Eyelight: The Infinite Project -- "'The Personal', more or less' including letters, diaries, journals etc

The Infinite Project: Sub Section

What We Have Been Reading:

The Third Part of the Second Part of the Diaries, Journals, Letters etc

(these are not all of my own family, I have included various letters -- again I have included 'famous people' but was looking also for letters by anyone, but these were hard to find, or have been so far, I may compensate for that as I have used a letter written to a man about a job application -- its success -- as part of a contribution to an issue of Brief magazine -- which seems to have finally stopped going -- something I expected for a number of reasons. [Since this I have found a possible source of ordinary women's writings])

However the main 'way' of the Inf. Proj. -- subsuming EYELIGHT and the Infinite Poem and other things -- that way is not changed really in its essence.

[NOTE: I have some more images I want to upload.]

__________________________________________

Before WWII my mother who was born in England in 1917 to J R Miller and Beatrice Gray (born in India) of Bedford and Northamptonshire. Mostly my relatives lived in Kettering or Bedford. But my grandfather had come to NZ in 1903 and joined the British Phosphate Commision. He worked on Ocean Island where Ellice had begun mining phosphate for fertilizer. Ocean Island was the name of the boat possibly of those who (or the Europeans) discovered the Island. It is very small, near Nauru and it's name is Banaba. My uncle Frank Miller was born on Banaba. As he served in WWII in the RAF it is possible he is the only pilot of the RAF to have both English and Banaban citizenship. Tragically the effect of the mining was basically to destroy most or much of Banaba. Banabans now live mostly in Fiji on Rabi (pronounced Rambi). In this post my mother's memoirs give a picture of her growing up on Banaba. It was like a paradise. Unfortunately my grandparents only had B&W photography so I will show some images of Ocean Island or Banaba. (But more later hopefully and more extensively, just some for now here):

________________________________________________________ _________ _____________

FIRST: Some of My Father's, Leslie Stuart Taylor's, experiences in England, a Scout Jamboree in Denmark, and his Scout Group in Chiswick, London (the second Scout Group to be formed).

My father was keen on art, drawing. In particular artists such as Turner, whose work he had seen at the then Tate Gallery in England (ca. 1923 - 26 or so). Later he did street scenes and

painted areas of Kent. In NZ he continued with scenes of Auckland and other parts of NZ.

He gave up art (in the Depression) but when I was about 9 or so he started showing me how to paint and draw.

My sisters also took an interest in art. I re-taught my self in 2010 and added that art to digital photographs on this Blog. I mixed these (text, my art, my art and art by others, graffitti etc) in various ways... I am theoretically interested in all art. But "big names" or "stars" I am not interested in. Nevertheless there is a mix through the Blog-Project of "High and Low culture" to put things simply. Among the subjects I studied for my BA was Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Art was one that interested me. However I majored in English. I should perhaps have continued but circumstances intervened, or I lost the drive after my mother's illness and then death. Not an excuse, there were undoubtedly other factors.

In the following I mix various journals with those of famous people -- but I wanted also if possible to get the writing of ordinary people. I still have some of that. I wanted to get a book I had once from a local library on how Maoir learnt to read and write and after the NZ wars they continued a kind of 'war of words' but I couldn't find that book in the library system.

In my Project I 'give myself permission' to move between varying degrees of absoption in the text to more ot less quote Charles Bernstein from his 'A Poetic'. (Perhaps one model of a writer might be Christopher Middleton whose work seems to move across or through or via mny modes.)

As I write thei addendum, I am reading an essay by Derrida on his Differance and various other books, one by George Steiner, but a wide range of books including those science philosophy and history, art, psychology. YouTube is also a great source of science and other information and ideas. Reading as widely and deeply as possible also recalling that reading is for entertainment....Pound's Cantos I am seeing as more a significant than I did before. He is sa poet wrieter one reads some of intensely then some more and so on. I miss Ted Jenner when I think about things to do with classics or indeed literature in general. Ted Jenner who was a poet, a great poet, under-rated, was also a classics scholar of Greek and Latin but translated from FRench (e.g. Ponge the modern French writer of 'detail and the near surreal) and lso some Greek poets. He also wrote some good poetry books. We talked a lot about literature and writers and writing. He died in 2021. Near the end, we both knew he ws ill of cancer, hhe kept sang froid and at my house complimented me on my beautiful hydrangeas. This surprised me. It was a little out of character. But Ted did have an eye for beautiful things. He was as he said a minimalist rather than some one who liked e.g. the 'looser' art of even David Jones, whose poetry we both liked. (I see Art in general as a a kind of total project, something that somewho gives validity to hiuman life, although even this is a dubious way of puting things, neverthe less we like to feel that wary. Art and culture etc add to our other needs and interests. Also science interests me and other things.

But back to my father and the journals and letters etc. (These are not all of my own family and other texts are interweaved on here.):

.........................................................................................................................

......At the Denmark Scout Jamboree 1924, where my father said: 'The Germans sang so...beautifully.'

Baden Powell

seated below.

Young people from much of Europe but also lands such as the US, Australia, Japan and many others attended this event. Baden Powell is seen there with the Danish Commissioner. Above the Lithuanians.

My father approx. eighteen to twenty, around 1924 to 1926

My grandfather Aaron Stuart Taylor who after various occupations speculated on the stock exchange, making money from investments (even in the Depression), but he also ran a dancing studio, and was

a professional photographer. I never met him at an age I could talk with him or remember him. A dispute between he and my father and I think my uncle Geoff led to a life long silence between the two. During WWI he helped develop aerial photography techniques using two cameras to make an effect of depth.

My grandmother Lilian Thoms who died when my father was 16, in 1922.
She died of pernicious anaemia. She was 36.

The start of the building of the Scout den

in Chiswick, London. My father and his brother Geoff were keen on scouting. The Chiswick Scout group was the second scout group formed in the world. In 1924 my father went to Denmark

for the Jamborree there.

The scouts had a mix of 'native' things borrowed from colonies such as Canada and the US and NZ etc and stories by Kipling. In the scout den my father, because he could draw and paint well, was allowed or asked to put up around the den many of his drawings and paintings.

A drawing by my father.
At university studying
for architecture at the
University of Auckland
around 1940 he got
99% for drawing. He asked
why not 100% and was told
that no one gets 100%.

[ADD the 1924 Denmark Jamboree images]

That which is understood gets Articulated when the entity to be understood is brought close interpretatively by taking as our clue the 'something as something'; and this Articulation lies before [liegt vor] our making any thematic assertion about it. In such an assertion the 'as' does not turn up for the first time; it just gets expressed for the first time, and this is possible only in that it lies before us as something expressible. The fact that when we look at something, the explicitness of assertion can be absent, does not justify our denying that there is any Articulative interpretation in such mere seeing, and hence that there is any as-structure in it. When we have to do with anything, the mere seeing of the Things which are closest to us bears in itself the structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that just to grasp something free, as it were, of the "as", requires a certain readjustment. When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more. This grasping which is free of the "as", is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands. It is not more primordial than that kind of seeing, but is derived from it. If the 'as' is ontically unexpressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori......

….....................................................................................................................................

c/o Manager's Office

CAC Day St.

Ham. Sect.

Dearest Joy Darling,

I had a rotten train journey, I felt hot and stuffy and very

weary. I was very glad to get into bed....

….Gosh its raining cats and dogs outside, has been all day, the factory grounds

are a quagmire – a sea of mud – I very nearly failed to cash in my benzine coupon

this month, forgot all about it but managed to kid the local storekeeper to give me

a gallon yesterday morning before he had made up his books – I dont often use the

car but its a godsend in rainy weather.

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions. I am alone here

every night after 9 pm, the family are early to bedders – and I sit alone with my

books and think of this long war and all the lonely women throughout the world

and the men in camps and holes in the ground tormented with hunger for women.

This is not a very cheerful letter I'm afraid. I am trying to save as much as I can,
but things keep popping up like weddings and income tax insurance.
Good night Sweetheart. Love from

Leslie

….............................................................................................................................

….Many a flower is born to blush unseen,

and waste its sweetness on the desert air...............

Above: The shot tower at the Mt Eden CAC where my father worked during WWII. He acted as a draughtsman there, redrawing the CAC technical drawings etc. During the war as is clear in one letter the entire factory was moved to Hamilton. Below are two examples of bullets made at the CAC, which was moved back to Mt. Eden after the war.

There are enthusiasts who love guns and killing. My father, as can be seen from this letter, hated war and warmongers. But he was ordered to do war work at the CAC Mt Eden. Then they moved the entire operation to Hamilton which he mentions in a letter. My father had done or was doing a degree in Architecture so he got the old plans and redrew them, re-organized them. He had some examples of bullets in various states of manufacture. His friend, a Chemist (who had been a prodigy of maths and science) worked on finding why bullets were jamming in guns. This was because of a trace element in a constituent of the bullets.

Beside some pride (he was rejected for war service as his lungs showed traces of TB) : it is clear that for him both the war and the preceding Depression of 1929/30 etc and his own general melancholia did not add to any 'glorification of war'. Of others 'out there' he considered them 'morons'. He was tormented, perhaps by his mother's death and his general dispute with my Grandfather, who he never talked to after the latter tried to tell him how to raise his family.

He loved poetry and would quote various poems such as the short line from Gray's Elegy above. If the reader is not completely familiar with this great poem, God help him or her. We don't want to know such. He also got to know R. A. K. Mason. When he brought home a book of Mason's poems I was surprised. I used to read and re-read the poems in that collection many many times. It obsessed me: and it profoundly affected me.

R. A . K. Mason: a great poet, a communist, and a deeply feeling man. My father had made his acquaintance. I became obsessed with his poems which had no political significance to me per se. Mainly they are about existence.

