Chores Day

This morning has been a chores day, hoovering the room and currently waiting for my clothes washing to be completed.It is at the drying spin stage as i write. Nothing more boring than watching clothes tumbling around in a machine,so here i am on the net catching up with people,and thinking that i should be out in that sunshine.

Meanwhile, Via sartorias this link into how writers got the first publication.


The Key to the Kingdom, or How I Sold Too Like the Lightning

http://exurbe.livejournal.com/29935.html
http://www.exurbe.com/?p=4241

WiFi at The Quays

I cannot believe that i am on LJ in the common room here at the Quays and my LJ pages are not fucked up like this as normal -





I guess it is either that hardly anybody is on the WiFi here , as most of the residents either seem to be still in bed or out somewhere. Anyway, i have my normal brown page screen and full functionality of the page and editing areas.

I also have a WiFi on the go device in case i need to be onthe net in an area where there is no WiFi signal.

Book 41 - A.Alvarez "Night"

A. Alvarez "Night: An Exploration of Night Life, Night Language, Sleep and Dreams" (Vintage)





Alvarez brings a kind of journalistic quality to a subject that he apparently devoted four years to bring to fruition in this book. He looks at it from a bunch of different angles. The book takes on - dreams and nightmares, the fear of the dark, night shift work, the history of lighting, night motif's in painting and literature, and soon.


As a critic he analyses and reflects on what artists have had to say on the subject. The book starts with the poem, Acquainted with the Night, by Robert Frost and ends with a quote from Krapp's Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett. Many pages have passages from writers such as Stevenson, Freud and Coleridge, with Alvarez using them to examine a subject like the connection between dreams and surrealism.


The photographs and paintings that Alvarez chose to accompany his text are particularly haunting. One in particular: an untitled photograph by Roger Parry shows a dark room with a dull beam of light streaming in through a half-opened door. The photograph was taken from inside the room and a few objects can be dimly seen: a daguerrotype propped upside-down against the dark wainscoting; a length of rope that might be fastened into a noose. Alvarez has this to say about the photograph: "I no longer remember how I populated the darkness, but I remember the fear itself, particularly of the darkness that shrouded the upper floor, where I slept."

I found this a fascinating book.He's serious but playful, has a casual sophistication, a curious and sceptical mind, and a direct writing style.

Well worth seeking out.

Birthday Greetings

Happy birthday to st_martin_a.Hope you have a great day and wonderful weekend.

Shiraz Saturday

This afternoon was spent sunbathing and deepening my tan. I then had some pizza and garlic bread for dinner , washed down with a feisty Shiraz wine.

Then i listened to the radio,fell asleep, listened to the radio again and answering some of the questions on the new series of Counterpoint on BBC Radio 4.

This evening has gone by too quick , and as it approaches midnight, i will be looking up to see a full moon, and checking my hands, just in case. Howl!