant who was about to retire. The booklet was called Touching The Dark.

However since August I have been writing very intensely about the violent flare up of the disease which began in january 2004. It forms a third part and I hope to be printing a these poems in a small collection for this Christmas.

However I am still in the middle of writing poems and time is running out.

You can read a few of these poems on www.loffman.co.uk

Take care

David

Hi. Well I'm writing. I have been since August almost continually. I'm trying to put the last six months into some kind of perspective. Finding words is a way of doing that although I don't expect sudden healing - writing can only go some way to healing. The poems need a lot of revision and editing.

I have been home for two weeks while my eye recovers from the op it had. As a result I've been able to spend quite a lot of time working on the poems. So I have been steadily revising the poems over the last two weeks. This is what I need to focus on now - quality of writing not quantity - although there are still some poems I need to write.

I've not been able to write about the amputations for example, or the time when I did not eat. I want to write about the incredible sense of liberation and energy I experienced after the amputations. Also I wanted to write about all the amazing visitors that came to see me in hospital. These will be hard to write but I have begun some brief notes. We'll see.

I want to get back to The Troubadour and the Merton writing group again.

If you are reading this and want to know more of what has been going on for the Loffman family over the last seven months visit www.loffman.co.uk

Hi well I have been writing again. This has been quite satisfying, however the poems are a little thin. The poems are about what has happened to us as a family over the past five months. For those that do not know I have had a serious disease that has become very active. As a result I have had both my legs amputated. The left above the knee, the right below the knee. I have also had some difficulties with my eyes. I am at a rehabilitation centre where I hope to be able to walk again. So much has been destroyed for us over this period and we are trying now to pick up the threads of our battered lives and make a new life for ourselves. I put together a brief selection of poems in a booklet as a thank you to all the staff at the hospital who were involved with my care. The hospital is called St Georges and my booklet is called Slaying a Dragon.

Here is a recent poem

Making Connections

I sit at my bed,
all Tooting is laid out
in 3.00 am
humid neon glare below.

With me, in the shadows
of the ward
the restless stirrings
of strangers sleeping,
wrapped up in their own darkness.

Last night,
- the first night for months -
I lay beside my wife,
retraced the shape of her body
and stared into her river blue eyes, again.

And in the morning the children came
running to our embrace.
His arms surrounded me,
her head leant into my shoulder
as I adjusted to their new height.

Lightening fractures the stifling night
and my pages lie exhausted
longing for the morning and home.


© David Loffman

Hi I seem to be online again but things have changed. Now I have no legs, I have a new computer and I've not written a serious poem for months. It has been an incredible year so far. Katy has been in hospital twice with minor but painful operations and I've been in hospital for five months. I hope to be at work again in January however it still may take some time before I can get to the limb fitting centre. Each delay will put Roehampton rehabitation back further.

I have spent some time writing and reading hiaku. I'll put these up on the webswite when I can work out how to do that again. I've forgotten so much. The Troubadour!

New Year. I feel like I'm in a poetry wasteland at the moment. Our health has not been good and family life demanding. I'm not reading much and the television flood gates have opened. I've lost my edge, and am retreating back into a numb, trivial emptiness. I need will and self discipline. I need a physical, mental and spiritual health. I don't mean that my ulcers are an excuse. I mean to be as fit as I can be. This must be my prayer. I am so weak willed.

Christmas was very relaxing and rejuvenating. Maybe I can work from this.

I did manage to get to The Troubadour in December for the poetry party and that was very encouraging. I intend to go back in January and Febuary. I hope I'll be able to read again in March - we'll see.

Well it seems to have been a very long time since I posted anything. I expect you have been visiting the site and expecting more posts, and sadly you turn away, disappointed. I don't blame you.

The truth is I've been busy. Poetry has had to take a back seat. I read at The Troubadour in July - and that was great and in August I received the last of four rejections from four poetry magazines.

Things have been very busy at home too. I'm teaching new courses and the family needs more and more of me. I think I've been using poetry as a hiding place - a wall to keep the world away - to some extent that means my wife and children.

That seems completely unacceptable to me when I look at it that way. So I'm putting writing poetry onto the back burner. I'll only write something if I can do it very quickly. That seems like a good exercise anyway. So don't expect much.

Poetry workshop in Leicester coming up.

Hi I just wanted to tell you about the 50 birthday celebrations at The Poetry Library. We went to the gala poetry evening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday 14 May. it was an entertaining and magical evening. I didn't really want to come home.