My father met (I think it was) Mason and Fairburn at the WEA possibly before the war. My father painted in those days. Mason was one of the few to purchase his paintings when dad gave and exhibition. Dad liked Mason's and Fairburn's poetry. He was sympathetic to some aspects of their ideas, he didn't like the obvious class system in England, but didn't share Mason's left wing views. When I joined the Progressive Youth protesting etc against the Vietnam War (in those days I met Dick Fowler who changed his name to Rewi Kemp. He died in 2016 (I will have to check the year, I think it was that year). I also knew a photographer called 'Ruffo' who used to appear mysteriously at protests or near and talk to us. He urged that I study photography. We took a photo of each other photographing each other. (Where are they? I cant find mine of him. Nor do I know what happened to 'Ruffo'. But he offered to get me into contact with Mason. It was about 1969. Mason had two years to live. For some reason, having moved into a kind of strange, semi-fanatical state, I turned the offer down. I have no idea why though. Protesting was very much something people of my father's background & generation (basically English working class, from London, but ambitious to get a "professional" occupation.) were not keen on. Putting it to him once that Mason was involved in left wing politics (I didn't know he founded the China Society, he must have known Ray Gough). My father said: 'But he was above violent and unruly protests.' Or something of that sort. Mason was a Communist. Of course he wasn't born as one! He gained a Classics Degree and wrote poetry from a young age. Some of NZ's greatest poetry.

...................................................................... ..........................................................................................

Mt Eden

Friday

Dearest Joy.

I miss you very badly darling. I dont seem to be able to get any enthusiasm
for anything......life seems so pointless when you are not about. I keep thinking about
you and I was pleased that you got a little fine weather although it has now turned
quite cold and I suppose it is the same at Tauranga.

I have started taking lectures at the University but I don't know for certain

if the faculty will agree to my working on a part time basis.

My mother who by now was in Tauranga (ca. 1940/41). She is with her dog called Robb. My grandfather John Miller moved to Tauranga from Ocean Island before WWII.

My parents were married in 1942.

My mother Joy Taylor probably at Tauranga.

…..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................This .....was before we came...into being......there is a hidden missingness in all things, a skipping in the street, the cries of life, the moving shadows, the light, the light: sometimes so hesitant that light....but we came and we were and we are and we shall be........into forgettment endless thrown and in dark remade and in light...........sadness precedes joy....................................................................................................................

[In 1954] the French parachuted a powerful force into a small town called Dien Bien Phu in the north-west and developed it into a fortified base, the strongest in Indo-China. It was inspected by an American General and declared impregnable....the entire force was parachuted in and it was supplied by air with both reinforcements and supplies of all kinds. Although surrounded by jungle covered hills, the French did not believe that artillery could be brought to bear on their main positions....In the event, the People's Army mounted guns in positions where nobody would have dreamed it possible that if could be done. The did it by dismantling and carrying with them into almost inacessible positions by backbreaking manual labour. The French had over 16,000 men in the fortified camp. General Giap concentrated 40,000 men to make certain of their destruction. This was another thing considered impossible by the Franco-U.S. High Command.....[How?]...the answer was that 120,000 peasants humped the supplies on their backs over scores of miles of terrible country to feed Ho Chi Minh's People's Army. To defeat the French Air Force whole roads were dug out underground and camouflaged. Over these roads thousands of bicycles and hand drawn carts kept hauling the sinews of war forward to the scene of the battle....One of the most tremendous feats of human endurance and courage in the world's military annals. In considering the fate of the French troops at Dien Bien Phu, do not forget that they were the aggressors, and that included in the force there was a large sprinkling of ex-soldiers from Hitler's Nazi Army who had joined the Foreign Legion to escape the consequences of their many crimes in Europe during World War Two....

On 13^th March 1954 the attack began...Throughout the whole of that period aircraft flew incessantly over the battlefield, drenching the Vietnamese positions with napalm, that terrible weapon which the United States still seems to regard as the key to victory....[but] without avail. Towards the inevitable end, in despair, the French appealed for massive aid from the United States. They still believed that air intervention on a great scale could trasform the situation. The offer that the United States made was the use of the atom bomb. As early as March 20^th,only 7 days after the beginning of the battle, General Paul Ely had arrived in Washington and asked for immediate aid. According to Georges Bidault, who was then French Foreign Minister, John Foster Dulles on two occasions offered the use of the atomic bomb against both China and Vietnam. China! A country against which neither France nor the United States were at war, officially of unofficially! No doubt this was because of their terrible crime of providing the Vietnamese people with the means, scanty though it was by comparison, of defending themselves against the French and winning an immense victory for the freedom of their country. If this was indeed a crime justifying the immolation of untold Numbers of Chinese people, what would the same warped justice demand of the American people, whose Government had been flooding war supplies of all kinds into Vietnam in the aid of a foreign aggressor for over four years? For those who still doubt that the Americans made this offer, I would refer them to the book “Deal at the Brink” by Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, published in New York in 1960, pages 116-123. There are many other references to it and M. Bidault has made it quite clear “that the first offer was for one of more atomic bombs to be dropped on Chinese territory near the Indo-China border and that there was a second offer “of two atomic bombs to be used against the Vietnamese forces at Dien Bien Phu.”

Burn burn burn oh lord I plucketh thy out!

Beautiful images of brave US soldiers controlling
Communism in Asia. The inverted man is at a
disadvantage.

Soldiers enjoying their 'round' and playing with skulls in Vietnam.

Bombs away!! Democracy will win!! The United States showing it's near infinite military power
and the glory of its great mission...

[These are not my comments, some cynical 'wit' put them there.]

This was the lunatic period of political and military bankruptcy which the United States had sunk in 1954...but since [in the entire process of the Vietnam War, almost the most brutal war which should be called American War which began in earnest not too long after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu...in 1954, when I first went to school at the age of about 6 as I had been ill all of 1953...but I knew nothing of this terrible war and, indeed, nor did millions of people in the world..]......................

Here for me the following poem I wrote is not about any particular war, although my sympathies was for the poor parachutists sent to (one of the Islands in the Mediterranean) by Hitler. But it could as well have been about soldiers sent by such warmongers as Churchill or Kitchener. The young German soldiers represent all victims of war everywhere. Instead of the drivel about the ANZACS I remember the poor young men. But THEY are reasonsible. Whoever holds a gun and uses it is the perpetrator of war. THAT is how wars are perpetrated: by those who participate. The real heroes refuse to fight. They are honest that they are in terror of being killed or maimed terribly.

And yet...are we not subject to an endless chain of unchangeable causation? No one knows....

War Thought Dream

They dreamed and ages fell:

and they fell from the sky.

It was then I caught it

the words –

for there has to be words

or worlds –

and I tell you: 'I 'll Wrreacklickh:

for I'll wreack it

I'll teare it

I'll breakk it I'll kraeckk it I'll braackk it!

For there has to be braeakage

– and anger and

I was caught with you

on the beach:

they fell from the sky

crying for their mothers:

blond and blue they fell from the sky:

For it had to happen

and they had to fall

like spiders or those

who eat the wrong apples...

'Mutter, Mutter!' They cried

I awoke. It was dream. I was. I was – for I'll

wreck it, I'll....

But they fell, they fall, they

fell....

And it had to....

and then the deaths, and the cries.

For they fell from the skies.

(But they were once childzeyes ....)

The babies were tossed to the burning laughing skies....

and then they opened fire for it was life –

life you see – the needful death in life:

Terrible. Terrible. What. Are. We?

For it had to happen they say they say they say –

For it was in that Dream, you see –

And it was me. It was me.

It was bloody me.

[IMAGES OF MY MOTHER'S School in Melbourne. And related material.]

My great (maternal - Millers) grandmother, my mother, her brother my uncle Frank Miller, an aunt of my mothers, a sister of my grandfather or of my grandmother.

My mother returned after initially being brought up as a child on Ocean Island -- Banaba -- then returned to England, then returned to board in Melbourne Australia and with frequent times on Banaba.

My great grandmother -- Miller side --

My mother I assume at Firbank College in Melbourne.

In England. My mother at the RHS -- they spent holidays as an uncle had a car, at beaches, or blackberrying, went to the South Coast etc

My great grandmother, my mother, Auntie Maud and Arthur Loveday in Cornwall.

Mum went to a primary school in England, then to this high school before returning to Australia &

Banaba.

Captain William Gray my maternal grandmother's -- Beatrice Miller bn. Gray's --- father. He lived in Bedford then Kettering, after serving in India.

Oreba. "....we all loved her."

Oreba looked after mum and my uncle Frank:
"When Frank arrived they got a Banaban lady Oreba to look afer him (both of us). She was a dear & we all loved her."

All the palms belonged to the Banabans & that particular owner came to my father with his complaint and Dad had to pay for the tree. I will not forget how angry he was with me! My brother Frank arrived on 28^th of November 1921. We only had tinned milk so with a weaned baby my father got some goats and he was fed on goats milk for quite a while.

A little kid arrived and that was my pet – I loved him but he disappeared – I expect they sold him. I also had kittens from time to time. When Frank arrived they got a Banaban lady Oreba to look afer him (both of us). She was a dear & we all loved her. When they went to Sydney on leave Oreba went too. But she was not happy at all! – Too cold and she had to wear large shoes. So did we and [also] hated it! Mother made us some flat shoes to arrive in.

The Banabans were divided into 4 villages: Ooma – & near Ooma were all the phosphate driers [?], the machine & the carpentary and machine shop, offices, stores, and up the hill a way houses for the white workers, mostly Australians. Yabwebwa was near where we lived – the village a little way further inland & up the hill.

Our house was close to the sea (Western outlook) and there was a way down to the shore between the pinnacles – we called it 'Miller's Beach'

Puakonikau was near the highest part of the Island North of Tabwebwa – & Tabiang was about midway between Tabwebwa and Ooma – lower ground. There was a Post Office & later a small school for white children; and several of the Government officials lived near there....." (From my mother's 'Memoirs' which are sadly too short.)

Some pictures of mymother and Banabans on Banaba (which she called 'Ocean Island' -- it had been named after a ship that 'discoverd in ca. 1900.

____________________________________________________________________________________

LETTERS & MEMOIRS OF MUM'S TIME AT FIRBANK HIGH SCHOOL, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, in the Second Time of being at Banaba and (first time) at boarding school in Melbourne.

From the school yearly journal and letters:

THE CHILDREN WHO FOLLOWED THE PIPER.

Now have you heard of the children's fate.

Who followed the piper thro' the magic gate,

Into a land of joy supreme

Where the meadows are always green!

One boy a cripple was left outside

In the bitter cold on the moutain wide.

But a fairy told him not to fear,

As their time for release was drawing near.

He said that gold should everyone give,

To get back their children and with them live.

So the parents with joyful hearts that day,

Asked the cripple to show the way.

For a path of gold they had to make

For all the missing children's sake.

