Miscellanea

The New York Times seems rather keen on Dulwich Hill, which is part of Marrickville, just up the road from me. The version of multiculturalism described is rather vanilla (or should I say garlic?), but I'm not complaining.

In other breaking news -

Dean has tagged me. Actually he did this some time ago, but I didn't notice until I subscribed to technorati last night.

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

Hmmn, well, first I have to say that the two closest texts to hand are an old NW, its cover screaming "Plastic Surgery Disasters", and the latest Continuum. The closest actual book is a goodie, a hardback borrowed from the UTS library, Ruth Barcan's Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy.

Here are the required sentences from page 123:

"For our purposes, Foucault's description is noteworthy because his metaphors draw on that of the naked truth - revealed, paradoxically, in death rather than life. His description makes use of the recurring binaries of openness and closure, visibility & invisibilty, revelation & concealment. In terms of Perniola's categories, the corpse in modern medicine is not the older en-souled nature, but the empty box."

So there you go. That's rather good I reckon. I tag Superannuated Feminist, Thirty Something North, and Go Away Please.

Laugh and cry with the Jelly

A very lovely post.

Sisterly Love

Hackney Road

Little Griff and his mums live in Hackney, London. So, I've decided to make Hackney blogs the sister-blogs of Marrickvillia.

The first thing you'll usually read about Hackney, if you look it up on Google or Wikipedia or some other reputable spot, is that it's a pretty poor place, with a lot of crime. In a reckoning undertaken by BBC4 using various statistics Hackney was deemed the worst place to live in England. Hmmmn. High crime, vile pollution, poor education, bad transport (no tube).

But when I visited I liked it a lot. About 25% of people there are black, which seemed good to me. Pete Doherty, musician boyfriend of supermodel Kate Moss, lives in Hackney (it's mentioned each time he goes to court). He's obviously hopeless but doesn't seem angst-ridden, so, whatever. Sid Vicious once lived there, too.

The Tescos was big & friendly, the teenage mothers at the station were cute, the hot chips were brilliant. We had excellent Indian home delivery (we couldn't go out because Celebrity Big Brother was on).

Like Marrickville, Hackney is very multicultural and full of wayward artistes & academics & lefties. At least that's what the blogs I've found seem to indicate.

Slaminsky is a favourite.
Baroque in Hackney is a poet who also writes about the bus, the train, the weather, whatever makes her cross, and Celebrity Big Brother.
Luke Akehurst writes stuff that may or may not be parody about being a Labour whip for Hackney council, and about Celebrity Big Brother.
Made in China '69 blogs about culture & art in East London.
Hackney Lookout hasn't written anything in a while, since his baby was born, but I like his transcriptions of overheard Hackney conversations:

"It's like summer. But it ain't cold."

"Whadja mean?"

"Well, like, it's really hot in summer. But then it gets cold at night. And now, it's, like, warm."

"Well, whadja expect? You've just been standing next to a barbeque."

Beauty in modest trinkets

Before Christmas I looked around Marrickville for a home decorated with coloured lights to feature here, but never found one that took my fancy. Today I took a slightly different route on my walk and spotted this delightful assemblage in front of a modest single fronted home on Illawarra Rd, way down near the river. As well as flashing lights these people have set up two decorated trees, numerous Santas, a set of sliver bells, a fairy castle (Santa's home?) a nativity scene, and a set of elephants (heading towards the manger).

The nativity scene. I like the toy pony at far left, and the dangling angels.


From left to right: Daddy & baby Santa, a fairy castle, Mr & Mrs Santa.

From left to right: nativity scene, cherub figurine holding book, set of black elephants.

mashing pumpkin

You know that saying "you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends"? I have a pretty wonderful family anyway, but now that my friends Julia & Helen are part of it it's even better. Here is the super-bouncy, chubby-thighed & (almost) ever-smiling Griff, in Sydney with his mothers & his Richard. He doesn't like our CD collection but is fond of our bed and Sailor, whose cheeks have been grabbed and whiskers pulled (she's being very patient). His favourite fancy face is the rhinocerous, which I'm still trying to capture. I'm enjoying the every-minuteness of having a baby in the house - no time for introspection: too busy playing, laughing, mushing pumpkin & canoodling. I've managed to avoid all the pooey nappies so far.