Chook Book

Because I'm an enthusiastic reader, I'm always eager to see what books strangers are engrossed in when I see people reading on public transport.

On the way down to Melbourne today I read this book on the train and then on all the trams I took. I held it out in front of me like a proud shield.

Keeping chooks is one of the greatest joys in my life and I want people to know that I am not some random redhead on public transport, but that I have chooks!

I learnt a lot whilst reading the Chook Book. Of course you can never read too much about something you love, but I have learnt more than a book can ever teach just from hanging out in our yard and quietly watching our birds in all their feathered glory.

So many people have commented to me how dumb chooks are – what pea brains. And maybe they are compared to dogs or cats, but what nobler job is there than sitting on eggs of new life. I was in awe of Cuba when she was broody and I am in awe of those little pea brains who can create something as complete and contained as an egg. 

After all these millions of years of evolution and with all my years of education, if only I could create something so wonderful each day.

Hatched!

It's been three weeks since we received 8 fertilised eggs and I am thrilled to announce the arrival of 5 chicks to our brood.

I am home just now from my mum's birthday party, where she provided all the delicious food for her family to lunch on.

In this photo, mama Cuba is doing her version of that too – grounding up the feed into small enough pieces for her babies to eat.

Happy birth day!

Unknown Online Doors

As well as teaching a course on blogging at the local neighbourhood centre next month, I am running a course called Exploring the World Wide Web. In it, people who are not confident knocking on unknown online doors will learn all about Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and more. The neighbourhood centre's course guide came out this week with my courses listed. To celebrate, here's this:

Artist Filippo Minelli says:

All my Contradictions have the same motivation/meaning. Technologies and the marketing behind them usually push the almost religious aspect of their evolution, as also said by Leander Kaheny in his Cult of Mac book, and the users are pushed to live in an intense way the abstraction from reality, living technologies only as an idea and sometimes without even knowing their real functions. And this aspect works for the social-networks too. 

The idealization connected with these experiences provokes a small-but-important detach of the perception of reality and what I want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies. 

It's a kind of reminder, for people like me which I'm an Apple user and also have social-network accounts that the real world is deeply far from the idealization we have of it, not only in the third world and even if technologies and globalization are good things.

Guest Blogger: JS

Our lovely friend Jeff has just returned from visiting his partner Cath in China. Here is a snapshot from his time away:

This morning, walking in Lu Xun Park, I slowed, and then stopped, to watch a man writing traditional characters on the footpath using a large calligraphy brush dipped in water from a plastic drink container. By the time he had completed a line of text his first characters had already begun to evaporate.

Further along, sitting on the edge of the path practicing characters was an older man with a beard. At his feet was a puddle of unintelligible words. Buying breakfast from a stall in Tina ai Lú I silently held out a handful of coins for the young girl selling baozi. Having just arrived in Shanghai, and my only Chinese being nihao, I could only point and hope she understood.

A small child smiling on the back of a pushbike repeated phrases her mother sang as she peddled passed one of the street’s corner fruit and vegetable stalls. Language I realized was something I had taken for granted; now words were unfamiliar, and I felt more infantile than the child on the back of a pushbike repeating her mother’s song.

But I also experienced something other than a sense of alienation as I held out my handful of coins at the baozi stall. There was something more. The characters written in water evaporating on the warm concrete footpath, and being stepped over by passing pedestrians may have been unintelligible to me; however the gentleman’s practice, his gestures were not. The young girl, with a prod from her father, selected the correct coins from my palm and handed me my meal.

Tea Fountain

From here.

Nice One

Once there was a really nice girl. She was really nice. She lived in a nice house surrounded by a nice garden in a nice neighbourhood. She met a really nice guy and they got married and had a wedding list so all their nice guests could give them all the nice things they wanted.

They went on their honeymoon to the beach where they spent most of their days reading books about nice things. At night they ate nice food in the resort restaurant. They befriended the waitress who was really nice. She reminded them of the woman who arranged the flowers for their wedding. She was really nice too.