“Because it was,” the fairy said,

“The path that from the mountain led.”

But the mayor was crafty, and he was bold,

And did not give quite all his gold.

So the path of money which the people make,

Does not quite reach the magic gate.

But the fairy said the mayor must give

All his gold that his child might live.

So the mayor laid down his remaining gold,

And the mountain door did then unfold.

Then the children came out of the mountain blue,

Skipping and running two by two,

To their parents arms they run with glee,

Shouting and laughing as glad can be.

The Piper smiled and nodded his head,

And plucked at his coat, so blue and so red,

The bidding the children O fair good day,

He picked up his pipe and vanished away!

J.H. (Clarke)

...............................................................................................................................................................

Joy, DO YOU REMEMBER

When we cut Miss Longmates creeper & then tied it up with string? When you fell over & got a black eye while practicing for the the three-legged race?

When you wrote “when I am dead my dearest” for Miss Smith. When Sheila Wright adored coming to & from school with you?

When we crept down the basement & “pinched” a cloth or headdress with a skull and crossbones on it?

When Miss Longmates buried her poor dead cat? ( i/n// m/is/t//a/k/e)

When Miss Longmates house “....” with the earthquake, & the articles she made for the school fate? [sic]

When Miss Smith called you and Margaret “the disgraces of lower IV A “ because you both walked up to the games field without hats?

Do remember “Latin is a language?” and the “chocolate sandwich you made at Miss Longmates?

The china ornament of Brenda Nunneley's which we broke and & then threw the pieces over the Chapel fence?

Do you remember the “Lectures” we had in the Hall at 6 o'clock or sometime like that, and we used to stay to tea and play “hide and seek”?

Do you remember Miss Knighton when we were at Hillside in Form I, and the button hole Miss Collingwood wore to hide the hole in her jumper?

Do you remember the noise she always made when drinking tea. And the two or three cows

which strayed into the Big School front garden on Fridays, and of hundreds more things?

(And also when Miss Baskerville sent you out of singing?)

...............................................................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................................................................

c/o W Perry

Broad St.

West Maiden

[These two letters crossed.] December 26^th

Dear Joy

Firstly congratulations and love....receive the cake this week and I am terribly thrilled to

hear of your marriage....Personally I think that Leslie is a very lucky man and do hope that one day Lindsay and I will have the pleasure of meeting him.

You have heard of course of the probability of Lindsay being a prisoner of war – indeed I hope that he is: but naturally will be glad to be officially notified to that effect.

….....................................................................

So much of my early married life is associated with yourself [that] naturally I am longing to hear all about the wedding; where and what you are living

…..Do hope that both she [my Grandmother Beatrice Miller] and your father are well – are you living anywhere near her? Also, how is Frank? I do hope that he is safe. [My uncle Frank, my mother [Joy Taylor nee Miller] was in England during the war. At one stage he joined the RAF and flew bombers, but this was earlier than that. He trained in the US and Canada. But I am not sure where he was when this letter was sent.]

You know probably that dear old Jack Ross died suddenly following an attack of pneumonia, which he caught while attending his brother's funeral the week before.

Well....I did not mean to fill my good wishes with sadnesses but pleaase accept my love, and very good will for 1943 and the years to follow.

Naene [Naime / Naire] (?)

................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

January [~ 1943]

Dear Joy

Many many thanks for your letter and snaps. Of course I was dying to hear of your wedding as you may imagine ; receiving the photo was just too marvellous.....was just thinking of you and Barbara, she has grown up since we were in Auckland.

How strange being married at St Margarets & living at Mt Eden.......

There is a complete blank regarding news of the men at both places, which has been …..Somehow altho' I get frightful qualms I feel that if the A.I.F. [Australian Infantry – I think someone this writer loved, a friend of my mothers perhaps when she was at school before the war at Firbank Boarding School, Melbourne, is talking of a young man [a husband a lover or a or loved one fighting in (or is somehow a “non-combatant” possibly caught by the Japanese) the Pacific War] are taken prisoners, surely non-combatants must also be taken prisoners and not shot.....

…..............................................................................................................

Your flat sounds a [?] I well remember Valley Road [Mt Eden, Auckland}
– do you remember climbing Mt Eden with us?

The Parnell Kiosk, is that near the Rose Garden which is a heavenly spot.

Many thanks for the wedding cake for which I did not have to pay any postage on, thank you, for your thought of me. Am inclosing a snap of my son Justin who grows apace in cheek and cunning.

Well my dear much Love...and all the happiness in the world to you both

Naime

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ocean Island

Central Pacific

25^th October

Dear Joy.

Received your welcome letter a few weeks ago, many thanks for the snap, I can hardly realise Joy that you have two girls. It was a very good photo of them. Hope that your teeth are all fixed up [I myself had forgotten that my mother had false teeth until I made this out. The letter must have been sent by a friend of my mother's who was on Ocean Island (Banaba a tiny Island on the equater where my grandfather and grandmother (the Millers) were up until about 1939 when they moved to N.Z. The Island was exploited by the British, Australians and NZ for superphosphate fertilizers derived from bird lime as on Nauru which is part of the same group of Islands – Kiribati. So as my sisters were born Gillian in 1942 and Susan in 1945 this letter came possibly after WWII – but how the writer survived the Japanese occupation I don't know. I am not sure of the date. My mother spent many holidays (from Melbourne where she did part of her schooling, the rest was in England (she was from Bedford but was at school partly in Kettering Northamptonshire.) By this time she had had her teeth all out. I have a friend who had that done. Why it was needed I don't know. ] ….by this [time?]. That is one thing that I dread – going to a Dentist, should have gone before I came up but just put it off. I am sitting in my cabin in the [ ] writing this, we are on the recruit [?], so far have had a very pleasant trip, been ashore at three of the Islands & we still have quite a few to do, as they want about nine hundred boys [workers, Melanesian or Polynesian to work in the industry on Ocean Island or on the phosphate ships?], it is nearly three weeks since we first left Ocean [Island?], did three Islands then back to Ocean, put off the new boys and their luggage, then started off again; we are drifting off Tamana* today, still have a couple more Gilbert Islands to do, then we go to a few of the Ellice Islands; it is a nice trip & we have a good rest, wont want to go back to cooking again after being waited on, the weather has been lovely which makes it so pleasant. There are five women on board, the Doctor's wife and baby fourteen month old, Mrs Woods, Mrs Bill Allan, Mrs Smart – her husband is in McBlackie's place at the Island & then myself, some of the Islands they work night and day but that doesn't seem to stop us sleeping.

Things are just the same at the Island, I wrote a long letter to your Mother telling her all the Island news; told her to let you read it as two tales too long writing the same thing over again; I still hate writing letters; when Jack came home I said I wasn't going to write any more, but it is easier said than done.

There was a baby girl born at the Island a few days ago, to Mrs Peter Anderson, we got word through the Captain, she wasn't due till late in November so hope everything is alright, believe the nurse wasn't expected [I have a map of Banaba (Ocean Island) and it is very small so there probably wasn't a nurse there but I will check that map as there were quite a lot of facilities there. The British were meant to replace every coconut tree destroyed by their digging etc. My grandfather, Robert J Miller (born 1883 in Bedford, England, worked on Ocean Island as a general engineer, he told me once that, constructing jetties, he had been in one of those diving suits with an air hose, walking under the sea when he saw the frightening shape of a manta ray, but they are harmless and eat only plankton despite being related to sharks. On there I think the British attitudes to what my mother called 'the Natives' was fairly good. My mother grew to love her 'nurse' and hated returning to England where she refused to go to primary school and was home schooled for a while as she wrote in a short memoranda. I recall in the 50s as a boy of 8 or so going into town and onto cargo ships [mum had worked at the British Superphosphate Headquarters in the Dilworth Building in NZ about 1940 or so but she also knew a number of ship's captains, who I met, then we would go to the engine room where 'black men' (of what ethnicity I had no idea) would explain to me what the huge machinery (the pistons and cranks etc which were idling but still making such a noise that I could hear nothing of what they were saying to me but those ships fascinated me). This is not to say that my mother hated England as she talked of great times blackberrying in the English lanes etc and it is a pity she didn't write more about here own life.]...till the middle of November so when she arrives it will be all over and nothing for her to do.

We haven't any golf course now. They are going to build houses on the old golf course so don't suppose we will be getting one, it would be nice to have it going again, they are fixing up the old tennis courts & they are going to have open air Pictures on the [ ? ], should be started by the time we get back.

The Island is getting back to some thing like the old days now they have most of the women back, though it will be a few years to get all the single quarters and the work back to the old days.There is some talk of them building the New Dance Hall & Picture Theatre out at Tapiwa as most of the married people will be out there. There are more children on the Island now than there has been, the school started for them just before we left, one of the chaps who works on the Islands, his wife is going to be the Teacher till they get one through the Government, wont the mothers be pleased to have them off their hands for a while.

Jack Rudd is keeping well he comes to our place every evening for a drink before he goes down to the Mess Room for his dinner, still as big a tease as ever.

Joy you will have to forgive me for not answering every question you may have asked in your letter, I forgot to bring it with me & I wanted to send this by the ship and it wont be at Ocean long when we get back so I will answer your letter next time.

I ….. hope you are all well as it leaves us both in the best of health, heaps of love and all from Jack & myself.

Your friend

Chris Fraser

x x x x x x x

Give our love to your Mum and Dad

when you see them or write, I

will be writing to your Mother

later on.

[*The smallest island of the Gilbert Islands.] [My note, RT April 8^th 2019]

.........................................................................................................................................

THE HARP OF NATURE

February, 1944

'Tis sweet to lie upon the velvet mead,

Still sprent with tears of quiet joyfulness

Brushed from the gown of softly breathing dawn;

Once more in Nature's crystal glass to read

The motions of my inmost soul, while stress

Of pent-up Life flees on the wings of morn.

Come! Tire the long long morn with briskest walking

O'er the high downs whose hair the breezes play in,

And spe ak of Hellas and old Israel;

Till noon day hush; – that's time to cease talking,

And muse, aglow, with long thought-lanes to stray in,

Till the church by the coppice tolls her Vesper bell.

Peace! Angel hosts o'erthrong the golden skies

And High Empyrean with wondrous signs;

And on this Harp so delicately wrought

The unseen Hand of God doth magadize,

And every sigh of Holy Love entwines

New songs of incense round His changeless Thought.

