Hieronymous the Anonymous

The FA Cup from Oz

It's a sign of the times when the FA cup final tonight (Melbourne time) passes almost without comment. There was a little spread in the newspaper this morning previewing, but nothing on tonights news, and little in way of build-up prior to now.

When I was a kid there would be FA Cup parties. Generally it was a bit of an excuse for a few beers and a bit of tucker before the blokes - who probably knew little about the game - would gather around the TV to watch and act like experts. The girls would likely be in another room while the kids - me for example - would be bundled into makeshift beds listening to the occasional explosions of excitement from the next room.
 
When I was older I would occasionally catch up with a couple of mates to quietly watch in one of our loungerooms while we sucked on a drink or two. My mates, and my generation in general, were much more knowledgeable about the game. For my dad and his mates watching it once a year soccer was a bit of a poncey game they played in England. By contrast my mates and I were used to the weekly highlights and match of the day being beamed in from England, and every one of us had a favourite premier league side.

The wheel has turned again since. For a while - here anyway - soccer, or football as it is now commonly known as, was the FA cup, the big English premier league clubs, and the world cup, and not much else. Our view of the world is bigger now, and technology, wealth, and pay TV has broadened our perspective.

Soccer is much more than what they play in England. It's what they play in Spain and Italy and Germany and every other country in Europe - and it's what we see on our TV these days, the Serie A, La Liga, and the Bundesliga. That's just Europe, it's huge in South America obviously, and Africa, a great focus of the Asian region, and with so many Australians now playing at the top level overseas it has now become pretty big here.

In that time the FA cup has paled into one of the less important trophies - even in England I suspect, where the league title is everything. Just last week was the Champions Trophy final, a huge event I know many people got up early here to watch - Barcelona thankfully beat Man U in the final 2-0. Every week during the season there is a big match somewhere in the world, and some great rivalries being played out.

All the same, tonight is the FA Cup final. Chelsea olay Everton. Everton were the side I followed back in those days I wrote of. In the eighties Liverpool where the dominant side (and very well supported here), but Everton popped up for a couple of league titles and where a very good side. Less fashionable but hard at it.

These days Tim Cahill is the star of the team, and that's another reason to support them. He's a great stalwart of Australian soccer, and a dangerous footballer great to watch.

On the other is Chelsea, one of the big 4 in English football. They are coached now by Guus Hiddink, who I have a huge soft spot for after his great work with the Socceroos.

Chelsea probably deserve to go in as favourites, but an upset would not be a huge surprise. Everton are a club on the rise, and play with a lot of spirit. And in Cahill the Toffees have a player with the rare ability to turn a game on its head. He's a winner, a big game player, and could well be the difference.

Not so lazy days…

My first lazy day for a while, and even then not so lazy. I’ve been doing one thing or another, just not the variety no at the pace I’ve recently been accustomed to. In the end I’ve found my own pace today and for once happily downshifted to it – I’ve been thinking so much lately that I’m just about thunk out: so this will be short.

I haven’t added to this for some time because my brain has been taken up in other things. In work and work related things – searching for work, negotiating with my marketing company, dealing with the printers doing my brochure, scrolling through the MS partner site, training myself and reading a lot of work related articles and correspondence, not to mention the emails, the phone calls, the catch-ups.

On top of that I’ve been writing. Point of fact it’s probably that which has kept me from here most. I’ve only a certain number of words in me every day I reckon, and creative words carry a premium over the merely descriptive. And so come the end of the day when I might have sat down here to write I found myself emptied out. I still had thoughts, still had ideas and observations, I just didn’t have the energy to compose them into something meaningful. And so I let it go.

I’ve been writing a lot, and have generally been pretty happy with it. I’m working on a bit of a deadline so I have been very productive. I’ve promised a segment every week for one of my readers to review. Each segment is between 4 to 5,000 words, which is pretty hefty. I normally reckon 600 words a day is pretty good going, but in these last couple of weeks I have had days in excess of thousand. And this is creative stuff, the stuff you drag out yourself kicking and screaming to put on the page. This discipline has been good for me.

I was up late last night writing. I had promised the latest segment for today, but by the time Wednesday afternoon came by it looked more likely that Monday would be the go. It’s hard to gauge what you’re going to manage on any given day. You never know what you’re going to get stuck on, and some things are easier to write than others. On top of that there is revision, which can be pretty time consuming with me. I want things just so. And sometimes you’re just blocked.

