Snapshots, January 19, 2005
Winter habit took the stray dog.
A friend got taken as well.
**
Photo:
Dr. Richard Rozen, my dentist since about 1975. A girl friend of my ex-wife
we were not even married then recommended him. My wife was a painter.
Dr. Rozen, she was told, was also painter, so, her logic went, he must be an
³OK guy.² That was true then, and itıs also true now. In fact today, he
says, ³Iıve been painting up a storm.² Indeed, the framed canvases that
surround me while leaning back in the dental chair are filled with
Diebenkornıs California golds and yellows which fill and juggle de Kooning
style shapes - ones that my eye cannot help but compare to molars. Itıs as
if Dr. Rozen, the painter, is in the middle of a late, mid-life
break-through. Whatıs been held back is bursting forth. Heıs also been in a
good mood. Some years I felt itıs been a struggle to keep his chin up. Three
kids, now all grown. One worked in Washington, DC for US Senator Boxer and
now works in public policy for Kaiser Hospital. Another one, his son, is an
actor who does plays locally, but makes his money in industrial
documentaries. I donıt know what the other daughter does. In fact, itıs
nice- or somehow right- not to know the family whereabouts of everybody, to
imagine someone as a mystery, who represents something possibly estranged,
especially, perhaps, if the father is a dentist.
Today, when Dr. Rozen is finished with my teeth, I ask him if I can take his
photograph and, if he will, stand behind his tool tray and in front of this
big new painting. I joke with him about the shapes that look like molars.
³I hadnıt even thought of that,² he says. ³Only you. Only a poet.²
Spontaneously he picks up his drill and holds it up like a miniature
pitchfork. He grins, I suspect, humored by the idea of a dentist, instead of
a farmer, acting out his own version of Grant Woodıs ³American Gothic.²
Poets. Dr.Rozen over the years he has told me is also the dentist for
Jack Gilbert, Carl Rakosi, Lawrence Fixell, and Jack Marshall, among others.
What a world view!
(This is a "day" from Crossing the Millennium, a 1999 journal day book and
photography project that I am currently reproducing on my blog. The photos
are yet to go up.)
Stephen Vincent
***
Two Peninsular Outings
1
I remember my pleasure at thirteen,
beginning on Latin, to learn that
islandı was insulaı, almostı paeneı,
peninsulaı almost islandı.
(The word isthmusı went alongside,
another borrowing to savour,
but Greek I never made a start on -
its alphabet was so un-Roman.)
Savoured again still as we turn left
leaving Geelong for the Bellarine,
and the roads diverge,
delicious choices all of them.
Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads? -
not this time, though a later jaunt
to the Dunes Café would suit,
to see the golden surf at sunset.
Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff - yes,
and crossing The Narrows to the town
is by an isthmus to a mini-peninsula,
and from both you look across The Rip
to that other peninsular tip,
Point Nepean, where the long rich
Mornington Peninsula
(twenty-six golf courses!) peters out.
The Rip! Stand on the cliff-top rapt
at the turbulent narrow opening
where the Bay meets Bass Strait;
thereıs the tiny pilot boat buzzing back
and now some big arriving ship
serene with a local expert on its bridge,
follows it in, tall as the cliff weıre on,
leaving behind the so-called Shipwreck Coast.
Come back then to The Narrows
for the off-leash dog to fling itself
along the designated Dog Beach.
Beware poisonous puffer fish, pooch.
2
These days from Geelong we veer further left
past the Steampacket Gardens,
Limeburners Point, Stingaree Bay,
the Government animal health lab,
oh and the Cheetham Salt Works,
their stark bulldozed pyramids,
their broad evaporation ponds;
past the Moolap industrial estate
where the street-names catch the eye
(Nobility, Anomaly, Moon, Sun),
past the view of the aluminium works -
Point Henry (another mini-peninsula),
over the hill at Leopold (to our left
Pelican Park, Grand Scenic Drive, unsealed)
through Drysdale where the vintage train
terminates beside a genteel lake,
to Portarlington (one word),
for the sake of a b. & b. by the sand.
Over the wide waters to the left,
delectable mountains, You Yangs by name;
ahead, mini-stalks on the horizon:
Melbourneıs skyscrapers;
to the right across the bay, Arthurs Seat;
further round, out of sight, Indented Head.
Now thatıs where Iıd like to live,
Max the poet of Indented Head,
where Pike Street and Whiting Street meet,
in a weatherboard bungalow,
low-care garden of prickly pear,
metal dinghy in the carport,
hammock on the sundeck,
observation tower above;
views of the busy sea-lanes beyond
and inshore the rust-dark paddle-steamer
Ozoneı, scuttled in nineteen twenty-five
and settled there as breakwater.
(Ozone, from the Greek for smell.
Pour me some resinous ouzo, darling,
or the local Bellarine Estate Shiraz,
the one with the narrow neck.)
7.45am, Wednesday 19 January 2005
Max Richards (leaving Melbourne right now
for Portarlington, Bellarine Peninsula)
***
My nose has its own memories.
The smell of a bushfire in our hills
Sends me foggy out of bed at 3.45am.
I stick my head out of five windows
And check the dried leaves for fire.
The smoke has no address on it, so my fear is up.
I can't find fire, so I can't sleep. Slowly
The fog clears and I remember the TV news
Footage of a bushfire and a major burn-back.
I sleep in the lounge where my fears are put out,
Where the red glow of dawn comforts me.
Andrew Burke
***
JLG / JLG
Jean Cocteau
landscape crossed,
given, and a country conquered,
Justice Fielding entered my chambers.
Let's get to work.
Go from shot 6/4 to shot 6/5.
Jamais mort
la duree de l'eternite
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 1-19-05 (12:27 AM)
Written during my first viewing of what Jean-Luc Godard describes as
a "self-portrait in December", an hour-long filmic essay he wrote, directed
& produced in 1994, casting himself as the lead actor. I'm still thinking
about Philippe Sollers' incisive comment, "Of all Godard's films, I think
that JLG/JLG is the one that comes closest to the essential question: what
do we mean by thinking?"
***
OUTSIDE
outside
cold damp
wet windy
inside
warm cosy
man
and cat
share sofa
man snores
cat purrs
cat dozes
on an open
poetry book.
pmcmanus
raynes park-uk
***
after the weight
of eleven dreams
there's the dog shadow
in morning columns
noise is booming
careless radio
street-torn waves
writing that lifts words
busy empty pages
remember
the tunnel
night has made
Jill Jones
Marrickville 19 January 2004
***
shovelling
wind-packed snow
across a hem of pavement
where crystal and dark
emeralds compelled
by wind-chill all
invented by stark
world I read
like a scroll my
thoughts of ourselves
as fireside
beings
steeped in our
makeshifts our
sops
Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit, New York, United Purple States
6:16 am
***
First day
of another term. The snow is blowing
horizontal and
learning is on hold. My word for the day:
deontology.
David Latane
***
mud slides
south or north
coast lines
up such damage un
control
No one can impugn
what has always been
my relation to truth.
& no one does
watch the mud
the slide of
animosity
a relation
in nature
killing some
times
Douglas Barbour
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