–John Hawes

By John Hawes ( picture below), 1919-1945 (died in WWII) the son of Arthur Hawes and Gertrude Miller. My mother's cousin: he was also a musician. He is stuck in a “Keatsian mode” although the book this comes from is very short. He may have developed over time.

The last stanza has something: 'magadize' either a creative misprint or type or misread but it works. His poems caught between (bad imitations of) the Elizabethan Metaphysicals and such as Shelley or Grey of his Elegy, or Keats. He was a devout Christian it appears. And I would say a good man. A tragic waste of life among the many tragic wastes of war.

John Hawes who was a musician, composed some music, played the piano well (as did my
mother). He also wrote poetry; he was a cousin of my mothers on the Miller & Gray 'side'.
They were mostly from around Bedford or Northamptonshire. He was killed (as far as can
be ascertained) in Burma in WWII.

John Hawes's mother (I think).

Kettering High School. My mother was born in England, then went with her parents to

Ocean Island or Banaba as it is now called. She grew up in Banaba where my uncle

Frank was born (he later settled after WWII in Australia, he had four children, all girls to

his wife Jean who he met in London. He worked as an architect. As did my father Les Taylor.

After living at Banaba for a few years as a school age child my mother and family returned to

England. There after my mother got used to things she had a great time touring England on holidays

and she met her grandmother. She returned to Australia then later with my grandfather, she

settled in NZ. So all my relatives are English except for cousins who are either NZrs or Australians.

This was the house that the Hawes lived in. I think it was in Cornwall.

….....................................................................................................................................

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions. I am alone here every night after 9 pm, the family are early to bedders – and I sit alone with my books and think of this long war and all the lonely women throughout the world

and the men in camps and holes in the ground tormented with hunger for women.

Here at the wedding: top row: My maternal grandparents Beatrice & Captain Robert Miller,
Robin Stokes (a friend of my father who was a brilliant chemist in research), my father's
brother Geoff Taylor who also came from England c. 1927 to farm etc and became an
Agricultural Scientist and later managed a Chemical Company.

Front row: Mary Melville (who later married an architect called Mark-Brown who designed the
Parnell baths etc); My father and mother, and I think the other woman is Barbara, possibly Robin
Stokes' fiancee. Weddings are always a significant event for human beings. For women
particularly it is a deeply significant and symbolic recognition of a kind of ancient rite.

My father was a deeply troubled man. But he had a sense of humour and he raised with my mother

four children. Gillian, Susan, myself and Dennis. We had mostly a womderful childhood. We

were quite well to do and while we lived "modestly" I didn't experience any significant difficulties.

Our parents were very kind overall and I had the benefit of modern medicine and had a great childhood. We children played endlessly in the local streets in Panmure or we went to beaches or on holidays and so on. Christmas and Guy Fawkes were two really exciting times.

A great picture of my mother. Years later I took her to the Parnell Rose Gardens where they held the

reception. I wrote a poem about it. We had a great day. Clearly this was a wonderful day for my

mother. The beginning of a new life and a family and a new house. First we were in a state house

but my father bought it. He believed in 'initiative' and so on and always voted National.

My maternal Granfather and Grandmother. We would frequently visit them in the '50s at their house

in Devonport in Auckland. My grandmother was born in India under the Raj. Later my uncle Frank

would be born on Banaba Island. He stayed later in England and trained as an architect as did my father. He fought in WWII in the RAF flying bombing missions etc. This experience he described to

me as 'terrible'. He later settled in Australia. My grandfather seen here was born in Leicester in 1883 and died in NZ in 1975 at the age of 92. He read quite widely -- but he was a working class tradesman whose father was a train driver -- and he once gave me a book of Russian stories. At the time I objected that I was too young for them. But he and my father said I would read them when I was older, and indeed I read from that book frequently. My grandmother we loved and used to scold us gently by saying things like 'Be off with you!' and 'A penny for your thoughts.' She worked as a

school teacher at one stage, and the Miller family lived either in Bedford or Northampton. Many of

the letters of my mothers are from Kettering where they lived later.

Here my father looks very happy. Something I rarely observed. He was perpetually tormented
by something. But here were happy days, a happy day.

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

Virginia Woolf's diary.

Monday 1 March

I wish I could write out my sensations at this moment. They are so peculiar; so unpleasant. Partly T[ime] of L[ife]? I wonder. A physical feeling as if I were drumming slightly in the veins: very cold: impotent: terrified. As if I were exposed on a high ledge in full light. Very lonely. L. out to lunch. Nessa has Quentin; don't want me. Very useless. No atmosphere around me. No words. Very apprehensive. As if something cold and horrible – a roar of laughter at my expense were about to happen. And I am powerless to ward it off: I have no protection. And this anxiety and nothingness surround me with a vacuum. It affects the thighs chiefly. And I want to burst into tears, but have nothing to cry for. Then a great restlessness seizes me. I think I could walk it off – walk ; walk till I am asleep. But I begin to like that sudden drugged sleep. And I cannot unfurl my mind: apply it calmly; unconsciously to a book. And my own little scraps look dried and derelict. And I know that I must go on doing this dance on hot bricks till I die. This is very superficial I admit. For I can burrow under & look at myself displayed in this ridiculous way & feel complete submarine calm: a kind of calm moreover which is strong enough to life the entire load: I can get that at moments; but the exposed moments are terrifying. I looked at my eyes in the glass once & saw them positively terrified. Its the 15th of March approach[ing] I suppose - the dazzle of that lamp on my poor little rabbits body: which keeps it dazed in the middle of the road (I like the phrase. That gives me confidence.) ….

Virginia Woolf younger and later closer to her death by suicide in 1941

Considered 'difficult' Woolf wrote extraordinarily subtle imagistic and deep psychologic novels. I don't choose her for her suicide or madness, in all such cases I always wished the person had been able to live longer and happier. Even happier and not write as happiness is paramount.

Some degree of this happiness must be achievable. But her books I recommend . Even her early novels which were not 'experimental'. But from Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, The Lighthouse, The Waves (a kind of poetic masterpiece rivalling some of the things by Joyce), The Years and Between the Acts, her extraordinary last book published after her death. Also her essays, letters (of which there were many hundreds if not thousands) and her diaries (I have 5 volumes of them). Orlando is an amazing thing and seems to stand on its own. Completely different is The Waves. It is many voices or waves but it is really one voice, one restless searching consciousness.

'....the garden becomes a fictional device: “Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk . . .” ....'

..........................................................................................................................................

….....................................................................................................................................

Flat 4

283 Carlisle St

Balaclava

[Melbourne]

Vic

14. 2. 43

Dear Joy

What a lovely surprise to receive a piece of your wedding cake. Congratulations dear and all the very best to the both of you. Heavens knows when I shall meet this man of yours, we may both be old women by then - horrible thought isn't it.

I've completed my training and having 'a dam good loaf' at present, it was a great thrill when results of the finals came through and ten of us were proclaimed sisters, we donned our veils and celebrated for a week. It was great. I felt rather sad leaving the Hospital. I stayed for an extra fortnight...........Is your brother married yet? My brother has returned from New Guinea wounded he apparently is nearly fit again but is up north in a Hosp. so we are all very disappointed not to have him nearer home....but young Bill has so many girl friends I cant keep track of them, I hope for Jean's sake he doesn't include her [her friend, an army nurse, who looked after him in a field hospital.] ....

.... Mr Jones is in the Merchant Navy again. Nam is very well. Mrs Blight lives not very far away from us and & the Woods are up north. I occasionally meet Island people around the place, its very nice to renew acquaintances. I met Len Ravenstoft and Jack Munro in the city some time ago both in different services. You remember the 'Admiral', Adam Phillips - He married a Western Australian girl, and is going to be a Daddie, cant imagine it, can you? His young brother was killed in the Middle East. Its all very sad I know a number of lads who have been killed and write to an old friend in a prison Camp in Italy. Its a ghastly business - I'm just waiting for a call from the Army myself. I hope to get one very soon now. Maybe I shall go north somewhere. I hope so anyway. Its my one ambition at present though a confirmed bachelor girl from now on -- after my last effort. I believe I told you I broke off my last engagement. Anyway he is well and truly married now. Well Joy dear I guess I had better ring off now -- Daddie made some beer and after a couple of glasses I begin to feel very sleepy. So until I hear from you again - Cheerio and lots of love

& luck

Yours as ever

Jean

[The Jean who married Frank? I am not sure. The writing might give a clue.]

.........................................................................................................................................

85 2nd Avenue

St Peter [?]

South Australia

Dear Joy

Congratulations! I was thrilled to hear of the safe arrival of your lass [Gillian, my oldest sister, so I think this is 1943. Gillian was born on the 22nd of Oct 1943]. And I trust that she will bring you much happiness and joy. Actually I find that ones joy in possessing a family grows as they grow. At first I felt very elated about it all, then when one feels pretty weak and the baby is fretful, one wonders just how much joy there is in having a family & one feels just too weak and ignorant for words. Gradually as they grow, & you feel better, what a different picture is presented altogether.

Can imagine your father and mother's thrill -- what a shame they live so far away. Perhaps one day your father will sell the place [his farm in Oropi,Tauranga I think she means] --- yet cant imagine him doing it.

This month for the first time since being in Australia I am free of doctors and dentists. I think that perhaps the new year is at last bringing me health. Do not think I will ever be as well as I used to, I simply cannot walk the same, or do as much [ so tired I am ?] ... I am not going to grow into a lazy and irritable old woman.

Its 4 years on Tuesday since we were wed. Time goes on.

Well my dear. All my very best love in this new career you have created for yourself -- that of being a mother, which I think is the finest of all.

My love to your Mother & Self,

Naeme

_________________________________

Yesterday bumped into Bob [?] for the first time since being in Australia. He looks no different & she no longer dyes her hair but is lame through her stroke. However she looks the same.

.........................................................................................................................................

