Monday, August 30, 2010

Call me Duck, or Lulu.

Let me rephrase the ol' woodchuck chestnut: how many blogs is too many blogs for one boggled blogger to have? ... three blogs, four? Six? Ten? I guess you have to weigh the relative benefits of having multiple discrete interests against the possible appearance of having multiple discrete personalities, the latter increasingly exponentially past point x where x = possibly too many blogs.

Apologies to any mathematicians reading this.

Anyhow, I guess what I'm trying to confess is that I have four blogs, and, perhaps, therein lies the answer to my initial question: x + 1 blogs is too many blogs for one boggled blogger to have (I was trying to work a mathematical log into that, but it made my head hurt), where x = the number of blogs one boggled blogger can maintain single-handed, equalling, in my case, 3.

Apologies to anyone reading this.

Anyhow, my three other blogs might be described as 1) naughty; 2) nice; and 3) neglected. I guess what I'm trying to say is, 1) the tumblebug bites baaaaad (hence 3) above); and 2) after due consideration I have decided to let Duck and Lulu loose on blogspot for the briefest of moments; that is, if you were to head tumblr-ward via ducknostrum or lulu-legs, you might just find Penelope's sisters.

Meanwhile, week 6 is Judith Wright and Penelope-as-Class-Presenter week in my Australian literature subject. Strangely it was her short stories I discovered first, after appropriating a copy of The Nature of Love from my Mum's bookshelf, and I never really looked at much of her poetry - probably a high-school-ambivalence hangover thanks to Year 11 English. But there you have it: hair of the dog can work a treat. Particularly this one:


NIGGER'S LEAP, NEW ENGLAND

The eastward spurs tip backward from the sun.
Night runs an obscure tide round cape and bay
and beats with boats of cloud up from the sea
against this sheer and limelit granite head.
Swallow the spine of range; be dark, O lonely air.
Make a cold quilt across the bone and skull
that screamed falling in flesh from the lipped cliff
and then were silent, waiting for the flies.

Here is the symbol, and the climbing dark
a time for synthesis. Night buoys no warning
over the rocks that wait our keels; no bells
sound for her mariners. Now we must measure
our days by nights, our tropics by their poles,
love by its end and all our speech by silence.
See in these gulfs, how small the light of home.

Did we not know their blood channelled our rivers,
and the black dust our crops ate was their dust?
O all men are one man at last. We should have known
the night that tided up the cliffs and hid them
had the same question on its tongue for us.
And there they lie that were ourselves writ strange.

Never from earth again the coolamon
or thin black children dancing like the shadows
of saplings in the wind. Night lips the harsh
scarp of the tableland and cools its granite.
Night floods us suddenly as history
that has sunk many islands in its good time.


Chances are the lecture will uncover some vast postcolonial problematic to dull the sheen, but I'm happy to bask unawares a day or two more.

Excuse me. I have 97 tumblr updates to attend to.

Love Pennylop.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Two things novel

1) The tiny hordes of bacteria-eating warriors I've been swallowing three times daily are finally gaining the upper hand; my blood must be running with little white flags because I'm positively trumpeting with the feeling of Health stealing back through my limbs. The lead's gone out of my head, the jelly from my legs, and I can't wait for tomorrow because there's nothing makes you appreciate uni like being too sick to go for two weeks.

2) Meanwhile (because writing a poem a day for a year wasn't quite gimmick enough) I am now officially writing a novel in November. It's an online, international kind of gig (www.nanowrimo.org) preaching quantity over quality to the tune of 50000 words, which works out at 1700 per day. I'm apprehensive to put it mildly, so I'm reluctantly spreading the word such that, come mid-November when I want to put my little half-novel quietly to death and plant a rosemary bush over its grave, I won't dare for the glare of scrutiny by all my nearest and dearest. I'm not sure if anyone ever comes to this dusty corner of the universe, but if you're a person and you're reading this, feel free to bother me alllll November about that novel I was meant to be writing. I'll love you come December.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Penelopitis

A spectacular (I was going to say 'fluorescent', but TMI, right?) case of bronchitis has laid me off work for the day, and since my brain is MUCH too addled to contemplate two weeks of neglected Bourdieu readings, it looks like I'll just have to spend the afternoon in bed writing and sipping vegetable-and-barley soup. Bliss.

I started compiling a list of kick-ass ladies a while back; the criteria are fairly ephemeral (even tiresomely predictable) but could probably be summarised thus: Originally Nuts Ladies with a kickin' aesthetic, who don't give a fuck what the world thinks of them. So far the list (far from complete) looks like this:

Bjork / Vivienne Westwood / Yoko Ono / ?Dita Von Teese? / Madonna / Lady GaGa / Lydia Lunch / Kate Bush / Grace Jones

Not so sure about Dita, she seems kind of clean-cut/formulaic compared to some of them; then again, she did play a not insignificant part in bringing good ole-time burlesque back from the dead (AND she's a total babe), so let's leave her there for the moment. Also, I've restricted myself to still-living ladies for simplicity's sake, but I suspect Simone de Beauvoir and Anais Nin et al might slip in with fake I.D.s when I'm not looking.

Anyhow, said ladies might be making cameos at times like these when there's not much going on besides bronchitis. And since YouTube and me are onto such a good thang with Lydia at the moment, here's a lil more. Perfect for sultry days in smoky, dim-lit rooms.


gloomy sunday

it must be time for some words from my namesake and divine-woman-of-the-moment, lydia. and just fancy, i'm gloomy AND it's a sunday. take it away, grrrl.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Penelope's Medicinal Potion aka Mud Tea



After spending the day at work feeling like a hedgehog's died inside my throat, I've resorted to desperate measures inspired by my friend the witch who dosed me so well last week I sweated garlic all the next day. So,

1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
an abundance of ginger, sliced
pinch or two black tea leaves
fennel seeds, to taste

Simmer in a saucepan of water until it reaches desired muddiness. It all slips down pretty easy given the somewhat ghastly stench, though a nip of brandy sure wouldn't go astray.

Love Penelop.

Monday, August 2, 2010

lipstick laksa

i lost my laksa virginity yesterday; i lost it wearing bright red lipstick on the greyest windiest drippiest day of winter yet, and i will never complain about being cold and damp and cramped again if only there's a bowl of laksa at the end of it. the whole experience might have been a little more enjoyable without the lipstick - if i hadn't been aiming each mouthful with military precision to avoid looking like i'd just been making out with one of those rotating meat pillars you get in kebab shops - but hey, my lipstick survived, and now bowls of laksa down cobbled lanes on days where the sky is dribbling down window panes and the wind gets at all your corners is my new favourite thing in the world.

on the subject of lipstick, my beloved bubble tea shop has this mystery flavour, "lipstick black tea". i bought one once; it tastes a lot like black tea and not very much like lipstick at all. then i thought maybe i'd missed the lipstick essence the first time, so i bought another one. then i tried googling it, all to no avail. it remaineth a tasty mystery.

and on the subject of weather, en route to the laksa i called it 'bleak'. bff had a dictionary definition to hand: devoid of hope, ie, this weather is devoid of hope. it also means (for useless knowledge and general edification) a european freshwater fish, alburnus alburnus, possessor of silvery scales used in the production of artificial pearls.