The poets were Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Carol Ann Duffy, Roger Mc Gough and Patience Agbabi. I felt the UK poetry world was there and they all seemed connected in some strange web. We sat near to people we knew and the woman I sat next to knew Peter one of my colleagues. The whole evening was a real buzz. After I walked out onto the new Hungerford Bridge, I didn't want to go home.

I suppose I felt connected in some small way.

This is going to be a very very short blog.

I’ve just spent about 40 minutes writing an entry and then I lost it so I am really pissed off. I really wanted to start my blog like this.

Hi I’m back on line. We lost contact for a while- did you notice? Our computer went down with a very bad virus and I really though we had lost it all. But it is in the process of being resurrected as you can read I can at last make a blog entry.

Its late so this will be short and sweet.

The publicity is out for the reading at The Troubadour. There is also the poetry party later on the 14 July the theme is Paris. I’ve already started on something – but what shall I read?

I’ve been reading and writing a little. At the moment I'm reading Lorna Sage's Bad Blood, and just before Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude. This is his portrait of his father though he could have been writing just about mine. I read Billy Collin’s new poetry collection – the line between stand up comic and poet blurs even further. At college we’ve been studying Frost, and for the first time for me Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. These poets have been refreshing and challenging, Dickinson's intense, dynamic and powerful writing is disturbing but brilliant.

I've been writing about my dad and still playing around with a poem called Sleepless. Since the computer crashed my writing has almost dried up. Clearly I am beginning to rely on the word processor too much. Sleepless has been fun. Recently I've been playing around with the shape and punctuation of the poem. It is an imagist poem but there is also aspects of stream of consciousness, experimental perhaps.

i am still watching DVD's from Blockbusters. I just can't keep on going there. Stephen reckoned Wimbledon Library has a great collection of videos. So perhaps New Malden Library will have a wider collection of films. We'll see. I think I can add two other films to my top ten. The Philadelphia Story and Terrence Malick's Badlands with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The Philadelphia Story is a film I video taped years ago and thought it was amazing. If I could not sleep I used to come down and watch it. I don't really know what attracts me about Badlands. Perhaps it is the narrator, or the escape from a father into a world of your own making - a secret world. Outsiders.

I hope I can maintain this blog and have some real writer's things of interest to put down. I hope someone else is reading this too. This feels a bit like doing an all night radio programme - you just don't know who is listening. Actually when Steve and I were doing late night shows on Campus Radio we always got a response, even if it was 4 am.

Take care and drop me a line if you can.

D

Hi I've got a date to read at The Troubadour. Fantastic. It will be on the 30 June at 8.0, The Troubadour, 265 Old Brompton Road, London. It costs 5.00 to get in. If you can come along that would be great. So I've got a bit of time to put together a reading programme. It will be similar to the Leicester and Canterbury readings but I want to put some new ones in. It should be fun. Don't forget it will only be fifteen minute read, I'll share the event with 5 other "New Voices".

I'm also reading two poems at The Troubadour on Monday 31 March. This will be on the theme of letters. I intend to read Ezra Pound's free translation of Li Po's The River Merchant's Wife - A Letter and my poem The River Merchant - A Reply. What cheek! But I just could not think of anything else.

Last week Katy drafted a letter for me and I sorted out 4 poetry magazines that just might be interested in publishing some of my poems. We've got to keep at it and get the letters out before the big read on the 30 June.

I've slowed down a bit in my writing. Instead I've been reading a few novels. The Reader, The Hours and right now Life of Pi. I don't mind the slow down although I hope the poems don't come to a full stop altogether. At the moment I'm writing a collection of imagist poems entitled Sleepless. It's about sleeplessness suprise suprise. I feel a little like Pi sharing his life boat with a tiger shipwrecked in the Pacific. He seems to be able to just keep going - his day filled with so many little victories. My writing feels a bit like this - very fragile, constantly worrying if it will all dry up and where is the next poem going to come from.

Finding time to write is still hard and now we have the TV space has become a problem. I'm still not watching it but just having it in the house is a pressure and a strain.

However I do watch DVD's. We rent some from Blockbusters and I want to buy my top 10 films. I don't know what they all are but I have bought Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Francis Ford Copola's, Apocalypse Now and Wim Wender's Wings of Desire. They are not perfect films but they all seem to address issues or themes that disturb, intrigue, haunt and facsinate me.

Last time I wrote I told you about all the poets I'm teaching with my students. Well it has not been as easy as I first thought. The AS year is very short and it is a race to get through the poems. The Penguin American Anthology Of Verse is a great anthology but just no time to dwell on the poems in too much detail.

Finally I seem to be developing a Blog routine. Just one a month one every 4 or 5 weeks. But you never know. Keep watching this space.