…......................................................................................................................................

was before we came...into being......there is a hidden missingness in all things, a skipping in the street, the cries of life, the moving shadows, the light, the light: sometimes so hesitant

________________________________________________ .

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER to ALYSE GREGORY

______________________________________________

December 23rd, 1946

Dearest Ayse,

Usually you begin a thank-letter by some graceless comparison,

by saying, I have never been such a very scarlet muffler, or, This is the largest

Horse I've ever been sent for Christmas. But your matchbox is a nonpareil,

for never in my life have I been given a matchbox. Stamps, yes, drawing pins, yes,

balls of string, yes, yes, menacingly too often; but never a matchbox. Now that

it has happened I ask myself why it has never happened before. They are such

charming things, neat as wrens, and what a deal of ingenuity and human artfulness

has gone into their construction; for if they were like the ordinary box with a lid

they would be one half so convenient. This one though is especially neat, charm-

ing, and ingenious, and the tray slides in and out as though Chippendale had made

it.

But what I like best about my matchbox is that it is an empty one. I have

often thought how much I should enjoy being given an empty house in Norway,

what a pleasure it would be to walk into those bare wood-smelling chambers, walls,

floor, ceiling, all wood, which is after all the natural shelter of man, or at any rate

the most congenial. And when I opened your matchbox which is now my match

box and saw the beautiful clean sweet-smelling empty rectangular expanse it was

exactly as though my house in Norway had come true; with the added advantage

of being just the right size to carry in my hand. I shut my imagination in it inst-

antly, and it is still sitting there, listening to the wind in the firwood outside. Sitt-

ing there in a couple of days time I shall hear the Lutheran bell calling to me to

go and sing Lutheran hymns while the pastor's wife gazes abstractly at her husb-

and in a bower of evergreen while she wonders if she remembered to put pepper

in the goose-stuffing, but I shant go, I shall be far too happy sitting in my house

that Alyse gave me for Christmas.

Oh, I must tell you I have finished my book---begun in 1941 and a hundred

times imperilled but finished at last. So I can give an undivided mind to enjoying

my matchbox.

[Signed]

_________________________________________________________________________

…..............................................................................................................................................

….....................................................................................................................................

[Aerogramme addressed to: Mrs L Taylor / 22 Court Crescent / Panmure S.E.6

Auckland N. Z. and Senders Name and Address: Frank Miller 137 Rockingham Road / Kettering / Northants (England) ]

25. 5. 48

---------

Kettering

Dear Joy,

Happy returns of the day. I am sorry this is a bit late but you know the

saying about better late than never. I had intended writing some days ago but

forgot . I am very busy these days, my work at the office makes a very full day,

and thus I am plodding with a correspondence course for the final R.I.B.A. exams.

Life is difficult here in many ways, though I suppose we grumble as a matter of

course, even if things are usually not too bad --

I often wonder does Leslie spend 75% of his time in the office filling in licence

applications, consent to build forms, W.B.A. and a thousand [ ] others? It

seems here that one must go on bended knee to the Little Tin Labour God and flap

half a ton of duly completed forms in his face, to be told that you cant build,

although the brick yards and timber yards seem to be overflowing - Obtaining

glass is like going down a coal mine to find gold. One thinks that all they seem to

find in coal mines is salt, if our coal store contents are any criterion.

I went over to town on May the 7th for the R.I.B.A. [?], the one subject which

I have taken many times.

Auntie M had a very nice letter from Dad, this morning, saying they were hoping

for you and the bairns to join them for a holiday soon - that would be very nice. I

am conscious of you being so near although you don't seem to see such a lot of

Mum and Dad - Jean is very busy writing letters and has her hair up after washing it. I expect you look a bit of a "sight" for Leslie on such occasions - I should very much like to see your family particularly Richard. I hope he is as well [ behaved? beloved?] as Corinne Louise. I am sorry Mother doesn't like our choice of names - there are so many Betty Anna Mary, Joan, Susan etc that I think it is refreshing to have a name which is to say the least not usual.

I am very busy in my free time from my correspondence course building a

workshop out of the shed at the bottom of the garden. I have built a brick wall and

made a bench top for my drawing board.

[Here he has put a small diagram of what he was doing on the letter, which was

written in his fine hand, very small. I detect a strange "disconnect", a strange

wandering in this letter. The brick work was a bit rough - and I think if a [ ] had

done it I would have had no [qualms?] about watching him pull it out. The other

side of the room I have built a fireplace with a very ingenious flue made out of 6"

earthenware drainage pipes. This may not be very interesting to you Joy but you

remember what a little pest I always was as a kid for writing letters - no change in

me yet. Auntie M and Jean are at me all the time - anyway, what I meant to add

was - the odd sketch here and there does help to fill up space - even if it is a bad

sketch.

Jean sends her love and best wishes -- and all my best wishes and love.

your brother

Frank

------------------- ------------------------------------- ------------------------------------

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

..........................................................................................................................................

John Cheever is still perhaps the greatest American
short story writer. At least for the mode or form of
his stories. They always have a realist-surreal aspect
which is difficult to define. Of course there is no one
great story writer. There are (in the US) Hemmingway
of his 'The Snows of Kilmanjaro' and e.g. 'A Clean Well Lighted Place' and his enigmatic, dialogue filled boxing stories (often the drama is in what is leading up to what might be a boxing match); there is Peter Taylor whose long and subtle stories put him in almost another planet; there is the enigmatic Eudora Welty or Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, Raymond Carver, Donald Barthelme (whose 'post-modernist' stories in their mode are almost unsurpassable), and even Richard Brautigan. There are many others.

I had Cheever's diary. At the time I was reading it I had a kind of melancholia, and the anxiety that I was feeling was increased by reading it, but as I had started with -- in fact, wanting to takesomething from one letter written by my father -- this entire 'chapter' of my Infinite Project began to involve very much one or indeed always all of, my general aims such as any aim or purpose can be allocated. But I was now looking for journals by anyone. But such are hard to find, so 'famous people' (such as Cheever) and also Herve Guibert (whose diary I discovered and red before I knew anything about him) and it included excerpts from Van Gogh's diary as I happened to have Irving Wallace's compilation of them -- the same went for much else. I missed a book I had had with letters by Maori who learnt to write around and after the NZ Wars. I recall getting it from the GI library but couldn't locate it again. I did get writing or recorded speeches from Maori around 1840 on as well as Richard Taylor the missionary and scholar whose work Te Ika a Maui I used. But I added stuff by Woolf, Bertrand Russell (who knew Joseph Conrad a writer I have been reading and re-reading for years) and others. I embedded it all in Heidegger's 'Being and Time' and that was interspersed with long quotes from 'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf. Also quotes from her diaries and also quotes from a boook of famous and sometimes tragic of comic letters (those really strange and indeed funny ones by Mozart but there were many others). But it wasn't the 'great' or the famous I wanted. I wanted language or images or anything by anyone.

John Cheever the great short story writer.
Cheever's journal is also good. It is in the tradition of great journals as e.g. Pepys, De Quincey, Evelyn, Kafka, Woolf, Andre Gide, (Mansfield but I haven't read any of that although I like her stories, and I might have added things by NZ's Robin Hyde).

Because I spent some time reading through and studying Wittgenstein's 'Logico-Tractatus' and because of his connections to Bertrand Russell I quoted from Russell's autobiography. With such people one soon gets outside logic or mathematics and philosophy to literature: and in Russell's case not only the strangeness of Cantor's theories of infinite sets but his friendship with Conrad is of interest. In the letters things the Rosenberg's write a last letter before their execution, to their sons, Helen Keller writes of 'hearing' a musical concert. Gerald Durrell whose many books about animals and his eccentric family my family read in the 60s, is here (or in another earlier section) with a love letter.

Then letters from my mother's collection which includes my own family and myself follow. One of the original ideas of EYELIGHT which I got via reading about and reading Louis Zukovsky's 'A' and other works and books about his work, was a work that contained say: The Personal, The Political, Art, my own poems, then my own and other peoples poems fragmented etc. But here, more obviously than my original 'The Infinite Poem' I have my own personal experiences or some of them as well as some of my own family and images of them. These are juxtaposed with other images.

Nothing in the Infinite Project though is really quite so concisely planned and "process" is as important as anything else. Nor is it a 'poetic' work or is it really Art -- it involves or tries to involve all media and all aspects of human life. In theory no thing is prioritized. No one and nothing is 'taught'. In this project Roland Barthes, as far as possible, materializes: the Barthes of say Writing Degree Zero, Camera Lucida, Image Music Text and most significantly The Death of the Author. [The 'death' is essential in theoretical terms to or for this Infinite Project.] Also an essay by Charles Bernstein that was the initial to my ' from The Infinite Poem'. The essay 'Writing and Method' Silliman and Bruce Andrews (to me hugely important work) In the American Tree.

I have heard people talk negatively of NZ literature, I don't make criticisms of anyone as I see everything as potentially, in any case, of some value, or in a philosophical sense, of basically the same consequence. If there is a 'fault' it is in not paying attention to theory of all kinds and of not absorbing the lessons of the US Language Poets who of couse derive from the French and other traditions including say Mallarme, Apollinnaire and many others. But this is not to reject the Other traditions or processes. For me, as it seems it was for Leigh Davis, the controversial but innovative NZ writer, the word 'poet' is problematic. I have tried the word or name 'Neomaker'.

If there is satire it is more of the kind of Mennipean satire seen to a degree in Swift but essentially in Rabellais. Bahktin's great book on Rabellais is always in my thoughts. Of course all those writers and 'idea-ists' such as Lynn Heijinian, Hannah Weiner (her visual layouts), Charles Bernstein and indeed all those in the In the American Tree and all the essays seen in various places including say Bernadette Mayer's 'experiments' she unrolled for the St. Marks Poetry Project'.

But there are many other aspects and strands. Realism has its place beside say the writing of Artaud or the strange plays of Edward Albee, and then there is all the work of Strindberg. But do I neglect, say, George Bernard Shaw? No! All have their place. Beckett has his place beside Jarry and Shaw, or any other playwright.

This doesn't neglect the underpinning effect of such long things as WCW's Patterson, Olson's Maximus Poems, and Pound's Cantos.

But this I.P. is not focused on such names (generated via many of them -- I could add some other NZ names -- as well as, say, Kenneth Goldsmith (of 'uncreative writing', Kathy Acker and even NZ's Wystan Curnow. Indeed also Scott Hamilton, Shane Hollands (yes, a completely different writer, but I point also to the many that have read live at Poetry Live), and many other interesting and innovative writers. But also to anyone. To people who just try. People who just are. Whitman tried to celebrate himself and through that America and by that humanity. Dickinson went in another direction as did Mina Loy, H.D., Stevens, Ashbery, Schuyler, John Berryman, Laura Riding, Marrianne Moore and again back to Susan Howe. Does this rule out Keats. No. Nor does it mean that poetry is what I am doing here.

