Category Archives: Diary

A launch

Posted on 16 May 2011 | Leave a comment

Ursula Dubosarsky’s new book, The Golden Day, was launched yesterday with a suitable sense of occasion. I’d spent the morning as an extra in a rap video clip (about which I may blog some other time), but no one at the launch seemed to notice that my usually shiny forehead was sporting a light dusting of make-up.

We were at Nutcote Cottage, home of May Gibbs, a lovely site for a launch. The golden light of a fine Sydney autumn afternoon, tiny muffins, cupcakes and Lamington slices would have made the mood celebratory even without a subject. As you see from the pic a new Dubosarsky book draws quite a crowd: from the publishing world, family, writers (not just for children), artists and illustrators, colleagues, Marrickville dwellers, the wife of a former Federal Minister, former students of SCEGGS Darlinghurst and even some of the book’s target audience, that is to say, children.

The Nutcote lawn

Julie McCrossin presided. Drawing on her experience as radio interviewer and stand-up comedian, she put Ursula through her paces, quizzing her about her inspiration for the book. It’s set in a genteel girls church school in the inner eastern suburbs of Sydney, a school that evidently bears an uncanny resemblance to SCEGGS Darlinghurst, of which both Julie and Ursula are alumnae. Calling on contributions from other Old Girls, they evoked a startling picture of uniformed schoolgirls making their way from the bus stop to the school gates though filthy streets where junkies and prostitutes hung out. One member of the class of ’78 was coaxed by Julie into saying that she didn’t remember much out of the ordinary, apart from an occasional flasher and the naked woman who appeared in a doorway one morning asking her to get help.

‘There are myriad kinds of writers,’ Ursula said, responding to Julie’s pressing her for the meaning of some of the incidents in the book. ‘I’m the kind of writer who lets herself go to the dream.’ I quote this because it rings so very true of Ursula’s work, but also because just a few moments later Julie referred to the ‘ ‘myriad of influences’ she detected in the book (Picnic at Hanging Rock, classical myth, etc), thereby adding a little fuel to the fire of a conversation I’ve been having recently about usage: Ursula the classicist uses ‘myriad’ as I do; Julie the journalist agrees with my journalist friend. (Are you reading this, L–?)

Julie: Might I suggest that there's an underlying theme of sexual awakening? Ursula: Oh, that's what my book's about!

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Sydney Ideas: Spirited Muslim Women

Posted on 29 Apr 2011 | Leave a comment

We headed off before dinner last night to another well attended Sydney Ideas talk in the new Law School building: Dr Amina Wadud on ‘Spirited Voices of Muslim Women in Islamic Reform Movements’.

We hadn’t read the fine print on the web site, and didn’t realise that the talk was part of a symposium, ‘Spirited Voices from the Muslim World: Islam, Democracy and Gender Rights’, or that the talk was preceded by a performance by the University of Sydney Gamelan Orchestra. So we were pleasantly surprised to arrive at a very full auditorium that sounded like a Balinese night. Marie Bashir, the Governor of NSW, who is also the Chancellor of the University and acting Governor General, launched the Symposium before Dr Wadud took the lectern. The last time I saw her launch anything it was a book published by South Sydney Youth Services, and she brought the same respectful gravitas to that room full of pierced and tattooed young people as to this gathering of distinguished academics.

Amina Wahud is at the forefront of the ‘gender jihad’ – the struggle for gender justice within the global Islamic community. Actually, I just re-read the blurb about her on Sydney Ideas website, and realised that it gives a very adequate summary of the talk:

Dr Wadud’s writings and vision for gender equality, within an Islamic ‘tawhidic paradigm’, incorporate the wider struggle against other forms of oppression such as racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, economic exploitation and the erasure of human dignity.

