APPROXIMATE SPOUSES

Oh the poignancy!

Oh the bitter-sweet and sour!

Measured out by the spoonful,

The minute, to the dread hour.

In the window,

Working, scheming,

In the pub,

Joking, screeching,

In the bed,

Snorting, dreaming,

And all of it so very swell,

It fills the time so well.

Now the faces have faded,

All the eyes are dead,

The feet are gone

That here did tread,

Fresh faces pace the streets,

The halls of the same houses,

Take out the approximate garbage

For their approximate spouses.

Larry Buttrose

SO THAT'S WHAT A REAL JOURNALIST IS LIKE

Vale my friend Brian Johnstone


https://www.newmatilda.com/2015/02/10/life-brian-right-so-thats-what-real-journalist

THE FUTILITY OF EXISTENCE AND THE POODLE

A friend recently asked what is the book I always go back to… a good question, I thought. I answered, de Botton's "The Consolations of Philosophy". In addition to the human wisdom it surveys, it is so wonderfully wry and droll. "1788: Arthur Schopenhauer is born in Danzig. In later years, he looks back on the event with regret: 'We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.' 'Human existence must be a kind of error,' he specifies, 'it may be said of it, 'It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens.'"... "1853: His fame spreads across Europe… He receives fan mail. A woman from Silesia sends him a long, suggestive poem. A man from Bohemia writes to tell him he places a wreath on his portrait every day… Philosophically-minded Frankfurters buy poodles [his dog of choice] in homage."

POTIONS

The ideal holiday read. A heady brew - 500 years of social and political history swirling around at the bottom of a cocktail glass. 

THE OFFICE

CATGUT STRING THEORY

Is it so that the intestines of cats

Strung the staunch wooden racquets

Of the ladies in starched dresses

So pleated and hard white?

Are the universes all kept like beetles

In a matchbox in the bottom drawer

Of a desk at which no-one sits,

Nor may ever have sat?

Writing a lengthy To Do list

Whilst idly stroking a cat

That grew the generic for any beast

That gave its guts for our glory,

One item is to consult the entrails

For the origins of all the species

That jostle and snore, frolic and claw
In the matchbox of your bottom drawer.

- Larry Buttrose

What is DIVA DIVINE? Interview by ABC Radio National's Fenella Kernebone

Yesterday's interview by Fenella Kernebone with Heather Lee and me at Parramasala…. now a podcast on ABC site.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/weekendarts/parramasala---diva-divine/5818176