What I am attempting here is a kind of phenomenological process that embraces all things and tries to get rid, entirely of 'names' and competition and any particular media or 'way'. And to select if ever to select by a random process. I have read of a tribe of old times who had their kind of 'sports' -- throwing, running, jumping etc. If someone won too much his or her name was suppressed, and they were put out of that competition. They who won too much were disapproved of. I want to acknowledge the enormous potentiality of the people. In that we have to hope. But I cannot allow any philosophy or any one aspect take centre stage. You, anyone, you are it: anyone can make. Anything. All are valid. All of us have our place. So there is no program here. Having kicked off, we are all on our own. Make. Anything. In any way. The 'ethical' restraints will arise naturally.

Enough!

From The Journals by John Cheever [i.e. from Cheever's Journals]

1952 In middle age there is no mystery, there is mystification. The most I can make out of this hour is a kind of loneliness. Even the beauty of the visible world seems to crumble, yes, even love. I feel that there has been some miscarriage, some wrong turning, but I do not know when it took place, and I have no hope of finding it.

..........Yesterday was rainy and deeply overcast. At four B. and I walked up Holbrook Road to K's. The clearing wind had begun to blow. As the overcast was displaced with brilliance and color, as more and more light poured into the valley, the hour seemed tumultuous and exalting. Backgammon and gin.

...The ice, contracting in the cold, made a noise like thunder....There was no moon and the ice was black...

...World without end, I murmer, shutting my eyes. Amen. But I seem to stand outside the realm of God's mercy....

P7 *

As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish----without ever having achieved the deep creativity that have worked toward for all this time----I feel that I take a minor, and obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand....that L.. walking in the garden at dusk in the throes of a violent passion, is of no importance to anyone. It does not matter. It does not matter . . . .

...there is always, somewhere, this hint of aberrant carnality. The worst of it is that it seems labyrinthine...

P14 *

The park on a Sunday night. The light withdrawing from the sky and the life on the walks darkening and intensifying. The unrelieved sexuality of the experience. Small breasts in the streetlight; breasts held in a black dress so the crease shows....The round lights blooming, music, much-used, the ill-used music, music that gad been played..., music to which people had eaten in restaurants and on park benches, music used to swell a climax in a radio play or to bring to resolution the terrible problems of a movie.....

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The Rosenberg's

WE PRESS CLOSE AND KISS YOU WITH ALL OUR STRENGTH

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to Their Sons

At New York's Sing Sing prison on the evening of June 19th, 1953, married couple Ethel and Julius Rosenberg became the first Americans ever to be executed for espionage, sentenced to death thanks to a testimony from Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, which placed them at the centre of a Soviet spy ring. On the morning of their execution, Ethel and Julius wrote a letter to their two young sons, Robert and Michael. Three years earlier, whilst working on the Manhatten Project as a machinist, David had been arrested on suspicion of selling atomic secrets to a Soviet spy; keen to minimize his own punishment, he soon supplied names to the FBI and specifically recalled recalled his sister typing out the stolen notes he had

passed on. Years later, with his dead, David admitted that he had lied in court about

her involvment in an effort to save the real typist, his pregnant wife, from imprisonment.

June 10, 1953

Dearest Sweethearts and my most precious children,

Only this morning it looked like we might be together again after all. Now that

this cannot be, I want you to know all that I have come to know.

Unfortunately I may write only a few simple words; the rest of your lives must

teach you, even as mine taught me.

At first, of course, you will grieve bitterly for us, but you will not grieve alone.

That is our consolation and it must eventually be yours.

Eventually, too you must come to believe that life is worth the living. Be com-

forted that even now, with the end of ours slowly approaching, that we know this

with a conviction that defeats the executioner!

Your lives must teach you, too, that good can really flourish in the midst of evil;

that freedom and all the things that go to make up a truly satisfying and worthwhile

life, must sometimes be purchased very dearly. Be comforted then that we were

serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had

not as yet progressed to the point where life didn't have to be sacrificed for life;

and that we were comforted by the sure knowledge that others would carry on

after us.

We wish we might have had the tremendous joy and gratification of living our

lives out with you. Your Daddy who is with me in these last momentous hours,

sends his heart and all the love that is in it for his dearest boys. Always remember

that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience.

We press you close and kiss you with all our strength.

Lovingly,

DADDY AND MOMMY Julie Ethel

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I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

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Letter Addressed on reverse: Mrs. Joy Taylor, 22 Court Crescent.

[Susan was 10, Gillian 11]

14 Cheltenham Rd.,

Devonport

5th Jan, 1955

Dear Mummy,

Thank you for sending the sticks balls and dress. How are you

Daddy and the boys? Gill and I are both well and Granny and Grandpa too. We

went to see Bruce Dunnett the baby just now before we went shopping, when we

came back we saw the parcel. Last Monday we had lunch with Maureen and Mrs

Lang. Yesterday it was dull at Devonport and was just drizzling all day. Today it

is windy but fine. Robyn her brother and her mother went over to Rangitoto last

Sunday, to stay in Mr Luxford's bach. Mrs Luxford said she went to see the man

who had taken them over, and he said they got there allright but then had to tow

a dingy piled high with gear. I think that's all the news.

Your loving daughter

Susan.

P.S. Mrs Luxford couldn't go to Rangitoto because of Dane.

Susan here is about 11, which is around the time she sent the letter to Mum. I, 8, am the next in front

of my English grandmother -- all my relatives were English. Beside her is Gillian about12 and Dennis

is in front of my mother Joy who, in the convention of those days, Susan correctly addressed as Mrs. L.S. Taylor as women took their husbands names. Dennis was 5.

Susan earlier, looking wistful, about 5 or 6.

Susan, my grandmother (myself in front of her), Gillian and Mum with Dennis

in the front. We are in the garden. My grandmother died a few years later (1961).

Myself at Takapuna beach with Susan and a girl on the RHS. I recall this girl, their family was in my grandparents' flat by their house in Cheltenham Rd, in Devonport. Gillian recalled her name was Marte. She speculated she might have been Marte Szirmay. I think she recalled she was Hungarian. In any case Szirmay created some great sculptures. Susan is older here, about 13 or 14. We had great days walking up to the beach.

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JOHN CHEEVER:

1955 *

Sitting in a chair on the stones before the house drinking Scotch and reading Aeschylus, I think then of how we are gifted. Of how we have requited our appetites, of how we have kept our skin clean and warm and satisfied our various appetites and lusts. I would not want anything finer than these dark trees and this golden light. I read Greek and I think that the advertising man across the road may do the same; that given some respite from war and need the mind, even the mind of the ad salesman, inclines to good things....

......[but] I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

1956 * P70

It is four o'clock and I am in Rome and I want a drink. Out of the window I see an orange house that is being turned into appartments ...Mary and Susie have gone out to

meet Ben....

1959 P100

How the world shines with light.

I dream of a better prose style, freed of expedients, more thoughtful, working closer to the emotions by both direction and indirection, feeling and intelligence. A pleasant dream, and I feel myself.

We cannot hope to cope alone with the devil; we cannot cleanse our hearts and minds by our own devices. When we sin, and I have sinned – I have indulged in lewd fancies and read the writing on the public wall – it is not our own flesh and blood that we seem to disfigure or our chances at immortality that we seem to damage, but the whole picture of life, shining or dark as the case may be, seems to have been offended by our lapse.

P119

We run out of liquor, as I had planned, at noon. At three I study the bar with its empty bottles. At four I drink four cups of tea with sugar. At five I stuff myself with bread and cheese and play backgammon. At six, when Mary returns, I drink the last of the liquor in the house, two fingers of cooking rum This does not make much difference and I begin to feel the symptoms of withdrawal. I shout at Federico. Drying the dishes I think of my dead mother, lying in her grave, and death appears to me to be a force of loneliness, only hinted at by the most ravening loneliness we know in life; the soul does not leave the body but lingers with it through every stage of decomposition and neglect, through heat and cold and long nights. Another symptom of withdrawal is anxiety. The oil burner will explode. Thieves will come in and harm my children, etc. This morning (9 A.M. ) I have also given up smoking. Walking down to the station I am pleased to fill my chest with the cold morning air. I seem to feel it refresh my blood. How much better is this for me than smoke. But in the last half hour I have begun to feel the absence of a habitual stimulus. I feel sleepy – horny in a disgusting way – my eyes are sore and my sense of things is faded and dim. Here is the let down, the distortion.

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Phone Y.M.C.A.

855, Hunua Camp Adair Hunua.

19 12 59

Dear Family,

I arrived safely had lunch then lay down with other boys a/n//d

I re//d/ read. Skip told us about Camp. Then we had Free time. I played on the

parallel bars etc Then I went in canoe fell out four time and bumped into

other canoes. Then had a swim. but I didn't go on the Flying Fox. I'll try it

next time.

I'll write later

Yours

Richard T.

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Letter on the form from Camp Adair. Here is the form. I was there in 1959

THE AUCKLAND YOU MAN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

CAMP ADAIR, HUNUA.

AN INVITATION:

Parents and friends of boys in camp are warmly invited to visit

Y.M.C.A. CAMP ADAIR at Hunua on VISITOR'S DAY

SATURDAY: "26 of December" [Handwritten by me.]

Camp is open to visitors from 9.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. and buses have

been arranged to leave the Auckland Y.M.C.A. at 9.00 a.m.

THE FARE: Adults................................................8/6 return

Children 4 - 14 years ......................4/- return

Seats must be booked at the Y.M.C.A., Pitt St., Auckland,

(Please note: No telephone bookings can be accepted.)

Those who prefer to do so, may travel in their own cars. Ample

parking space is available.

CAMP IS CLOSED TO VISITORS ON ALL OTHER DAYS.

Please bring your own picnic lunch.

Hot water and milk can be provided free.

We are looking forward to seeing you.

W. H. ELLIOTT .

Dear [Now in my writing] "Mum and Family

Woke up 7 oclock had cold was in stream.

we have a Junior leader and a senior leader. Capie. Had a swim today. I'm

feeling quit well and having fun. I sometimes feel bored and homseick

how is the family. See you next week on Saturday."