Patience is important. I remember reading of a famous author once who finished up writing every day with the beginning of the next days writing already in his head. He argued that gave him a head start the next day and allowed him some momentum going forward. I can’t argue the logic of it, but I would never do it. I’m afraid, and with good reason, that I might lose something good from one day to the next. If it’s there I want it on the page. Yet patience does a big part in the final product. Writing can’t be rushed. Sometimes it feels like it comes to you, but in fact that’s not the case. When you’re in this mode you are forever moving forward even if at times it is so slowly as to be invisible to the eye. Like a glacier.

That’s how it is with me sometimes. I know generally where I want to go, but often that’s as good as it gets. And so when I get to that stage I back off. I make a cup of tea, read a book. Sometimes I’ll be in bed reading and something will come at me. That slow-moving facility has been quietly whiring away in the background. Sometimes there is something I read or see that sparks some inspiration. And often I go to bed with nothing and wake up with the words in me ripe to be plucked. It’s for this reason I keep a notepad by my bed and another in my bag. I know by bitter experience that if I leave it to memory then I’ll lose it. Better to scribble something rough – as it often is – than to leave it to chance.

So, that’s where I was, stuck a little, and way behind schedule. Yesterday afternoon I sat at my desk and for a few hours went over what I had previously written and eked out a few words. They were the right words though as it happened, and they cleared the way going forward.

I went back to my desk last night intending to write just a little more so that I might finish up today on schedule. Instead as I wrote with the lamp on beside me I found I had some unexpected momentum. And so I kept on writing. Soon I had written enough to think it would be silly not to finish it up last night. And so that’s what I did. When I went to bed I was a happy blank.

And that’s what I am today too – you’ve done well to get so many words out of me. I feel exhausted by all this writing and I need a break. I gave myself the day off. I’ll be back into it Monday expecting that the break will have been productive. There are days when you get so close to what you are writing that you virtually live it, and for me that is neither pleasant nor sensible. It is good to get some distance, and good to go at it again fresh. I expect I’ll have all the answers on Monday, for a little while anyway.

Another awesome game!

Now I've seen everything.

Been watching the NBA again, game 2 Cavs versus Magic. Like the first game big early lead to the Cavs - as much as 23 - but again the Magic hang tough and fight their way back point by point. They get the lead and then lose it and then it's all tied up and the Cavs give up a dumb foul and with 1 second on the game clock the ball goes whoosh through the net clean as a whistle and the Magic have a 2 point lead.

The stadium is very quiet. One second to level or win, one second to score from the side ball. Right about now I'm pretty down on the Cavs. I figure they don't deserve to win. Orlando have played the tougher basketball all the way through. They've defended better, and offensively they've created better options. And they're very well coached.

The Cavs are just about all Lebron. He's a great player but it makes them predictable, and it sucks the air out of the rest of the offence. The Magic have played deeper and that's made them a lot more dangerous. I'm thinking all this and pretty well writing off the Cavs for the rest of the series because there's no coming back from this when the whistle blows and Williams on the sideline looks for options before throwing the inbound pass.

There's no surprise who it goes to - Lebron James. With the micro-seconds rapidly ticking down he gets it pretty well at the top of the key and outside the 3 point arc. He turns and jumps in one movement, sights, and shoots - and in it goes, all fucking net! That's why he's a superstar.

Fuck me dead, the Cavs have won against all fucking odds and the place erupts. Great, great win in the end, though you have to feel for the Magic - lot more blue collar about them, but in the end pure class prevailed.

Man, has my mind turned around from 10 minutes ago. The series is now level 1-1 but a victory like that is worth more than a simple number. It's going to fill the Cavs; for the Magic they're going to be thinking they've done everything right and bang, gone. It's a deflating way to lose.

I think it'll go the distance though. The superstar plays for the Cavs but he's pretty well their game plan. They need to spread the load a bit more and come up with more options to stretch the Magic defence. As for the Magic, I don't know if they can do much more. They are the better coached team, and play to their strengths. It's the Cavs to lose, but it may happen.

Tranquility not

Yesterday afternoon went into the city to see my accountant. Afterwards I was to catch up with Becky for a quick drink. I was early and sat in the cold outdoors sipping on a white wine. Then Becky came and we ordered a bottle and then the phone rang again and again and within half an hour Cheeseboy had joined us. Becky stayed till 7, and Cheeseboy and I had another beer. Before I knew it we had set out again and I was sitting in Punch Lane about to have dinner with 9 other people. I thought I'd be home by 7. Instead it was 11.30 I got home, full once more.

