Sounds like wish - A quiet place.

19 March, 2012

366 unusual things: days 74-78

14th March – Yesterday I saw a young blind guy walking with a black Labrador guide dog. Today I saw him again closer-up and realised I knew him. I remembered him spectacled and dogless.

15th March – Saw through the rear window of a parked 4WD about ten plastic heads with moveable jaws.

16th March – Offered my figs to a Saudi woman, thinking of her other life she lives, like an Israeli fig-loving friend of mine, near the cradle of civilisation, near the Garden of Eden. But she doesn’t like figs. At all.

17th March – Was given a chance to learn German online for free. I said yes. A mature decision for me, having hated Hitler’s language since childhood.

18th March – This morning I read two 19th-century stories: The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant and Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol. In both, the woman values her existence only when she is pretty and attracts wealthy men. This afternoon I read in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey: ‘If the mind be but well cultivated and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.’

17 March, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Unusual

Death is something I hate thinking about, let alone writing about. But when choosing photos from Egypt in 1942, there are so many whose subject is death that I will inevitably have to consider them. I selected this image which, since my childhood, has always turned me cold but curious, simply because of the caption my father wrote beneath it: Dead City, Cairo. Until last week when I was researching the cemetery near the pyramids (see my entry for the ‘Contrast’ challenge), I never knew that Dead City was a cemetery.

Today there are about half a million people living in the City of the Dead due to Cairo’s exploding population. They live in the tomb buildings as slum-dwellers and have no electricity or sanitation. However, some good people are growing micro-gardens in the Dead City complex which give the residents a way to produce some food for themselves and sell the surplus at the markets. Tomatoes and strawberries, mint, aubergines and peppers are popular and grow well because of their shallow roots, not in soil but in a layer of minerals laid on top of the sand. Read more about the project here: http://www.abitare.it/en/liveinslums/the-microjardins-in-the-city-of-the-dead/

The building in the foreground is in the Mamluk cemetery. It’s the mausoleum of Sultan Al-Ashraf Barsbay, built in 1432 AD.

So through blogging I’ve learnt of three unusual things: Dead City is actually a city built for the dead; half a million people are living amongst the dead; a few others care enough to start vegetable gardens here and improve the lives of poor cemetery dwellers.

14 March, 2012

Contrast

Contrast is the theme for this week’s photo challenge, but it made me think also of contrasting experiences. The poems in my father’s poetry book demonstrate strong contrasts between the life he had led at home in Australia and the life he was struggling to endure in North Africa in 1941/42. Here are the first verses of two poems he recorded that show the difference. I have transcribed the poems (below the images) in case his handwriting is unclear.

The first poem was written by Pte. L. Partridge (NX2196) and was published in the A.I.F. News, 20th December 1941. The Tweed River forms part of the border between the states of Queensland and New South Wales. The countryside and coastline south of the river are fertile and scenic and would well be missed if one was on the other side of the world in a war zone. My father spent a lot of time fishing along this coastline.

The second poem was written by a soldier in Tobruk, a town in Libya which was taken from the enemy by the 2/15th battalion of the A.I.F. (Australian Imperial Forces) at Easter 1941. It was Germany’s first defeat in WWII (Tobruk’s Easter Battle 1941, John Mackenzie Smith).

*The Shell at Dusk,* written by a soldier in Tobruk, Libya, 1941

Springtime on the Tweed

Far away my fancies wander
And in wayward dreams they lead
Out across the blue seas yonder
Where it’s springtime on the Tweed.
There are scrub-clad hills surrounding
The river’s emerald sheen,
Crops of corn and cane abounding,
Wondrous shades of brown and green.

The Shell at Dusk

A flash in the sky, a distant roar
The awful approaching screaming whine,
You drop on your face, in the dust once more
And curse the Hun and his 5 point 9.
She bursts to your left where Fred went to ground,
You’re deaf as a post and covered in dirt,
Hot jagged shrap has whistled around
And that one’s gone, and you’re still unhurt.

13 March, 2012

366 unusual things: days 69-73

9th March – In a Chinese restaurant, I wanted the “Catch of the Day” until I saw it swimming in a tank.

10th March – Walked up my son’s driveway through a litter of apples fallen from a tree. I looked up, hoping to pick one, and indeed there was only one on his side of the fence, but it was too, too high. The fruit-laden branches were on the neighbour’s side.

11th March – In an alternative café, an old wall vent has had its screen removed and replaced with four brass taps. Vent art.

12th March – Last night at midnight we called the police about a party outside the government flats. This morning I read in Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë, an old cottager’s thoughts on the desirable consequences of being nice to unpleasant neighbours: ‘the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree – to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them.’

13th March – Busy selecting potatoes in the supermarket, I heard the sound of heavy leather slapping the floor behind me. When my bag was full I turned round and found a large wallet, but no one close enough to have dropped it. Handed it in.