"Your Son Richard T. "

Y.M.C.A Camper.

In a time before television, calculators, computers cellphones or other useless trumpery; and we used Pounds shillings and pence, we used miles, inches, Fahrenheit, and in maths log tables, when there was no harbour bridge and we took the ferry of vehicular ferry to Devonport, when we could get White Bait for those delicious fritters my mother made: here the family sit and sing by the piano. I learned for a while but was embarrassed by the music bag that had been my grandmothers. I had no real ability for music but I liked playing and played Mozart's 'Rondo Alla Turka'. I mostly liked drawing the base and treble signs. My mother played very well. She also sometimes played the ukele. These were happy times.

I am in the centre about the time I went to Camp Adair. I can be identified as there is a tear on the photograph. I recall the children in my class. Not all their names. It is 2020 so this is about 1958, 62 years ago. To my immediate right looking at the photo is Dean, the Warren Murdoch. In the next row I recall the blond girl 2nf right looking at the pic: I think she was Linley, then there is Marilyn, then I am not sure but the last girl in the row is Erin McKecknie. Panmure was a state house area. Today or since about 1980 after Ponsonby was 'gentrified' more and more Polynesian people moved into the area.

In the Mt Wellington Soccer Team, we won that year. I remember greatly enjoying my soccer. It was almost the most exciting thing I did. Our team won just about every game. The boy holding the boy is or was Hugh McKinley (Capt. and Centre Forward). Beside him is Kavali, I am above him by the coach. Beside to the right is Rutherford (I think he was). He and McKinley coordinated to get goals. Later another team was made. I was left out of the A team, made Captain of the B team. I took this as an insult and in one of those rages I used to get into I told my mother I was not going to play soccer or any other sport again. And I didn't.

Myself at school, or at home with my sisters and Dennis with his plastic saxaphone which Dad always said 'had surprisingly good tone'. My brother Dennis played in the Mt. Wellington Soccer team for quite a few years. Gillian was very active in roller skating and Susan was in the girl guides and later played squash. She joined a church and married Kelvin McIntosh. Gillian married Leonard Priestley. Dennis was later the Dux of Tamaki College and did a degree in Chemistry and Cell Biology. He moved to Australia.

Matapan Road or near Tunis Rd. in Panmure, somewhere. Panmure in those days was

a predominantly European working class area in those days (50s to the 60s). Graham was a little fellow (I am not tall myself, as those who know me know, but Graham was shorter, perhaps that was part of why I liked him!) and we were friends for a while. I surprised myself wanting to go on such an "adventure".

We slept in little huts or cabins: I worried about spiders, and we got up early for a swim in the cold stream nearby. It was exciting and unnerving. 'Skip' told us that sheep cough, and never having seen a sheep (I think) I was fascinated, and at night we could hear coughing. One time we went on what I think was either a two or all day tramp. We got to a hill part and to get up the senior boys showed us how to grip each others arms by interlocking fingers and pull each other up. I think we slept out somewhere.

All the time at the Camp at Hunua I was ravenous. Now I think I know, in recollection what it must be to be one of the starving. Or one of "the wretched of the earth". At least to some extent. At lunch time or dinner (for which we ached) I ate voraciously (we must also have had breakfast). It was all exciting, but I was homesick. Excited but terribly homesick at the same time! My parents visited. We played soccer, swam in the nearby stream and slid down a mud slide on a river bank. Homesick, energetically hungry and it was also quite strange for me. The Skip in question told us that sheep coughed (I knew nothing about sheep never having then or since, ever been on a farm where there were sheep or cattle despite that NZ is supposed to be a farming nation); and we heard the sheep, and to quieten us he would whisper; "Be quiet or you'll wake the baby!"

I recall when one boy lost his glasses (or were they...) and saying, almost crying, that he couldn't see. We all started looking for his glasses. I was really frightened for him as I thought that that meant he was going blind! All the boys around were concerned as he was distraught. He must have found them.

Looking at the dates I must have been 11 although from memory I thought I was younger. I try to recall when I first learnt chess, and I think it was around this time. Not long after this in any case I "graduated" from reading The Famous Five by Blyton to Biggles and then I started on Dickens and by High School I had read all of the books on the shelf in our living room. I also read Alice and Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass (which got me to learn chess, which my father and I learnt together first through library books etc then he bought books. So it was around that time. And at that time in 1959 I had started a garden. My father dug the garden. Our garden was enriched as my father used to bury all food rubbish from a large bin at regular intervals around the garden. This meant that the soil, volcanic as much here is, was enriched. (We had a great garden as did many around here -- and Maori many years before us and indeed the Chinese Market Gardeners, I met up with Dick Lum whose family lived close to the roundabout near Queens Rd and Kings when I was at Tamaki Intermediate -- I had remembered him as though for many days he was assailed by a mass of boys he fought back valiantly, he got into commercial art. I caught up with him a few years ago [ca. 2016 or so])

In any case I was disappointed and embarrassed that my father had done so much work on the garden (I was supposed to do it all and I wanted to do that). But still, coming home from Camp Adair, I was enormously excited to see the amount of growth of my garden: it had been fascinating seeing little bean shoots come up and so on. In the end I had corn, pumpkins -- that seemed to me like boulders and grew all over the fence towards No 24 in the bottom left side corner -- broad beans, turnips, and others (Dad had grown strawberries, I recall the family picking them, putting them in those little soft-wooden punnets, and also passionfruits on the shed (virtually all the State Houses had a shed, and ours was used for that but on the other side we grew string beans, something I continued to do until I think about 2006 or so as well as trying broccolli, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots etc)...in fact as many of the people in those days had fruit trees or indeed passionfruit, or tamarillos, or other, one of the Court Crescent boys under a Brian Mace (an extraordinary boy who was our really great friend, always making up games and full of ideas in those days) who lived over the road at what is now about No. 25 I think, used to rob orchards or maraud and climb through fences or hedges (one day something seemed to go in my ear, and thinking of "earwigs" I screamed and with the the boys and possibly Jennifer Smith, we all went to Mrs Somervilles, where, in her kitchen,she poured olive oil into my ear!...I since have learned (she was kind but skeptical of the earwig theory!); that earwigs have their name for other reasons than for entering peoples' ears....); but there was my garden, or our garden, and when I came back (I went back in a truck at night to the YWMCA (that for years was in Central Auckland). For some reason it was night. Maybe we stayed there until the next day. Coming home I recall my father taking me to see my garden. He was pleased as punch himself, as he loved gardening (if he didn't realize I needed to do things for myself (my parents and him did everything for me in any case, we were not even required to dry dishes, and once when I saw a rocket station (plans to build) in an Eagle Annual I asked my father to help me make it -- I was deeply disappointed when he proceeded to make it (even though indeed it was very good) and I did nothing: there was my space station, and I soon lost interest in it, he had not encouraged me to do things for myself, at the age of 19 I had to ask how to use a hammer, and which end was used to remove nails: not all of this, of course, was my parents "fault" but I used to yearn for stricter parents, even poorer (my father had become an architect during the war and we were always well off in the 50s, with lots of food etc and good toys)...and our parents were very kind and loving, and I loved and love and remember them: but this part of it, and my father doing my garden, was a problem)...In any case my father was excited and when I saw the change in the size of everything I was also hugely excited. Despite being "deprived" it was exciting to see this amazing thing: growth of life. It was, indeed, like Jack in and the bean stalk, with the pumpkins huge greenish boulders almost great bombs of life heaving heedless over that bottom fence into the neighbours yard (that was the Monroe's, Jack Monroe was a mechanic, not much interested in gardening I think -- some remembered him as people would come around from everywhere to get cheaper car repairs. He liked booze, unlike my father, and with his stiff leg (damaged as, as an aircraft mechanic, he jumped from the wing of a bomber or bombers of transport aircraft, or many aircraft, during WWII...later he would buy my first car to repair and resell for parts or whatever when, a "mate" of mine ran it, after I said not to, as it had come back from repairs, with no oil in it....that was Teale who I used to take to the PYM (Progressive Youth Movement, he lived in Coates Crescent) in 1969, but more or that anon.....

Mr. and Mrs. Monroe with their daughter Joanne (or Robin who was the younger daughter). The Monroes were good working class people. Jack worked hard fixing cars and his wife was very nice. As a teenager I increasingly retreated into myself and my room, reading books and so on. I became alienated and avoided young women. Once Robin who was then only 12 or so greeted me. In a panic I flew into a terrible rage, swearing and swearing at her. Mrs Monroe came out and protested. I apologized. It was strange. I didn't attend either of my sister's weddings. This I think was Gillian's. However, all my life I have disliked social groups of people, or concerts of any kind, or football matches or parties. I was worse then, I avoided people if I could. In 1967 when I was working as a Road test technician for Bitumix, hearing that someone had died of a heart attack I suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Anti-depressents and sedatives brought me right. Gadually I became more outgoing so to speak. My obsession was with death. This, death, has remained almost the main force or 'experience' of my life. It

is connected for me to the mystery of life. However the intense focus on death has lessened.

Mr Monroe (Jack) was a good man. I wrote a poem about him and included it in reading I gave with Joy Mackenzie in 1991.

__________________________________________________________________________________
my sensations at this moment. They are so peculiar; so unpleasant. Partly T[ime] of L[ife]? I wonder. A physical feeling as if I were drumming slightly in the veins: very cold: impotent: terrified. As if I were exposed on a high ledge in full light. Very lonely. L. out to lunch. Nessa has Quentin; don't want me. Very useless. No atmosphere around me. No words. Very apprehensive. As if something cold and horrible

The corn had leaves that were somewhat yellow. I think the corn itself was o.k. As it happens I won the competition and was awarded with a bag of blood and bone (or was it superphosphate [more about what that triggers later as my mother and her brother were brought up as young children on Banaba Island (Ocean Island) which was destroyed by the British, NZ, and Australians....the discovery of superphosphate on that Island (from millions of years of bird droppings etc and submergence in the sea) sealed that Island's fate and that of the Banaban people....they at first lost their language due to the influence of a missionary who "converted" them away from their perfectly adequate life and beliefs and tabulated their language and wrote it's vocabulary, in a dictionary: so that even early in the 20th Century almost all of the original Banaban language had disappeared, and Ocean Island or Banaba, had effectively been destroyed, the last villages bulldozed, thousands of coconut trees destroyed in a slow holocaust...the result of the greed of men (Elllis who discovered the phosphate -- Ellis who my grandparents knew, and via them as they knew the Hellabies, enabled my father to obtain a job as an architect at Hellabys....But more on him...and the Banabans are almost all moved off their largely destroyed Island to Rabi in Fiji....)....