The couple came home and went back to work the next day. They made extra big dinners so they could take the leftovers to work for lunch in Tupperware containers. They worked hard five days a week and at night they reclined on their couch and watched TV. Their couch was nice. It wasn't new but it looked new. The colour matched the picture on the wall above really nicely.

On weekends they ate breakfast out at a nice little local café. Later when they would have kids, their kids would play with the café owners' kids and then later, the two families would car pool to and from school.

Their school was really nice. It had a big tree in the front yard. One day a bigger kid threw his shoe into it and fell out when he went to retrieve it. He broke a bone in his wrist and then the kids weren't allowed to climb the tree any more. All the parents thought that was a good idea.

Without the Rind

Several months ago, I wrote about World Dividers; how the world can be divided into two categories, those who do certain things and those who don't.

I was too quick to judge, it seems. 

Last week I had tea with someone I know very well. This is her iPod with the protective plastic still on the click wheel. When I saw it I was shocked. I always thought people who left the plastic on their electricals were scared of life, like old people who cover their couches with clear PVC.

But now I've changed my mind. This person I know is fierce in her approach to living.

Protective layers make me think of these lines from Nin Andrews's poem, Notes on the Orgasm:

The orgasm will peel you like an orange. You may feel exposed, raw, even wounded. The orgasm wants you to live life without the rind.

The Dud Avocado

I enjoyed Loobylu's review of this book so much I had to read it for myself. Normally she reads books while stirring pots at the stove or stopped at red lights, but as her copy of The Dud Avocado is so well-thumbed she needed a hand to hold each cover for fear the pages would fall out. 

I liked how she wrote nothing of the contents of this little known classic but rather, about her experience of reading it. As a result I too was unusually aware of how and not just what I was reading.

When I ordered the book online, I requested the first available copy within our network of libraries, which just happened to be a large print book. I have never read a large print book before and I was happy for the new experience, thinking it might also be a good thing for my eyes.

I took this book away with us to the beach. Usually I only read books that fit inside my everyday bag, but I liked that this was one was large: I was on holiday from my usual sized books and I was on holiday from reading nonfiction too. As there was no shade at the beach, I used its size to block out the sun as I lay on my back, my arms outstretched like a sundial.

Have you ever been out somewhere and seen a group of young women completely dolled up to the nines, talking too loudly on their phones and to each other? They take photos of themselves in pose after pose and all huddle round the camera to laugh too loudly at the outcome on the screen. Sally Jay Gorce, the novel's protagonist is one of these young women, (except that it was published in pre-digital 1958), but despite her youth and vapidity, she does manage to endear herself to the reader with her wit and observations.

I was ready to give the book the flick when I first started reading it. I only persevered as I was searching for the reason it was included in the NY Review Books Classics series, and also because the book is loosely based on author Elaine Dundy's real life experiences in Paris when she was a 21 year-old.

While I read this book I also re-read the journals I wrote when I spent three months in India as a 25 year-old. Reading about my own impetuous audacity as a young traveller definitely helped me see Sally Jay with more affection and with confidence that she too will grow up and take steps towards living a life less self-centred and less self-conscious.

Here Comes Everybody

Thirteen years ago on NYE my nanna Jo-Jo died, three years ago on NYE PJ and I met at a party and on the subsequent two NYEs, we have taken part in the annual parade down the main street of our town. Here we are last night:

Sixteen years ago, the graphic designer Tibor Kalman erected a giant billboard on Forty-second Street in NYC. It was bright yellow and had the word EVERYBODY written on it. Even though it was at street level, it hung graffiti-free for its two year run.

Our lovely friend, Ian Robertson who took the above photos, suggested PJ make a sign saying HERE COMES as HERE COMES EVERYBODY is something John Cage used to say and both he and PJ are John Cage nuts. (Incidentally, Cage borrowed the saying from James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake.)

A fabulous night all up. Happy new year EVERYBODY!

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