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Snapshots December 29, 2004
THAT BIG WAVE
she said
terrible!
a disaster!
that big wave!
mega tsunami
phone lines
all jammed
every-one ringing
can't get through
to the agents
it's awful
we had our
best holiday
booked at
yes Phuket!
now we shall
have to find
somewhere else
the Caribbean
or something
but sadly he is
so disappointed
but luckily we
were insured
and we can
get a refund!
pmcmanus n590
reported conversation
from my allotment I was rather gobsmacked
not one word about the victims wow
***
some events defy capture
till time has passed
are just too big
to turn themselves
easily into poems
anyway
who would want to be
poet laureate
for the world's disasters
sometimes
words are just
countless bodies
floating on a churning sea
defying you to
make some sense
of them
Jim Bennett
***
A ladyfriend and I had dinner at Scarborough beach last night, and I must
admit I had to sit with my back to the ocean - even though it was calm. My
poems in response to disasters only make another disaster, so I wrote a love
sonnet (of sorts) ... My personal occasion of love is only part of the love
I share for all those people who remain and have lost loved ones and so much
property ...
Old time rhyme once tied _Love_ up into
tidy packages - a comparison
here, a red rose there. Now we speak of
the present as the present of itself
leaving the past in our wake, the future
in bigger hands than ours to plot and plan.
(If that's God laughing, the joke's on us.)
We have our miles up on the clock, yet
we move through the chicanes like tactful fish,
once bitten, now rushingly shy again,
waters clear, uncongested, hazards few.
Off the sunset coast the golden orb sets ...
'Sixty!' crashes loudly over the tables -
fish'n'chips for two, haute cuisine of love.
Andrew Burke
***
'there is a lot of ruin
in a nation'
so much beyond this dark
night sky
white ground
held together by
the slow fall
ing snow flakes
their silence
a veil & reproach
before the gathering ruin
in so many nations
silence alone
no voice
as ever before death
singular or
improbably beyond counting
a few bent notes
blue
hover still
in the bleak air
Wednesday 29.XII.04
Douglas Barbour
***
Slide Show: The Hats (and Gloves) That Came in From the Cold
This winter, traditional mufflers, hats and gloves are getting untraditional
embellishments.
Front Row
Taking the pulse of the fashion world, at the consignment shop.
A Snippet of Fur
Fur boleros and capelets are being worn to the dinner table.
• Go to Fashion & Style
WHAT TO BUY
Slide Show: Barware
Sleek new bar equipment not only eases the host's job but also provides
glamorous visuals for guests, putting an extra happy in the new year.
Giving Prosaic Rooms an Exotic Accent
Three new stores are now offering a variety of imports, and anyone can mix
the exotic with the mundane.
• Slide Show: Personal Shopper
Warmed by the Glow
Substituting for candles this year are fresh takes on ancient oil lamps.
• Light to Soften the Suburbs
• Go to Home & Garden
WHERE TO GO
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Restaurants: Sushi at Masa Is a Zen Thing
Masa, which receives four stars, will take you to the frontier of how
expansively good a single (and singular) bite of sushi can make you feel.
$25 and Under: Korean Treats, Grilled at the Table
At the Korean spot Chung Moo Ro in Midtown, barbecue is the main attraction
by design.
Everyone's Driven to Eat. How Many Arrive in a Bentley?
Amy Fine Collins, the author of the new book "The God of Driving," and her
driving instructor tour New York's eateries.
Bar of the Week: Snitch
Years after losing Tramps, Chelsea once again has a kicking rock club,
albeit one that's much smaller and a bit of an L.A. transplant.
ENTERTAINING
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
The Price Is to Gulp, but the Champagne's to Sip
The Times's wine panel recently sampled 23 top Champagnes, and found a rare,
consistent excellence.
• Interactive Feature: Wines of The Times
Take a Cup of Tapas Yet for Auld Lang Syne
Spanish food, especially tapas style, is easy to prepare, serve and enjoy,
making it perfect for a New Year's party.
Roses, Chocolate and an Urge to Inhale
Pichet Ong, the pastry chef at Spice Market restaurant in Manhattan,
combines rose and chocolate into one very romantic dessert.