She described how at the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 the Muslim women met with the aim of coming up with a joint statement, but no agreement could be reached between those who talked in terms of a human rights agenda and those who talked in terms of Islam. She went away from that meeting determined to find a way of reconciling the two, of finding, as she said, epistemological, theological, and other kinds of logical grounds for a Muslim feminism. Like Professor Muhammad Abdel Hameen on the Book Show recently, she has a thoughtful, non-literalistic approach to the Qur’an and pretty much scorns the approach that would take isolated verses as prescriptions for living.  She takes the concept of ‘tahwid’, which is literally the notion that God is One, central to Islam, and argues from it that all humans are equal because each has a direct relationship to God the Transcendental.

I’m not at all engaged in Islamic theology, but it was a joy to hear this flexible alternative to the version of Islam that dominates the airwaves. Dr Wadud began her talk with an invocation of God in Arabic, and when she mentioned the Prophet she said something in Arabic, presumably the traditional ‘Upon him be peace and blessings’. It seems to me that to wage a feminist struggle from inside Islam in this way must be more fruitful in the long run than any number of feminist denunciations of Islam.

There were other, smaller joys. Dr Wadud, who was born in Maryland, USA, wore a shalwar kameez with an elaborate scarf tied over her hair, and a loose scarf over that. For the first quarter hour of the talk, this loose scarf kept trying to fall off. As we strove to follow her explanation of the background to her theoretical work, she had a struggle of her own, repeatedly hitching the back over her head. In the end, the scarf won. The other small joy only made itself known in the Q&A: Dr Wadud explained that some of her points would have been clearer if she had used her PowerPoint version of the talk, but she has moved to an iPad and wasn’t able to connect it to a projector. The joy: we had a person talking to us, instead of to a bunch of explanatory slides.

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Wafu

Posted on 24 Apr 2011 | 9 comments

Last night half a dozen of us had dinner at Wafu to celebrate a sixtieth birthday. Wafu is an establishment with policy. Evidently, Yukako – the owner, chef and entire wait staff – found that as her restaurant became popular some years ago she was appalled to realise she was becoming part of the great system of waste that prevails in the West. She decided to lay out some requirements. The restaurant is now open only to members and their guests, and there’s a sign near the front door asking visitors NOT to enquire how to become members. The Art Student (who insists that one newspaper article doesn’t mean she has to give up that title) and I, guests of a member, arrived before the rest of our group. Yukako welcomed us and gave us a sheet outlining the policies. Here they are, from the website:

To contribute towards creating a sustainable future we request a little more of our guests than most other restaurants. Please bear in mind the following points.

DO NOT WASTE FOOD
“Please imagine people who live on the other side of the earth – every 6 seconds, one child under the age of 5 dies because they have no food”
Be mindful of the amount of food you order – try to order just the right amount, in harmony with your appetite. When eating with company, please consider sharing meals, family-style, as you would at home. We request that any dishes ordered be finished, as far as possible.

DO NOT WASTE CONTAINERS
“Please imagine wild animals”
If purchasing takeaway meals, please remember to bring your own containers. Sturdy, long-lived containers are the best. Failure to do so will result in a surcharge, and possible refusal of service.
We advocate respect for food, waste prevention and doing what is best for the environment. Help us to do what we can to shape our future!

“Please re-think”we can do more preventative things before resorting to the 3Rs
(Reuse, reduce & recycle)

Eat-in Policy
First, read our policies and mission statement on our front door or on our website. If you agree to our terms (namely, not wasting food and sharing meals as if you would at home) we will gladly welcome you to Wafu.
Please note that vegetables and salad on the side are NOT decorations; they are part of the meal too. Finishing your meal requires that everything is eaten except lemon slices, gari (sushi ginger) and wasabi.
If you think you might have trouble finishing your meal, order a little less or tell us in advance so that we might put less rice on your plate, for example. As an extra precaution, you could also bring a sturdy reusable container.
“We hope you always keep a suitable container in your bag”

Takeaway Policy
Takeaway orders are available. Please allow extra time for large orders. It is best to pr-order your takeaway meal via SMS. Please be clear in what you want to order and make sure you bring a sufficient amount of containers or plates (bring extra if you are unsure).
Please bring your own reusable storage containers or plates.
However, please ensure that the containers or plates have been well washed and dried – unclean containers will cause food to go off.
When using your own storage containers for takeaway food, we will give you a 30% discount and stamp your Wafu card towards the reward of a $20 voucher to be used for anything in the store!
Trying to order takeaway without your own containers or plates may also result in refusal of service. We advocate respect for food, waste prevention and doing what is best for the environment. Help us to do what we can to shape our future!