10 March, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Contrast

‘Egyptian graves’ is the caption below this photo in the album my father brought back from Cairo in 1942. There is a contrast between grave styles: some like theirs pyramidal and reaching up to the sky from the open desert, others prefer to stay close to the ground, in the shade of a tree.

P.S. After submitting this photo for the ‘contrast’ challenge, I did some research about the graves in the foreground and responded to Laura’s comment below. I learned that they are in a modern Muslim cemetery built over the site of the quarry where some of the pyramid blocks came from. Since the time of this photo, 70 years ago, a wall has been built around the cemetery, hiding it from pyramid tourists.

I also discovered that the structure on the left of the photo is the pyramid tomb of Queen Khentkawes (c 4th Dynasty) built on top of a cube of rock which remained after blocks had been cut for the larger pyramids.

9 March, 2012

366 unusual things: days 64-68

4th Mar – I read on my father’s army service form that he had blue eyes, a revelation to me; I never looked him in the eye. My mother and three siblings have brown or grey eyes. I have blue eyes.

5th Mar – A rural commentator on ABC Radio today said he wants ‘action, not just antidotal stories’.

6th Mar – Just heard Cupid by Sam Cooke. Sam asks Cupid: ‘Draw back your bow and let your arrow go straight to my lover’s heart’. But Sam loves a girl who doesn’t know he exists. She can’t be his lover then, since a lover loves.

7th Mar – Thought about a mentor’s advice to use ‘perhaps’, not ‘maybe’. Saw ‘maybe’ in an article and found myself mouthing ‘perhaps’, which purses the mouth with its two p’s and a sibilant s and a breathy h in the middle. The song Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps just wouldn’t work as Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.

8th Mar – In a bookshop, I searched for the translators’ names in three editions of Madame Bovary. The most expensive, a Penguin edition, gave a translator’s name; a cheaper Penguin and the Collins edition made no mention of translators. Perhaps Flaubert wrote them in English.

4 March, 2012

366 unusual things: days 59-63

28th Feb: I felt the pressure of words when I read, across the rear window of a ute in front of me, in large white Gothic lettering, ‘Justify your existence’.

29th Feb: When I go into homes to tutor, some people tell me to leave my shoes on, even on rainy days on fully carpeted floors. I never see them barefoot. Others won’t let me step inside until I’ve removed my shoes, even when they have tiled floors and the day is icy. I never see them shod.

1st Mar: Tonight when I was in the shower, a police car gave its siren a short sharp burst right outside my bathroom window.

2nd Mar: All this rain (4th day) is bringing out garden weirdness. Today my foot just missed a 7-inch long leopard slug; a large caterpillar crossed my undrying washing like an omega Ω; water-retaining crystals used in the drought have jellified and are oozing up out of pot plants and creeping over the sides.

3rd Mar: My son said to his boss today: ‘I’ll just take this back out the back then I’ll be back.’

3 March, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Distorted

Several photos in the war album were taken in India, and while there is no caption accompanying this one, I suspect it was in India because bamboo scaffolding is still used there. Would you climb on it? Clearly, it’s flexible.

29 February, 2012

Indulge

After reading that Shepheard’s Hotel welcomed British Army Officers but not ordinary troops, I thought of this poem that my father wrote. These are his thoughts after an attempt to indulge in a few drinks in a cabaret. The poem is several pages long; here are three of the verses. My transcriptions appear below the images.

Seven Days’ Leave

The digger grinned as he heard his name
They were dishing out the pays,
Next thing, he gave a hearty shout,
He’d got leave for seven days.
That night for him was sleepless,
He couldn’t help but think
If he’d see the sights of Egypt,
Get in a game or drink.

*****

About the town of Tel Aviv
He wandered for a while,
Looking for a lair-up pub
Where he could spend his pile.
He came across a cabaret
But ’twas “For Officers Only”,
He felt a little homesick then,
Almost a little lonely.

A man’s got a ton of bloody dough
And can’t get a bloody drink.
“For bloody officers only” thought he,
Wouldn’t it strike you bloody pink.
After hours of solid searching
And of pests all out to sell
He came across a cobber,
“With him”, he’d been thru hell.

28 February, 2012

February photo challenge: 29th Feb, Something I'm listening to

Pauline Croze has a voice that comforts me; a little bit husky, a little bit of a lisp. She sings clearly and not too fast so I can sing along with her, following the lyrics to practise my French. The jazzy rhythm helps me remember the words; it’s also great for chair dancing. Sometimes I dance on my feet (when no one’s watching).

When I took the photo of this CD cover, an energy-efficient light bulb overhead made her skin too pale. I grabbed a piece of the red organza (see post from 22nd Feb), set the camera timer and held the fabric close to the light bulb. It’s given her a bit of a tan.

I recommend her album even if you don’t speak French.