The Pancake, Perfected
There is a point at which pancakes become closer to dessert than breakfast,
as great Swedish pancakes prove.
• Go to Dining & Wine
ONLY IN NEW YORK
Stores Come, Stores Go, and Other Stores Simmer
Gerry Nally, who owns the Seaport Watch Company in the Pier 17 mall, feels
as if he's aboard a sinking ship these days.
The Rise and Decline of a Hapsburg Empire
Mocca, a venerable restaurant that spent more than 40 years on the same
block before closing, was a vestige of old German and Eastern European
Yorkville.
F.Y.I.
Q. I came across a reference to "Cake Day" as a traditional holiday in old
New York, and grew curious. It sounds like a child's birthday party.
• Go to The City
• Go to NYC Guide
WORD OF MOUTH
In answer to last week's question: Whether you're spending New Year's Eve at
a formal dinner, a glamorous party or just a low-key night with friends,
it's fun to dress it up a little. What are you pulling out of the closet to
ring in 2005?
butchyboy said: "This year I'm heading to Ibiza for a wonderful New Year's
week of revelry thrown by friends. I plan to pull out of the closet, my
latest fashion addition from Tom Ford ... the velvet coat. It may be warm in
Ibiza, but any man will feel as 'cool' as a N.Y. winter in a Gucci velvet
coat."
pupepup said: "I will be having a low key evening ... comfortable and casual
— trousers, a cashmere sweater type of thing with a warm coat so that I can
go outside for fireworks viewing."
This Week's Question
"Introduce more color into wardrobe." ... "Throw out all baggy pants." ...
"Wait two weeks before buying trendy items." What are your fashion and
style resolutions?
Oh I could have compiled something similar from the Melbourne newspapers.
Max Richards
***
Tsunami / Poem
"The coughing cacophony", no one wants to hear a poem
About a cold, no one wants to write a poem about a cold,
Everyone I know has a cold, or is getting over one or knows
They will have one. In the day time it's socially bearable, acceptable
To talk about your cold, but at night, with nobody there
But the body beside you, the involuntary coughing of both of you, a music,
Its jagged edges cut out thought, cut out dream:
A dentist with a drill touching the nerve. Who in the hell wants to read
A poem about this, the poet who makes music out of fucking coughing,
Strained muscles around the chest and not capable of saying anything
On top of which it is too cold to get up and make tea, or drink water,
Or suck on sweet lozenges; it's just an unroyal pain when, finally,
You fall asleep only to dream you are in a weight room lifting 500 pounds
Worth of barbells. Somehow you have gotten the load of steel high
Above your head but there's no way to breathe or bring the bells down;
You wake up stunned, and again, cannot fall asleep, while the mind's eye
Cannot keep from a monumental white fringed wave, a 100 foot high
Wall of water on "home video" on a beach in Sri Lanka about to crash
Followed by bodies and buses at float equally in the swirl of waters
And how can you be sweating the intimate pain of a cold between sheets
While the "forces of nature", these quakes and ocean forces, ripped open
The earth's skin to which Lear's 'but flies to the gods" is not at all
A useful quote in that these, these children, families and so-called
"Tourists" are not flies, but human beings dying there, dying right there
On the TV screen and there is absolutely not one thing (not one spell, not
Any medicine, not any "great military nation", not even one honest ballot,
Not one goddamn thing that anyone can do about it; there's not even a music
That one will ever write, other than its own strange, terrible music, one
In which one suspects the world was once first born, and for that witness,
That knowledge - so awesome, so terrible - maybe one can be grateful,
humble & charitable, or maybe not; for the dead remain really dead and,
Beyond the grief of so many, there is a silence around the bodies, a silence
To which no one can speak, an unbearable silence that cannot but claim us
Into which and where we know not a thing.
Stephen Vincent
***
OF ANDY GOLDSWORTHY,
otherwise, nothing.
Farming is very sculptural,
at times it is more difficult than.
