Thank you, Harrison

20 Saturday Aug 2011

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Harrison Ford to interviewer Margaret Gardiner (The Good Weekend, August 20, 2011): “… I thought the trick to this business was that they pay you fairly. Since they respect you based on how much they pay you, I’ve never been shy about asking for money… I also mean it when I say that I’m in it for the money. That is to say, this is my job. I don’t have another job. I don’t do it for free any more than a plumber does it for free.”

Any book publishers out there listening? Any literary agents out there listening? All you gung-ho wannabe authors out there, I dunno if that would be a wise career move… Consider the energy expended to potential income ratio: a friend of mine paints; it took her about a day to finish a painting she later sold for R12 000 to an American; that’s what I would call a decent return for her time. How long will it take you to complete your first book? Double that. How much of your own money will you spend on learning your craft and editorial advice? Triple that. Before you leave your boring/stressful/dead-end/impossible/unsatisfactory paying full-time job take a long cool sober look at a standard publishing contract. What kind of book sales would you need just to get you through the month? Never mind, there’s always acting… Or plumbing.

PS. Have I broken the cardinal writers’ rule? The comment above is intended to be full of wry wisdom gained with not a note of whine but it’s a fine fine line and easily crossed.

Departures

16 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Departures is the cool name of an astonishingly beautiful Japanese movie (academy award for best foreign-language film) about an out-of-work cellist who ends up working in a funeral home by mistake and proves to have a calling. It makes one think of a Departures lounge at an airport - as if we’re all just in transit from here to somewhere. In the movie the father bequeathes the wonderful idea of stone letters to his young son; he disappears out of the boy’s life but the quaint story remains behind. I experienced the pang of writer’s envy – what a fantastic idea… wrapping the fingers of the mother of your unborn child around a stone you have selected… a simple powerful image to weave past and present together, as well as make the emotional high point (see the movie!) -  a potentially corny moment – totally believeable. In The Good Cemetery Guide the only thing Anthony Loxton’s father left him was the ability to speak to the dead; imagination and a reaching out for grace was not permitted; so Anthony unloaded onto a Mexican puppet and dreamt of Mexico which was as far away from Kalk Bay as any place he knew. Being the kind of person who picks up random stones and rocks everywhere she goes the delightful idea of the look and feel of a stone evoking unspoken thoughts and emotions – a wordless letter - resonates with me in a big way. One can almost hear the beating heart of a stone as it rests quietly in one’s hand; it’s sometimes warm and sometimes cold but always oddly mystical, this nugget of rock created by cosmic activity and ancient weather patterns. Hence the borrowed category title: Stone Letters. The entire significance always seems to escape one: the felt whole is always greater than the sum of words written on the page. Maybe stone letters will work better…

D-Day for Paloma

11 Thursday Aug 2011

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Shitty morning. Carried through on a responsible decision. In my latter more ‘conscious’ years I’ve tried to follow the picked-up advice of a woman’s magazine psychologist responding to a reader’s angst-filled enquiry over a moral quandry. The psychologist responded by posing the question: ‘What do YOU really think?’ The reader was advised to find a quiet place and make sure that whatever decision she reached was her decision (not everybody else’s) based on what she really really believed within herself was the right thing to do. Hah! Easy to say. So why is is that having brought Paloma, our mantle Great Dane female (yes I know bitch is the right word) who thinks she’s a hyperactive retriever, to be spayed this morning I feel as if I’ve personally killed a whole litter of unborn pups? I had a major wobbly at the vet, had to talk it all through again so that I remembered why it wasn’t a good idea to breed with her. Our beautiful imported puppies who struggled to settle into South Africa, the recurring struggles with stomach bugs (unhygienic chicken carcasses?) and mysterious ailments, the constant antibiotics, the supplements and the probiotics that live in our fridge(the best on the market for humans), the four changes of dog kibble, the wonky hips of our harlequin male and Paloma’s puzzling small stature compared to their prize-winning parents, and not to be forgotten small local veterinary practices that no longer offer after-hours services (no call-outs) so if our precious Paloma needed a caesar we’d have to rush her off (probably after midnight) to a strange vet at a big practice in the northern suburbs that we’d have to drag out of a warm bed etc. etc.  Had to fight off a severe dizzy inclination to load her back in the car and drive home. Sometimes common sense and sentiment are in total opposition. Our family has had generations of Great Danes, going all the way back to the 2nd World War. I can almost see those chunky knobbly-kneed beautiful mantle and harlequin puppies we dreamt of introducing into South Africa. Couldn’t help sparing a thought for all those young girls and women who make a life-and-death decision to abort their own child. How come what you know is the right thing to do for everyone concerned so often still feels wrong?

