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I own my proclivities and short comings / I own the transgressions of those which have inflicted wounds some unhealed / I own the sublime moments of subjective joy / I own little but I am rich in compassion / I own not the land it owns me
You don't know the word for butter, so you spend seconds miming the way it froths in the pan. The owner of the shop says nothing. You want to buy their famous pesto, but it's nowhere on display. You speak to other customers, who nod and frown. Eventually you point at fragrant cheese and a melon that smells of ripest green.
Windswept Judean hills. Not by the sheer vista below could her abundance ever be measured; striding, with each step she believed no one could transcend the largesse she carried.
Italians are a people of integrity / who celebrate a celibate celebrity.
We share a love of poetry, having come to Gerard Manley Hopkins from opposite directions, her from religious ecstasy, me from the dark sonnets. In the 1980s we met, in a shelter for Aboriginal women in Collingwood. My next memory? Ursula introducing me to the granddaughter of Kelly's sweetheart, an old woman dying in a Melbourne hospital.
To make a choice is one hard nut. To decide and stand, to point and dot ... What they will do with what they were given? See their pride and their selfish dictations. See them leave us in hell while they are in heaven, living the life and leaving us to die.
It's a no eye contact sport, when I see a girl I like. She's putting lip balm on her lips, as the morning scenery slips by like a young child getting out of his pyjamas. I stare at everyone but her, because her face is like a burning sun ... It's only as I go to get off she looks up and smiles. I smile back, I've done a few miles with these smiles. I'd like to peel the pastry off and eat the sweet thing underneath. I catch my breath like a butterfly in a net. She's another stranger I'll never know the destination of.
It's a bleak sad day, That special voice has been taken away That voice that saw so much, Waged war against the witless and their wrongs, That smothered our lives and hopes And that voice will still sing his songs. Which we are free to hear for ages on.
The Academy, it seems, has listened. After the #whiteoscars furore of past years, three of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Picture, Moonlight, Fences, and Hidden Figures, are films with predominantly (if not entirely) Black casts, and focused on the experiences of Black characters. Cast and crewmembers from all three have been nominated in various categories. To be fair, all three films would have demanded attention, with or without the recent controversy around awards season racial bias.
Narrow, pointed arch entrance, low vaulted ceiling, stone and wood panelling - here four murderers walked over 800 years ago to rid their king of a meddlesome priest. Amidst singing and candlelight at Vespers, Thomas Becket stood at the Cathedral altar, knowing the armoured knights were coming: 'Here I am, not a traitor of the King, but a priest. Why do you seek me?' After their clamouring and brandishing of hatchets and axe, he knew his fate, bent his head in submission.
The chaos embedded in these characters' world is made clear through physical symbols - Chiron flees from bullies into an abandoned drug den, where he finds a used syringe and holds it up to the light like a talisman - and by the camera, which trails and circles the characters, or locks onto their faces, a conduit for their grief or desperation or lust or rage or joy. Bursts of actual violence or dramatic confrontation are rare. Where they occur it is their emotional content that is most confronting.
I put in my journal: 'a full moon tonight, crisp and splendidly clear for our walk around the shore and back to the resort' ... What did the Israeli professor remark? 'It bodes well on Hoshana Rabbah that we are casting shadows in moonlight.' Though our Chinese friend had little to say following this evening's lecture, he was right about the yellow plum at the bottom of the lake.