Not just about little
dainty things.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring MD US / 12-29-04 (1:19 PM)
I hadn't expected Andy Goldsworthy to be my subject this week, but chance
presented me with less than 30 minutes advance notice of one shot at brief
video coverage which I might not have seen, given that it was prompted by
the geographic proximity of his site-specific sculptural installation in
progress, "ROOF". The artist formally describes it as "several hollow, low-
profile domes of stacked slate, each with a centered oculus", and I should
mention that it is situated outside on the ground level. Commissioned by
the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, "ROOF" is due to be completed
February 2005 and visitors can view its process of composition through
glass from inside the museum as well as from the sidewalk outside, though
they are instructed not to talk to ("interrupt") the artist.
***
Tsunami
It's beyond comprehension. Each morning, the number grows: 22,000;
44,000, 58,000, 76,000 --
This entire city, its booksellers, its bureaucrats, its shopkeepers,
gone. Homes, grocery stores, apartment buildings, libraries, swept
away. Its grandmothers, gardeners, carpenters, and all of its
children, dead. Bodies in the broken streets.
It's beyond imagining.
this morning
a dead sparrow
on the frozen ground
Sharon Brogan
***
ars moriendi
"a complete and intelligible guide to the business of dying, a method to be
learned while one is in good health and kept at one's fingers' ends for use
in that all-important and inescapable hour." O'Connor, Sr. Mary Catherine.
The Art of Dying Well. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1942.
swooning
carried away
lost
expired, passed over
acabar sus dias
succumbed, perished
subir al cielo
slipped away, departed,
fallecer
met one's end, taken one's
last
gone
entered into eternal
entregar el alma
fuair ba/s, received into
glory
approximations of comfort
a spin of a wheel, mandala
a snap for memory
Deborah Humphreys
Newark, NJ
10:47 am
***
n
u a
ts mi
tsunami
--series of catastrophic ocean waves generated by submarine movements, which
are caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
landslides beneath the ocean, or an asteroid striking the earth. In the open
ocean, tsunamis may have wavelengths of up to several
hundred miles and travel at speeds up to 450 mi per hr (720 km per hr), yet
have wave heights of less than 3 ft (1 m), which pass
unnoticed beneath a ship at sea. The period between crests of tsunami waves
varies from 5 min to about 1 hr. When tsunami approach
shallow water along a coast, they are slowed, causing their length to
shorten and their height to rise sometimes as high as 100 ft
(30 m). When they break, they often destroy piers, buildings, and beaches
and take human life. The wave height as they crash upon a
shore depends almost entirely upon the submarine topography offshore. Waves
tend to rise to greater heights along gently sloping
shores, along submarine ridges, or in coastal embayments. There is little
warning of approach; when a train of tsunami waves
approaches a coastline, the first indication is often a sharp swell, not
unlike an ordinary storm swell, followed by a sudden
outrush of water that often exposes offshore areas as the first wave trough
reaches the coast. After several minutes, the first huge
wave crest strikes, inundating the newly exposed beach and rushing inland to
flood the coast. Generally, the third to eighth wave
crests are the largest. Since tsunami principally occur in the Pacific Ocean
following shallow-focus earthquakes over magnitude 6.5
on the Richter scale, one of the best means of prediction is the detection
of such earthquakes on the ocean floor with a seismograph
network (see seismology). Tsunamis may be detected by wave gauges, such as
those emplaced as part of the Tsunami Warning System
operating in the Pacific regions. Measurement of sudden sea level changes
from satellites are also used to warn of potential
tsunami. Probably the most destructive tsunami occurred following the
explosive eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in the East Indies
on Aug. 27, 1883, when over 36,000 people were killed as a result of the
wave. Waves were up to 100 ft (30 m) high with speeds
between 350 and 450 mi per hr (560720 km per hr). Its passage was traced as
far away as Panama. It is believed that a 0.6-mi-wide
(1-km-wide) asteroid that struck the ocean SW of New Zealand about A.D. 1500
created tsunamis that reached heights of more than 425
ft (130 m).
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2004 Columbia
University Press.