What this version doesn’t include is the threat of expulsion if a diner doesn’t clean up everything on her or his plate. Last night, I ate every grain of brown rice, every curl of spring onioon, every drop of sauce. When two of us ordered the salmon hotpot, Yukako recommended that they order one between them, and it turned out she was right .

At the end of the evening, I’m pleased to report, the Art Student and I were given membership cards.

Oh, and the gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, egg-free, vegan friendly food was excellent, though I’ll skip the chocolate soy mousse dessert next time.

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Zero Carbon by 2030 at Sydney Town Hall

Posted on 20 Apr 2011 | 2 comments

Last night we went to hear Peter Harper, Coordinator of Zero Carbon Britain, speak at the Sydney Town Hall. The topic was ‘Zero Carbon by 2030 – Britain’s dream or reality?’ As the advance publicity put it, Zero Carbon Britain is

a plan offering a positive realistic, policy framework to eliminate emissions from fossil fuels within 20 years. Zero Carbon Britain(ZCB) brought together leading UK thinkers, including policy makers, scientists, academics, industry and NGOs to provide political, economic and technological solutions to the urgent challenges raised by climate science.

Governments and businesses seem paralysed and unable to plan for a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy. ZCB shows what can be done by harnessing the voluntary contribution from experts working outside their institutions. The ZCB report, released in June 2010, provides a fully integrated vision of how Britain can respond to the challenges of climate change, resource depletion and global inequity, with the potential for a low-carbon future to enrich society as a whole.

(Download the PDF here.)

The talk itself was a great mood lifter. First, the setting: it’s hard to be gloomy about the future in the elaborate colonial prettiness of the refurbished Town Hall Foyer. Then the introduction by Robyn Williams, icon of enthusiasm for scientific enquiry: after an obeisance to current ABC pusillanimity with the mantra ‘I’m from the ABC and I have no opinions of my own’, he told us that the Science Show had broadcast three programs on Peter Harper’s base, the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, over the years, and generated a lot of interest. The audience was great, producing a supremely lively, smart, on-topic Q & A: as one of my friends said, when an event receives this little much publicity in the mainstream media, the people who know about it are likely to know a lot about the subject.

Peter Harper is a scientist with style. He began and ended with photos of his granddaughter. ‘Why am I doing this?’ he asked at the start. ‘Because of her.’ He went on, ‘I often ask my great-great-great-granddaughter what to do next, and though she hasn’t been born yet, she’s a sharp tongued little hussy and says good things.’ He characterised the ‘leading thinkers’ who had prepared the framework as greenies and geeks, and put his argument for a strategic approach to climate change (as opposed to much frantic activity around short term projects that often turn out to be cul de sacs) with wit, warmth and a lucid slide show.

One of my take-homes is what he called the Canute Principle. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with British lore, he told the story of King Canute ordering the tide not to come in so as to demonstrate to his obsequious courtiers that there are limits to kingly power. The principle: ‘Physical reality trumps political reality.’ That is, there may be any number of political reasons not to act on climate change, or to take short term actions that lead nowhere, but any plan that aims to actually deal with the dangers needs to take account of the physical world. Let me say that again in bold: Physical reality trumps political reality. Isn’t that elegant?

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Sydney Ideas: Gregory Crewsdon

Posted on 17 Apr 2011 | 2 comments

Sydney Ideas is a program of public lectures presented each year by Sydney University. The Art Student* and I have attended sporadically, always to our benefit. Tim Flannery on global warming, Sara Roy on Palestine and Margaret Levi on trade unions and social justice in the US and Australia, for instance, stand out. All of those lectures were at the Seymour Centre, on the edge of the university’s sprawl. This year, the program seems to have migrated across City Road into the grounds of the University itself. On Friday night we went to see US photographer Gregory Crewsdon in the new Law School building. At least it’s new to me, and as I approached it from the west, I was gobsmacked by the way it opens out onto a view of Victoria Park and the city.