I woke about 5am this morning having had more than my share of dreams. The night before had been dream laden too, meaningless, insignificant dreams about women I knew once and others so trivial as to be irrelevant. It was the same last night I think. In one dream I was in a car with Cheeseboy and his father - Guus Hiddink of all people - sitting on the front bench seat, before heading back to my place where we all did some gardening. In another I was with a woman acquaintance when we surprisingly got going together. And so on.

I lay in bed half asleep and taking a break from what seemed non-stop dreaming. After a few minutes I got up. I checked on the dog, then got myself a drink - I had the drys. I went back to bed and lay there. I felt the sleep in me, something warm and comforting. It was that pre-dawn period when everything is tranquil, when nothing stirs, when it is as dark as it has been all night and the silence complete. I felt it, listened to the tranquility if you like, appreciating it. And yet for all this I felt deeply unsettled.

It was the dreams to some extent, some nameless discontent they had stirred. And it was the night before. Perhaps I was just in one of those sour moods, but I felt lying there that I had done it all before, so many times. It felt stale. And lying there I felt myself sore in the familiar way - familiar recently anyway. Yes, I'm getting older, I'll cop that, it was all the rest of it, the lingering effects of my recent ailments that won't go away completely, the inconvenience, the pain, the sheer frustration of it all.

I slept and woke and drifted into all states in between. Still I felt the sheer comfort of lying in a soft, warm bed in the quiet. I was aware of the world outside gradually coming alive, the occasional tap of a high heel on the wooden floor next door, cars going by in the street. Forget it, I thought. When normally I'd have got up I stayed in bed, I need this I thought, and so I indulged myself.

The day was not much different to any other except I creaked a little more and felt a little less social than most. Otherwise it was same again, and nothing too much wrong with it. You have to wonder at those nights though.

Put it in your diary

According to Mayan legend the end of the world as we know it will come on December 21, 2012. If you're like me then you'll likely greet this with a healthy skepticism, however...

When you look into this there are remarkable aspects about Mayan civilisation. Their calendar and measurement of time were extremely advanced, and precise to the point of exactitude. More uncanny was their knowledge of the cosmos. There is no way of knowing how they could have made these discoveries, but there seems little doubt that they were far in advance of contemporary civilisations.

On that date in 2012 a cosmological effect that comes but once every 26,000 odd years will occur. The sun will align with the milky way. What happens then? Well, that's the question, isn't it?

If it's any comfort the Mayan calendar continues on after that date. Up to you if you choose to buy your Christmas pressies regardless, but my life won't be worth living if the world fails to end and I haven't fixed up the folks.

What a series!

This has to be one of the best play-off series in NBA history. The Lakers are now playing the Nuggets in the western conference final and are level 1-1 - great games both, the Lakers winning the first by ywo and then the Nuggets reversing the result in the next game to win by three - after being as much as 14 down in the first half. Virtually a mirror image of the first game. In both games so far the respective team superstars Bryant and 'Melo have been supreme. This will be a great series that will go down to the line - I reckon the Nuggets in seven.

The other final between Orlando and Cleveland. The Cav's have Lebron James and that should be enough to get them over the line, even against the leagues best defensive player in Howard. Before the series started I'd have said the Cavs would win it 4-1. That may still happen, but to do it the Cavs need to win the next four.

In game one the Cavs were cruising 15 points up at half time and looked a good thing. By 3/4 time that margin was reduced to 4 and it was game on. From looking early winners the Cavs fell behind in the last and didn't look like bridging the gap. The Magic were playing tough basketball and the Cavs were relying too much on James. Then it turned around. A couple of clutch 3 pointers and suddenly the Cavs are up with not much left on the clock.

Should have known there would be a twist. With about 14 seconds left on the clock Orlando hit a three to take the lead. The Cavs mucked it up, but still had a chance on the buzzer when a mid court shot rimmed out.

The Cavs should never have lost it. Maybe they thought they had it won. James was great with 49 points, but he missed some free throws he should have got - given they lost a point, pretty critical. And his dominance is revealing in a way. They're not a one man team but to begun to play like one. He needed more support and didn't get it until very late.

I still think they'll win, but whether it's the Nuggets or the Lakers they play in the final I think they'll come second. Lot of great basketball between now and then.

Turns of the screw

Over the last week I've been listening to the audiobook of Henry James classic ghost story Turn of the Screw.

When it comes to audiobooks I can hardly imagine a better story. It's one of those stories you listen to on the tram, walking the dog, cooking dinner and you're transported into times long past. It's the sort of story you'd read by the open fire on a cold winters night, and in fact the story begins in the classic way, as a tale recounted to old friends.

