Life Less Literary

Just doing a periodic prune of my Amazon wish-list (despite the fact that nobody has ever bought me anything from my wish-list, although one person did once claim to have bought the entire list for me [yes Keith, that's you, you lying toerag]) - well, it is nearly Christmas.

Amazon also offer a “buy used” option for any items on the wishlist where somebody’s also selling a used copy - and it’s interesting to see that all but one of the items they’re offering me are actually more expensive used than new (mind you, I did notice on the M John Harrison forum that somebody spotted The Luck in the Head on sale recently for £75, whereas Amazon are offering it to me new for a mere eight quid). Also infuriating to see that Amazon’s “recommendations” based on what other people who also wish for these items have bought is entirely (all 25-odd items of it) derived from the fact that I have The Seven Samurai on my wishlist. Hey guys, I like books too you know, in case you didn’t notice.

More shifting space, moving rooms - Gill and her dad have been busy shoring up the platforms in the downstairs bedrooms, building shelves underneath and moving our existing bookshelves out into the hallway. The shelves look surprisingly well placed there, they make the house look so much more homely than before. On the downside though, everytime I pass the front door I find myself poring over the hundreds of titles I’ve yet to read. Until recently they’ve been stuck away in a corner, where they were hard to scan, but now the whole expanse is there on view, and I can’t help picking out ones I want to read on every pass.

I’m already in the middle of M John Harrison’s Light which I’m enjoying more than any of his books in a long time, it works so well on so many levels. And I’m also working my way slowly through Adobe InDesign Clasroom in a Book, but still I couldn’t resist adding another to my “currently reading” list, an ancient copy of The Penguin Book of Lost Worlds Volume 1, which I think used to belong to my Grandma. I’m rediscovering my obsession with ancient Egypt, kicked off when I was two and the “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibition came to the British Museum at the beginning of 1972.

I think I need a few days off now, so I can do some more reading…

A tidings of magpies seems to have taken up residence in the area - several times I day I see them bickering across the rooftops and in the gutters which my computer looks out over (hmmm… I hadn’t thought of that… Gill is planning to move my office downstairs, if she does I’ll miss out on communing with the birds, but then I guess the kitchen is supposed to be moving up here so at least I’ll be able to carry on my ornithological studies while I cook).

I love magpies, might even go so far as to say they’re my favourite bird. In fact, I love pretty much everything that the word “pied” might be applied to (when I was 17 I used to wear one yellow fingerless glove and one red, and dreamt of owning a costume like the pied piper’s). The sharp contrast between pure white and oily blue-black-green is so visually stunning. And also they remind me of the protagonists of Sanjida’s excellent book, Angel Bird (which I really ought to review for Amazon one of these days).

I’ve seen some nice art made by elephants and cats before, but… maggots?

One, two, three more for the DVD wish list. Palm Pictures music video DVD retrospectives.

I’ve long been obsessed with the patterns created in Islamic art - because Islam bans representational art, a huge tradition of abstract pattern making sprung up, and many mosques and other buildings in the Islamic world are covered with these amazing interlocking patterns.

I used to love trying to draw and paint these (always rather unsuccesfully) when I was about 20, and in Tunisia I searched out as many examples as I could. I also remember Guy making a beautiful website with a similarly patterned background. But I’d forgotten them over the last couple of years. Then, while searching Google for a way to build interlocking weaved shapes in Illustrator (unsuccesfully so far - can anyone help?) I came across this web site. Awesome.

Walking through town today in glorious sunshine, it could almost be one of the last days of Summer, despite a distinct Autumn chill. And yet at the same time, there were people wandering around dressed as santas and snowmen. I’m confused - can’t work out whether this is a result of global warming making the year wind-down later, or global capitalism making Christmas crank-up earlier.

Trying to read books these days is so hard - it’s almost as if my eyes are the
same magnetic polarity as the words I’m reading: no matter how hard I try to force
them down, at the last minute they swoop away from the page and refuse to make
contact. I read and re-read the same passage time and again, but each reading
slots into a bit of my brain far removed from where I stored the previous sentence,
and try as I might I can’t bridge the gap between the two of them.

Currently Watching: Girls in fishnet tights and pixie boots.

It is to my frequent shame that, whenever I do something really exciting which deserves a long blog entry, I end up putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and eventually either giving up completely or writing, months later, whatever fragmented memories I have left by that stage. I felt particularly bad that I wrote nothing about my no-longer-so-recent
trip to Antwerp (who knows, it may still come… one day) and for the last few weeks I’ve been very aware that I need to tell about my glorious August before summer turns to autumn turns to winter. So here goes…

(more…)

Did you know?
The history of “scapegoat” is based on a linguistic misunderstanding. On Yom Kippur, the ancient Hebrews would sacrifice one goat for the Lord and lead another one into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. The ceremony is described in Leviticus, where it is said that one lot shall be cast for the Lord and one for “Azazel.” Modern scholars usually interpret “Azazel” as being the name of a demon living in the desert. But ancient biblical translators thought “Azazel” referred to the goat itself, apparently confusing it with the Hebrew phrase
“‘ēz ’ōzēl,” meaning “goat that departs.” The mistranslation was carried through Greek and Latin into a 16th-century English translation, where the goat was rendered as “scapegoat”; that is, “goat that escapes.”

Seemed somehow relevant.