This was probably the best attended talk that we’ve been to in the series., possibly because it was co-hosted by the Power Institute and attracted Fine Art students, possibly because Gregory Crewsdon is a celebrity among those students. Certainly, it was a young crowd.

The talk was interesting, with slides of Crewsdon’s work and books on sale in the foyer. His photographs were described in the publicity for the talk as ‘disturbingly beautiful, large-scale, small-town American landscape narratives’. He chatted interestingly about them to an Art Professor and then answered questions. We left  half way through the inevitable question using words like eidos and had an animated conversation over dinner about artists and entitlement.

You see, ‘large-scale, small-town’ images require enormous resources in the making. Crewsdon started out with what he called a ‘renegade’ process. Without any kind of permit, but with the cooperation of the local people, he took images from a high crane of people doing odd things: laying turf in the main street, planting flowers like traffic calmers and so on. He moved on to creating works on sound stages, that had David Lynch or Hitchcock–like neurosis hovering in the frame. And then, he took ‘the work’ outside again, and here’s where questions of entitlement came up for us. To create the image he wants, he might need to have a house on fire – the local fire brigade supplies him with a dozen houses they are willing to burn down for his purposes. He needs snow but not enough has fallen, so he brings in a snow machine. To create a single image, he has a huge crew, including a Director of Photography. The ‘renegade’ work involved engagement with a community. Once he had official status and access to more resources (no one said where the money came from, but he is a professor at Yale), the process looks much more like big business – all the paraphernalia of a movie set. The Art Student and I had been listening earlier in the day to Naomi Klein’s TED talk about advanced capitalism’s reckless plundering of resources. It was hard not to see Crewsdon’s artistic process as part of that recklessness: ‘I want this image to show a certain psychological state of alienation, and I’ll do whatever I need to do to make it.’ Carbon footprint? Social impact? Cost–benefit ratio? Not relevant. I remember Richard Wherrett saying decades ago – yes, I am a Baby Boomer – that theatrical productions like Jesus Christ Superstar were of dubious morality because of the human cost of mounting them: more than one person died building the sets of the Sydney production. As far as I know no one has died for  a Gregory Crewsdon photograph, but houses have been destroyed in a nation where homelessness is a significant problem. But then, how do you calculate the cultural benefit created?

Sadly, the Art Student, for whom these concerns were most vividly in mind, was too cranky to put them as a question rather than an attack.
—–
* She insists that one journalist calling her an artist doesn’t change anything. She’s still a student, and arguably still in kindergarten.

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A near immersive art experience

Posted on 10 Apr 2011 | Leave a comment

The one formerly known as the art student (TOFKATAS) and I are just back from a short weekend in Canberra – overnight in a wotif mystery hotel, and most of the rest of the time at the National Gallery.

The gallery’s new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rooms are just fabulous, and I hope to spend a lot more time in them. From early Papunya boards to the work of urban Aboriginal artists, the collection is dizzyingly rich, and the presentation is superb. And occasionally it got personal. Tony Albert’s ‘Ash on Me‘, for one tiny example, consists of the words ‘Ash on me’ painted on the wall and, as you might not be able to tell from the photograph at the link,  decorated with actual ashtrays, most of them with images of Aboriginal faces or figures, some with Australian flora or fauna. It’s a powerful statement in anyone’s terms, but I was grabbed by the throat when I saw this on the S:

In  case you can’t see, it’s a kookaburra with the words ‘Innisfail Qld’. It was borne in on me that this was an object from my Innisfail childhood, that ashtrays just like these with cute, noble, comical or otherwise stereotyped Aboriginal figures were an unquestioned part of the world I grew up in. I was implicated.