Henry James is a difficult writer in some ways, and for all the pleasure I gained from this book I had to pay close attention so as to not lose track. He is famous for his long sentences - I nearly said elongated, circuitous - but his style is classic, and in a way it becomes another 'character' in the story. Revealed is a mindset, a time, a place, a class. The voice is invariably that of the upper-class gentleman - or woman - educated, articulate, Superficially reserved, intimacies are revealed in the qualifications and digressions that turn simple sentences into long and revealing description.

In this case the narrator is a woman. She is the classic English governess in charge of two young orphaned children. She is devoted to their welfare, and as the evil influence of her predecessors haunts the children she fights back, effectively for the children's souls. It is an eerie story, spooky in the classic sense of the word. I was transfixed, right to the unexpectedly abrupt end.

There was something else unexpected in the production that was entirely personal. Listening to the cultured English voice of the narrator I could not help but be reminded of Jennie every time. The tone of the voice was not identical, though at times it came very close. The similarity was marked first in the phrasing. In Jennie I used to smile listening to her I enjoyed it so much. It's no great trick for me to close my eyes and to hear her distinctive voice in my head with her distinctive phrasing.

The greater similarity was in the writing of James - it was he who put the words in the mouth of the governess, and he who framed her personality and character. Listening I could imagine Jennie speaking to me of commonplace things in much the same way. Though some of the references and language are by now archaic there is enough still to pass for conventional though distinctive narrative. The echoes are loudest in the exclamations, in the moments of high emotion when I can hear Jennie herself in my ears.

By far and away the greatest similarity was in the characters. The governess is virtually Jennie. Like Jennie there is a vulnerability, even a weakness perhaps, that is overcome by the necessity to fight tooth and nail for the embattled souls of the two children. Jennie was always open about her dislike of confrontation. It was something she would avoid if possible and had arranged her behaviour to minimise the possibility of it. She was a very brave and honest woman though.

The governess strikes you in a similar way - competent, efficient, kind, unassuming, caring, and somewhat vulnerable. She oscillates between despair and doubt to hope and a kind of pride. She overcomes her weaker self because she must in the much greater struggle to do right. Like all truly good people she acts from a courage that cannot be doubted when she must.

It may seem strange to be writing this, and I do not intend it in that way. I never expected this, but it was not something I could ignore. If I think back Jennie is one of the very best and nicest people I have ever known.

How to live

I came across this quote by accident yesterday. This is what I mean. It's sort of what I was trying to say the other day, this is how I want to live:

"To be what we are we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

This life today

I lay in the hot bath while Rigby hovered nearby. Early days when he was small he would jump up on the side of the bath and peer in, his ears floppy but half-cocked with curiosity, occasionally dipping his head to lap at the bath water until I would shoo him off. He is much bigger now but the bath exerts the same fascination for him. One day I was running a bath when I heard a sound from the bathroom – Rigby had jumped into the tub and been surprised at the heat of the water pouring and given a brief yelp. He is bigger now - he has tripled in size since I got him – and stands by the bath looking in, ever ready for an opportunistic lap of the water. I don’t him that close, don’t like him drinking the water, don’t enjoy the tranquillity of the bathtub – ‘me’ time – being disturbed by Rigby seeking my attention. If I leave him out though he will scratch at the door seeking entrance – he doesn’t like to be where I’m not – and the impost in the end is relatively minor.

I like to think a hot bath is a Saturday afternoon luxury. Today it was that and a whole lot more. Since I got sick last year I’ve lost a lot of what was once pretty good flexibility. In recent times I have begun to exercise to regain it. The problem is not in my hamstrings, but in my lower back. I have taken to stretching, taking it a little further each time, pushing it perhaps a bit too far. In consequence I am now very stiff and sore, and have the stiff-backed posture of a man which every movement is potentially painful. So I lay in the hot bath reading a book while Rigby looked on, as my muscles slowly relaxed and some movement came back to me.

I am now dressed to go out, sitting at my desk as it grows dark outside. My hair is still damp, my feet still bare.Time enough. No lights are on in the house and the screen glows in the dim room. It seems very quiet around, pleasantly so. Every so often Rigby will wander over to check on me. Occasionally he will leap up with his paws on the arm of my chair and look at me with a dignified but insistent air, demanding my attention. At such times he is like a little man with a distinct personality and mind of his own. He makes me smile and stop for a moment to give him a pat, before returning to this. He is a spoiled boy to have his master home so often, and so close to him.