Halvard Johnson, NYC, 12/29/04 10:16 EST
***
Tantrum
In the morning paper railroad tracks
twisted around themselves
upended rightsided all muddy
that title is impossible it is wrong
let it sit there because that
is what we may feel like throwing
but there is no cause
no object
whatever force or Force made this
possibility was born so this could happen
because the earth is unfinished
even though we might wish otherwise
that the earth could move
not in some Hemingway hot-stuff scene
but in planetary orgasm
the joyless horror indifferent demolition
guys knocking down a Newark movie house
an Irvington housing project
at least are satisfied they are getting paid
nobody gets paid here everyone pays
a woman will sit under the photographer's lens
keen over the bodies of her six children
madly howl like Job
before the propagandists
pushed back the moment when
the poor sonofabitch lost it
she will not curse God and die
she has already died
and curses will make no difference
Kenneth Wolman
***
unholy waters
creating ceaseless absences
at the base of now
boundless ends angels lost
in this bottomless--
proof
no matter what
all can be
unmattered
instantly
Gerald Schwartz
8:33 AM, West Irondequoit, New York
***
dawn
a mother raccoon and three of her pups scampering silhouettes up the corner
and onto the roof of the empty house next door, disappear one, two, three,
four fuzzy humps into the chimney, kiss the bright line of day, the brim of
my cup
Frank Parker
***
HE WANDERED
he wandered
doubtfully
tentatively
into the vast
cavernous
multi halled
supermarket
with all its
countless aisles
alleys corners
sections subsections
but he
missed his way
got totally lost
and his sad pale
desiccated
dehydrated
mummified body
was found
by chance
years perhaps
decades later
in the back of
the seldom visited
loose dried peas.
pmcmanus 10-21
raynesparkuk
***
Water has taken away my family. - Mother, what's happened? I saw you
yesterday and now you're here. You're not dead, you've gone to another
village. Please come back. - We hope the funds allocated for the
people won't be lost to corruption. - It came just like a river.
People were running here and there. They couldn't decide where to go.
- My son is crying for his mother. I think this is her. I recognise
her hand, but I'm not sure. - There just aren't enough body bags.
We thought it was the end of the world. Š The water was as high as a
coconut palm. Š It was all over in 25 minutes. That's all. How can that
be ... such devastation. - Children in emergency wards were killed.
Soldier patients suffering from malaria helped to evacuate other
patients. - I need baby food as well ... no aid has come to us yet.
- No contact makes us fearful. We're trying to send helicopters there.
- Where is the military? They're just taking care of their families.
There is no war in Aceh now, why don't they help pick up the bodies in
the street?
This was the only thing we could do. It was a desperate solution. The
bodies were rotting. We gave them a decent burial. - Police told us
to come and have a look at this collection of ID cards. - We met in
university. Is this the fate that we hoped for? My darling, you were
the only hope for me.
Dead: they are dead, my cousins, their children, many of my husband's
family. There are too many funerals, he has to stay to help them. -
She went under a car, it just went over the top of her. I just got
picked up and chucked against a wall. I was a lucky one: we cheated
death. - Then all of a sudden we saw what looked like a wave surge
into the garden ... at one point I had to scramble up bamboo trees to
avoid the rising water.
I hope and pray that we can at least find their bodies so that we can
see them one last time and give them a decent burial. - Information
reaching here suggests facilities at Kalpakkam nuclear station may have
been affected by the tidal waves. - We don't have confirmed data Š -
The TV, everything gone. - I've got calls from people down south who
need clothes to bury their dead. They have none.