We also spent time with James Turrell’s ‘skypace’ Within Without, which from the outside looks like an artificial grassy hill with a rock dome rising from the middle of it, approached by a path between expanses of water. Inside, it’s an ochre pyramid with a huge basalt stupa in the middle, surrounded by eerily turquoise water. The space is filled with the sound of water overflowing. You walk across a flat bridge to enter the stupa – around its inside wall is a bench that seats about 20 people. The bench, it turns out, is heated. There’s a large oculus (a word I know from the Pantheon in Rome) in the middle of the roof, and a patch of coloured stone in the middle of the floor. If I hadn’t been introduced to Turrell’s work on Naoshima in Japan a couple of years ago, I might have had a quick look and moved on, because nothing much was happening. But we sat for at least an hour, and watched the oculus as its patch of sky grew deeper and deeper blue until it was pitch black against the whiteness of the inner wall, which we gradually realised has its own light source, and wasn’t somehow trapping light from outside. The sky couldn’t really be as black as it looked to us, I thought, and announced that I was gong to take a stroll around the inside of the triangle. I walked out the door of the stupa and, looking up at the deep blue, starry sky, took a step to the right – up to my calves in now invisible water. Fully shamefaced, I went back to my place on the heated bench, took my shoes and socks off and endured the amiable mockery of what had become a small community of Turrellites.

If you’re in Canberra, I do recommend that you spend time in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Galleries, and that you let the James Turrell space work on you – but take seriously the signage saying that the work of art does not meet Australian Safety Standards for Buildings.

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Airport interlude

Posted on 28 Mar 2011 | 2 comments

Last night I spent a couple of hours at the International Airport. I was waiting for someone who had booked on a JetStar flight from New Zealand. According to the web, their flight was a couple of hours late, at 7.20, and also cancelled. When I phoned JetStar in the afternoon, the person I spoke to said that meant it was arriving at 7.20. Once I arrived at the airport it was clear that it was actually cancelled, but since I hadn’t heard from my friends since the morning it was likely that they had been bumped onto the next available Qantas flight, a surmise with which the Travel Concierge agreed. Customs couldn’t help – the rules are that information about passenger lists can be revealed only three hours after a plane arrives. Thanks for that, regulators! I went looking for someone from JetStar, but their second-floor office was closed and their first-floor check-in desks deserted. I was collecting my email regularly on my phone, and my stranded friends finally managed to get word to me that they weren’t flying out until very early this morning, hoping fervently that they’d make their connecting flight to the US.

But stories about JetStar stuff-ups are commonplace, and that’s not what I wanted to write about. (My friends are now flying across the Pacific.)

An Emirates flight arrived during my vigil, and the waiting area was filled with Middle Easterners – plenty of women in hijabs and one in a niqab, a pleasant music of spoken Arabic, much familial kissing. When I was wandering aout the near-deserted third level, no doubt with a lost and confused look on my face, three young men came bounding up the stairs. One of them accosted me, speaking in rapid, excited Arabic, gesturing for me to join them. ‘I don’t speak Arabic,’ I said. He replied with more incomprehensible syllables, but this time made a fleeting gesture, not so much miming for my information as involuntarily illustrating his meaning – a slight bow of the head and two hands patting the air in front of his torso. ‘Ah, you’re going to pray,’ I said. He had no idea what I was talking about, and rushed off with his friends on their urgent quest.

I went back to the wall map I had been consulting, this time looking for any information about a prayer room. Sure enough, there was a little icon in the legend at the bottom showing a kneeling figure. I called them back and all four of us searched for the icon on the map itself. We found toilets, lifts, a first aid room, maybe a fire extinguisher, but no prayer room. We parted company, me heading back to the arrival gates, them about to settle, I expect, for a deserted patch of corridor where they could face in the correct direction and not be disturbed.

It was a surprisingly sweet encounter. Maybe the most sweetly surprising part was having someone assume I was Muslim, and probably, pink though I am, an Arab. It must be the famous Shaw nose.