I feel a little tired, much as you often do after a restful bath. It is a pleasant feeling all the same. My days and nights are busy so there is good cause to be a little weary, but I look forward to going out, and know that I am lucky to have so many interesting things to do.

Earlier today I attended a cooking course in Bentleigh. Tuscan Cooking was the title of the course. There were eight of us gathered in the home of the instructor, an accomplished and reasonably well known expert in Italian cooking. It was fun. Cheeseboy and I did it together, often working as a team as we prepared the variety of dishes – a chicken involtini, home made pasta, and a almond chocolate cake. The food was lovely, and surprisingly easy to prepare. Both Cheeseboy and I are foodies, and pretty accomplished cooks in our own right, but there was much we learned. At the end of it all we sat down to eat all that we had prepared, partnered with a couple of bottles of Mornington Peninsula shiraz.

Tonight is Fong’s birthday. She is having a small celebration at a restaurant in Swan Street. Earlier today while I was at my cooking course she came over and took Rigby to his obedience classes in my stead. That was very generous of her. She told me afterwards that she nearly lost her fingers feeding him the treats he gobbles up so vociferously. 

That’s how it is this Saturday. Last night it was the great hall of the NGV where we had a very enjoyable wine tasting. Tomorrow – back pending – I have a yoga session with the other teacher, the French one. There’s no shortage of things to do.

Exit Ghost

I wanted to write about Exit Ghost, the audiobook I listened to the other week. (It doesn't seem serious to say I listened to a book, as if the only valid criticism can come from the physical act of reading print on paper - but I'll overlook that objection).

Early doors this book resonated strongly with me. I've only read (or listened!) to about 6 of Phillip Roth's books, and only one other of the Nathan Zuckerman series.

As it happens I had read the very first in the series, The Ghost Writer, when Zuckerman is an ambitious and resourceful young man at the very beginning of what he hopes to be a successful literary career. In that novel Zuckerman is visiting the home of his idol, I E Lonoff, when circumstances contrive that he stays overnight. Zuckerman is at once witness to and gets involved in the events that follow, which includes the luridly imagined speculation that the European girl he has taken a fancy too is in fact Ann Frank, somehow saved from the camps and transported to the east coast of the States.

The book is playful, fun to read, whilst being typically intelligent - and Zuckerman is cast as a somewhat unreliable sprite of a character.

Exit Ghost is the last in the series. All the various books in between which describe the adventures of Zuckerman I have heard of but not read. In some way that became significant as I listened to this book - - I see him at the start and I see him at the end.

The end as such is very far from where he began. His idol Lonoff is long dead and largely forgotten, while he, Zuckerman, is a great man of American letters. There is some weariness in acknowledging this, as if after dreaming of it in that first book there is the realisation that it is just something more. Something essential as it happens, but something that is done, a job.

Like in Everyman (a great book) there is the theme of things running out, of life passing, dwindling in fact to this aged point. In Zuckerman's case he has prostate problems which necessitates him wearing a nappy. He also fears that he is gradually losing his facility to write, and in fact think, lucidly. And strangely for me he meets up with the very same Ann Frank substitute from the first book, Amy Bellette, in this the last. In this though she is no longer the alluring and mysterious European girl he lusted over. In the years between she has become an old woman who has just come from hospital after being operated on for a brain tumour.

Everything is in decline. The arc that started in The Ghost Writer and soared as Zuckerman became a successful writer here falls away to an ineviable and diminished end. For me, who has read none of the books in-between, this was most stark. Here the two books were directly juxta-posed against each other.

Then the flame that has died down over the years suddenly leaps. Zuckerman falls for a girl. Sure, she's 40 years his junior, but she's smart and sassy and sensitive and he is to her a great writer. His imagination dormant now comes to life. He contrives situations. He postulates outcomes. He imagines whole conversations - all in his erudite and measured way. In short, a type of hope takes hold of him, limited though it is.

This was my favourite part. That's my boy I thought, go get her. Why should you accept such a limited and bleak outcome? It's a question I'm asking all the time as I observe people I know winding down as if they have done enough, there is no more to try for or to wonder at, nothing more to hope for indeed - and certainly nothing worth fighting for. Well, for a moment, Zuckerman finds that something.

And then the story ends. For me listening it felt like it had another 3 chapters in it. All this in him and then he decides to pack up and go home and leave the girl behind. I had really enjoyed this book and then it ended prematurely, unnaturally almost, as if Roth lost interest in it and decided to wrap it up. Unfortunately what could have been claimed as a significant novel became something much slighter.