- Wednesday 29 December 2004
Those quoted, in order:
- Anbalakhan, who lost her husband, son and two daughters in the
wrecked village of Karambambari, Tamil Nadu
- a woman at a grave site, Tamil Nadu
- Indonesian House Speaker, Agung Laksono
- Rajith Ekanayake, a security guard at the P&J City shopping centre,
Galle
- Bejkhajorn Saithong, searching for his wife on Khao Lak beach
- Lieutenant-Colonel Budi Santoso, Banda Aceh
- Sofyan Halim, Banda Aceh
- Citra Nurhayat, a nurse in a Banda Aceh hospital
- Nurhayati, who has only had bananas to feed her 3-month-old baby
since Sunday, Banda Aceh
- Djoko Sumaryono, Indonesian government official, says of Simeulue
- Indra Utama, community leader in Banda Aceh
- Venerable Baddegama Samitha, a Buddhist monk and former
parliamentarian, at funeral of Queen of the Sea train wreck victims
near Galle
- Premasiri Jayasinghe, Colombo
- a young man at the site of the Queen of the Sea train wreck near Galle
- Mrs Seeli Packianathan, returning from Sri Lanka, at Sydney Airport
- Les Boardman, returning from Phuket, at Sydney Airport
- Joyce Evans, of Melbourne, in Sri Lanka
- Kolanda Velu, from Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu
- spokesman, Indian Prime Minister's office
- Indonesian Vice-President Yusuf Kalla, in Medan city
- Roshan Perera, at the Catholic church in Mattakkuliya, Colombo
- Kusum Athukorala, local aid worker, Mattakkuliya, Colombo
Jill Jones
***
Zabaione
- listed among the chocolate specials:
for old time¹s sake, I¹ll try it.
While it¹s on the way, I recall
my first ever Italian restaurant.
Auckland, my home town till the sixties,
never had one then, or not for me.
Twenty-five, I make it to London,
proudly get my reader¹s card
for the British Museum Library.
Sitting awed under the great dome,
making notes from the tall worn books
of hand-written catalogue entries,
faithful drudgery of countless scribes,
I pursue a dream of scholarship,
the lives and works of Œmodern poets¹.
At my side a tiny phantom startles me:
Doctor Shepherd! here from Auckland.
Elizabeth Annie, we used to call her,
but never to her face, a pale mask
of nun-like austerity and beauty.
Scholarship incarnate!
Never in her class had I offered
a remark, intimation of fact
or judgment, without trembling.
Now she requests the pleasure
of my company at six this summer
evening at a nearby restaurant.
Fortunately for me, her colleague,
Doctor Pearson, is on hand as well,
and he my first encourager I know
as Bill, slow of speech like me,
and rather shambling (which I like
to think I¹m ceasing to be).
The waiter greets her graciously,
the table for three with its stiff
white linen is in a quiet corner.
Both scholars sense my newness
at this. I accept their guidance,
sip her choice of wine slowly,
and gingerly enjoy the fish.
They talk research; I listen.
Dessert? The menu is Italian.
Like a gentle command,
might she recommend
Zabaglione? Oh, indeed.
Smoothly creamy warmly
whipped egg-yolks with a
tincture of sweet Marsala.
I have the café card still,
all fishing nets and floats.
The doctors are long dead.
And so¹s my dream of scholarship.
Now here comes my Melbourne
suburban zabaione sweetly warm.
Inaccurate scholarship - name,
flavour, texture, not quite the same.
1.00 pm Wednesday December 29, 2004
Max Richards at Cooee,
17 Illawarra Road,
North Balwyn, Vic 3104
***
We're done with the main part, the thighs & turkey breast,
the high holy days, churches ringing in the coming
of the child, Adrian's playmobile nativity,
baby Jesus swooping about on his crib crying
"Help! Help!"
Shops have opened. Snow has stopped.
Christmas extends meekly into the grayness
and all seems to hinge on the next twelve days.
Here is the meat of it. The joyous eve pressed to withstand
the coming span of silence, weekdays that are not weekdays.
No work to be done. Can we play?
Yuletide here is the ebb and flow
of the tide of darkness. Every light stays on all day.
On the twenty-first it turns: the great green world
heaves itself into realignment. Only this time somewhere
on the thin brass axis snapped,
the darkness we were spinning away from compressed,
crunched not into the easy seasonal flow
but a great crashing wave against which no yule logs
fetched from the basement store, no lights strung
in the thorns of the hedge, no TV specials can illuminate.
This is the brittle end of the Christmas tree,
the twelve days of darkness when we hold our breath
between bouts of gingerbread and pork and beer to see
if the sun does turn, or if the evergreen finally breaks
and sheds its needles under the weight of the task.
Knut Mork Skagen
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