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happy birthday

Posted on 12 Mar 2011 | 5 comments

Yesterday she who was formerly known as the Art Student but is still waiting for a new blogname turned 60. Nine of us are in Adelaide to celebrate- partly as a way for her to avoid having a party but mostly because she gets to take us with her visiting childhood sites, and we all get to WOMADelaide. At this morning’s birthday breakfast, I kept to my own precedent and read a sonnet. I wrote the last word just as the former Art Student came to collect me for breakfast, so it hasn’t exactly had time to ripen, but here it is:

For three score years you’ve been alive
and kicking up your heels, down doors,
my love and swive for thirty five,
co-parent, partner, joy’s main cause.
The psalmist gives you ten more years.
The Chinese give you rabbit ears:
wear red, a fresh start now, they tell us.
The Hindus say, Be forest dwellers:
reflect, find meaning now, make art.
There’s grimness, earthquakes, rising seas.
We know one day you’ll break my heart
or I yours by dying. Please,
though earth grows warmer by the hour
it’s still a garden. You’re still a flower.

[With acknowledgement of a line from Carolyn Kizer’s ‘Afternoon Happiness’]

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M-Day plus 4

Posted on 23 Jan 2011 | 8 comments

Three men and a van took our worldly goods from Annandale to Marrickville on Wednesday.

We were very unsystematic about telling our neighbours we were moving – it’s been just one incidental conversation at a time. Mostly people say they’re sorry to see us go, and seem to mean it. One man told me that when he was young and needing move out of his parents’ place, his wife came home one day saying she’d found a place for rent in Marrickville. ‘Marrickville!’ he replied, ‘Why not just go to Redfern?’ Just in case I didn’t get it, he paraphrased: ‘Why stop halfway? Why not go straight to the bottom?’ He went on after a beat, ‘It turned out we had the best two years of our lives there.’ So here we go: on our way to the bottom, or heading for unexpected bliss?

I’m going to need a new masthead image. This isn’t it, but here’s a quick phone snap of what the view above shot had become midmorning Wednesday:

The little man from our front door elected to stay in Annandale as a piece of public art:

The move was no more nightmarish than you’d expect. Nothing broke – though we did discover that a little Balinese soapstone sculpture in the garden had been knocked into the pond by an enthusiastic little dog and lost its head as a result. A dab of glue restored his head and a day in the sun removed most of the swampy smell.

Four days after the event, the new house almost feels like home. We’ve enjoyed the kindness of friends: one made us dinner and brought it around on the evening of the move; three lots of friends who live on this side of Parramatta Road  have just dropped in, a brilliant way to make us feel like part of a neighbourhood. We live much closer to the street here, so I’m entertained by the passing parade as I sit at my desk– many family groups, as the Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre is close by. Penny’s dog sculpture is now much more obvious to passers-by: a schoolgirl offers her a lick of her iceblock; a small child tells her father, ‘It’s only a pretend dog.’

Gas and electricity are on. Mail and phone redirection are working. The floor has been restumped. Rooms have been painted. The moving boxes have been taken back by the removalists. Halogen down lights have been replaced by vastly expensive LEDs that we’re told will pay for themselves in no time at all. A sp[ace is well on the way to becoming a studio for the Art Student. Pictures are going up on the walls. Books are in bookcases, though will need some re-ordering.  Settlement on our old home, now an empty shell smelling of cleaning products, was scheduled for Friday but because of a bank stuff up will actually happen tomorrow. Last night we walked to the movies in Newtown. We’re being urged by our younger son to have a house warming, and perhaps we will …

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M-Day minus 4: First mail, last juice

Posted on 15 Jan 2011 | 1 comment

The first item of mail has been delivered at our new address, a parcel containing a copy of Ruth Park’s Harp in the South, from a South Australian BookMoocher, in plenty of time for my next Book Group meeting. Note the artful smudging of personal details in the photo, enabled with minimal fuss by iPhoto.

And this morning, after decades of daily service at breakfast time, our  juicer blew its motor and has been consigned without ceremony to the pile of stiff that will be taken away on Monday by 1300RUBBISH.

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