PS. Should I use a word like ‘shitty’ in a public blog? I don’t swear aloud if I can help it and I only let my characters ’use profantities’ if it is an inescapable part of their personality but blogging feels like venting to a diary so I’m letting it stay for now…

Graves gardener retires

10 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in The Good Cemetery Guide

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On BBC tonight shocking scenes of burning cars and homes, daylight looting and rioters attacking police -  the worst riots in the UK in 30 years. Brought to mind a recent BBC insert about Jean “John” Moodie who’d spent practically his whole life (joined his dad as a 16-year old) looking after the Battle of the Somme (1916) english war graves in France. Apparently the British have around 320 gardeners in 27 teams looking after 500 000 war cemetery headstones in France and it costs the British taxpayer a tidy sum. Years of dedicated gardening have produced meticulously tended memorial gardens. According to the about-to-retire head gardener (whose son is also a graves gardener) no flower or shrub is ever allowed to obscure a soldier’s name. In contrast the Germans have opted for a low-maintenance approach with stark plain headstones for their war dead. It got me thinking; in The Good Cemetery Guide funeral director cum moonlighting guitarist Anthony Loxton, who understands all about future generations continuing the work of their elders, surprises himself by becoming an advocate (or is it an activist?)for park-like cemeteries where the dead can lie in peace and the living can experience comfort in the midst of nature’s ongoing beauty. All well and good, I’m with my hero in principle but looking after cemeteries is expensive and we’re living in super-difficult economic times (as today’s news clips of rioting and looting prove). The British apparently had their fair share of criticism for celebrating carnage with blooms but they forged ahead with their war gardens regardless. One has to ask though is the “Forever England” approach still appropriate nearly 100 years later? Isn’t it perhaps a tad twee for today’s tough reality of 20% unemployment amongst youth aged 16 – 24 in the UK? Shouldn’t the British get with it like the super-practical Germans and start cutting back on expensive war cemetery gardens in faraway countries? But I know what Anthony Loxton would be thinking: imagine if we could turn all our ugly depressing cemeteries into beautiful super-safe parks in a picturesque setting where the living could conduct their recreational activities? With utmost respect, of course. We could take the time to watch the birds around us and bees collecting the nectar of flowers and go jogging on paths next to bubbling streams, with grave headstones just a throw away, and death might not seem so terrifying, so alien, so incomprehensible, but rather part of the natural order of things. In the case of those flowery war cemeteries in France there must be many an english soldier and survivor (and war cemetery tourist) comforted by the thought that their government honours its debts. Still, maybe an anachronism to the unemployed raging young people burning and pillaging in the UK right now.

PS. I would have started blogging earlier if I’d known you can edit past posts. Had this idea that what’s posted is posted! Guess I was thinking of a physical mail box…

Hello world!

07 Thursday Jul 2011

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So much to write about so little time… Thanks to my friend Ana Monteiro I am now a blogger!

Oxford Chapel Women

Are there any stained glass window boffs out there who can tell me in which Oxford chapel these stained glass windows can be found, who the artist is and who the seven maidens represent? Very remiss of me but I only realised how spectacular they were when I downloaded the pics to my laptop. It’s something that I’m noticing more and more as we travel – the before (anticipation & planning) the now (tourist on holiday) and the after (memories & images months and years down the line) are so vastly different that it’s like three different viewpoints superimposed on each other, something like a 3-dimensional experience if I could only grasp it all at once.
Why is it important? Just because the images are beautiful and haunting. And because chapels like this fulfil a spiritual need that is difficult to ignore. After all, what relevance do the ancient dead have in today’s world?
A zooty digital camera/mobile phone feature would be the ability to add comments to a photograph post facto (for instance in the Oxford chapel where I took the photo), something like a customised date and location stamp that shows up (or not) on the printed image. It’s not asking a lot… If it already exists please tell me where!
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