But of this in those days I knew nothing. I did know that my mother had lived on an Island, my uncle Frank had flown with the RAF in WWII, and so on, but I was reading Dickens and Victor Hugo etc.

At the time of my garden and the Hunua Camp Adair, I mentioned this yellow colour of the corn. My father said that my uncle Geoff, as he was a soil and plant diseases scientist (he had worked for the DSIR and also later become the head of Chemical company in Nelson, or at least a manager), would know. I should write to him as he would be "tickled pink" to hear from me. He was it seemed and sent me a letter I still have and a book he wrote called Garden Pests and Diseases by G. G. Taylor. [It was subtitled: 'How to control them in New Zealand]. It was interesting to get his letter which talked of a lack of potassium, I think it was in the soil, as the soil here is basically volcanic and the heat of the eruption of Mt Wellington (Maungarei) burned out the potassium (if that is what was or is lacking in the soil).. I had the letter for years but have filed it somewhere I cant find just now. That was that period of my life.

[The Book Maungarei, by Mrs Holloway, gives a lot of the early history, including the history of Maori here and the European settlers here. It was written by a school mistress of the high school I attended (Tamaki College), Mrs Holloway.]

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YOUNG MAN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

Camp Adair Hunua, Auckland, 'Ph 855 Hunua'

"31 12 59"

Dear Family.

I received the Xmas cards thank you very much, my pen does not work

The night you left we had the beans. Did you see me in the Herald at the

far end of the bridge. On Tuesday we went for an over night hike. I had

my ground sheet and 1 blanket. We had a campfire and cooked tea. Minus milk

with condensed milk half a teaspoon full. At night I froze in a shearing shed.

Minus pullover I got to sleep at 2 oclock. Before we went to sleep we had a

swim in the nic.

Today we had athletics I fell over twice and lost. I've got 7d left. The names of the

boys in my cabin

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From John Cheever's Journal called The Journals 1960

Memorial Day. A new notebook. A man wearing a powdered wig and a tricorne carries a bass drum past the liquor store. …... I wonder if this cafarde, this immortal longing, this mysterious and stupendous melacholy from which I seem to suffer isno more than common alcoholism. So I look yearningly at the soft stars, but they do me no good. I think of moral crises, but when have I known the the taste of abstinence and self-discipline?

To describe all human misery in all its vastness and intensity without creating an air of disqualification. To trim misery of petulance and morbidity, to give pain some nobility. But can one do this – can one handle tragedy – without some moral authority, some sense of good and evil?

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Lake View Hotel

29th March, 1965 Lake Terrace,

Taupo

Dear Mum,

We walked around the shops of Taupo this morning and on our travels

bought a paper and gazed fondly at our own picture. Did you see it? Or is that a

silly question? I think it's a good photograph but Leonard says it makes him look

like Peter Sellers as the President in "Dr Strangelove".

On Saturday we stayed at the Great Nothern, and had a lovely sumptuous room

with our own bathroom. All very modern. On Saturday night we wen to see 'The

Yellow Rolls Royce" at the Civic. We were amused to see Susan and Kelvin walk

in. We turned our faces away when they walked past us up the stairs, but I was

giggling so much we were sure they would see us. However it was an excellent

film as Sue and Kell will probably agree. We left The Great Northern just before

ten on Sunday and spent the day driving down to Taupo, stopping at Hamilton for

lunch. We made other stops when we felt like buying something to drink, or to

take pictures although the light wasn't terribly good for photography.

Our room here isn't so luxurious The Great Northern, but it is attractively

decorated in light colours and it has its own bathroom. The Dining-room has wind-

ows for walls on two sides and gives a panoramic view of the lake which is just

across the road.

The weather when we arrived at 5:30 last night was cloudy & grey but today,

though cold, is clear & pleasant. On our walk around the shops we were side-

tracked by a book-shop, and we bought almost the whole series in paper back of

the "Narnia" books by C. S. Lewis. A good collection to have I think.

Leonard and I want to thank you and Dad for the wonderful wedding you gave

us. Especially you Mum for all the work & preparation you did.

I think all the rush and bother wasn't worth it as it all turned out just the way I

wanted it. I hope everyone else enjoyed the reception because I did -

I had a marvellous time.

I'll have to stop, mainly because I have run out of paper.

Love to everyone

from Gillian and Leonard!

The family sometime of course before my sister's weddings.

Gillian possibly at the skating rink that was in Khyber Pass. She retained her interest in the sport for many years. I did some and could skate quite well.

Gillian, the winner probably of 'figure skating' on the podium.

Gillian on Leonard's Lambretta. Len toook it completely apart and reassembled it before he sold it to me. He painted it red. It was 150 cc so I got a motorcycle license on it.

Gillian and Susan.

Leonard and Gillian before their marriage about 1964.

Fred Carr and Isobel Carr. Fred was a professional photographer. My father designed his colour-processing rooms. At the wedding. Bothmy sisters were married around the same time.

Mum and Dennis. Mum (Joy) with John Robert Miller.

Leonard's friend, the writer & poet Michael Morrisey (best man), Len, Gillian, Mum,

Mr Priestley, Robin Monroe, Susan and the other Monroe girl. Or is that the Hoey girl who

lived near the once small dairy on Court Crescent about no.30?

Mr Priestley, Leonard Priestley, Gillian, Mum and Dad

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YOUR TYPE IS A DIME A DOZEN

Hunter S. Thompson to Anthony Burgess.

Born in Manchester, England, the late Anthony Burgess is best known - in part

due to Stanley Kubrick's big-screen adaptation - for A Clockwork Orange,

the widely revered dystopian novel that first broke ground in 1962. But this was

far from his only achievement. Burgess was prolific, versatile, and highly

intelligent: he published 33 novels, 25 nonfiction titles, produced poetry, short

stories and screenplays, composed three symphonies, wrote hundreds of musical

pieces, and spoke three languages fluently. He also, when time allowd, worked

as a journalist, and in August of 1973 found himself in Rome struggling to

compose a "thinkpiece" owed to Rolling Stone magazine. Defeated, he

suggested "a 50,000-word novella I've just finished, all about the condition

humaine etc. Perhaps some of that would be better than a mere thinkpiece."

Unluckily for him, that offer landed on the desk of Hunter S. Thompson.

August 17, 1973

Woody Creek, CO

Dear Mr. Burgess,

Herr Wenner has forwarded your useless letter from Rome to the National Affairs

Desk for my examination and / or reply.

Unfortunately we have no International Gibberish Desk, or it would have ended

up there.

What kind of lame, half-mad bullshit are you trying to sneak over on us? When

Rolling Stone asks for "a thinkpiece," goddamnit, we want a fucking Thinkpiece

...and don't try to weasel out with any of your limey bullshit about a "50,000 word

novella about the condition humaine etc...."

Do you take us for a gang of brainless lizards? Rich hoodlums? Dilettante thugs?

You lazy cocksucker. I want that Thinkpiece on my desk by Labor Day. And I want

it ready for press. The time has come & gone when some cheapjack scum like you

got away with the kind of scams you got rich from in the past.

Get your worthless ass out of the piazza and back to the typewriter. Your type is a

dime a dozen around here, Burgess, and I'm fucked if I'm going to stand for it any

longer.

Sincerely

Hunter S. Thompson

________________________________________________

Joy, DO YOU REMEMBER

When we cut Miss Longmates creeper & then tied it up with string? When you fell over & got a black eye while practicing for the the three-legged race?

When you wrote “when I am dead my dearest” for Miss Smith. When Sheila Wright adored coming to & from school with you?

When we crept down the basement & “pinched” a cloth or headdress with a skull and crossbones on it?

................................................................................. .................................................................................

Whether the friend below wrote the above letter I am not sure. But these photographs are of her High School days. She was in England (where she was born but then went to Ocean Island or Banaba, then to

school in about 1924, then to Melbourne where she boarded at Firbank High and also went to Banaba.

This was about 1931 to 1938. Then she moved with her parents to a farm my grandfather had in Tauranga, NZ. [I will check these dates.]

Pictures of my mother and events at her High School (Firbank, in Melbourne. Australia, although one might be Kettering in England.)

My mother is the young woman second from the LHS. as the photo is viewed.

A beach near her school in Melbourne?

___________________________________________

Gina my niece around the time - perhaps a little older -- of this letter. Gina was the first child of my sister Gillian who became Gillian Priestley.

8 kashmir road

Glen Eden

17th June

1974

Dear Granny

Tommorrow my class will be going to the Pioneer village

to see all the houses that the Pioneer people built and the things they had.

I am up to my 5x and I can do my [sign for division], so I am very good

at maths. Mum was very pleased about the jumper.

Love from

Gina .

[I think my niece, then Gina Priestley, was 8 then.]

Picture of Erin about 1978, he was a bit older

Dear Granny,

Can we come to see you soon

love from

Erin

[Gina's younger brother, Erin, who was about 5 or six then.]

........................................................................................................................................

….....................................................................................................................................

........................................................................................................................................

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions. I am alone here

every night after 9 pm, the family are early to bedders – and I sit alone with my

books and think of this long war and all the lonely women throughout the world

and the men in camps and holes in the ground tormented with hunger

for women

......................................................................................................................................

______________________________________________________

John Cheever's Journals 1975 P303

The sounds of evening in New York. A baritone practices his scales and sings an aria – Italian, I guess because of the sentiment and the G-sharp. Church bells. The only dog who lives on the block has a barking spell.

Across the yard, …. She is wearring a housecoat and looks hung over. I have never seen her fully dressed, or looking as if she didn't need or have a drink. Then I think I hear some choral music. One hears almost no music from these backyards. Knowing absolutely nothing about music, I conclude that it must be Puccini....I once had perfect pitch, but that was long ago. Then I hear some dissonance and decide that it must be Berg or Schönberg. The soprano then hits a very high note and sustains it for an impossible length of time, and I realise what I have been hearing is the clash of traffic and a police siren amplified by a light rain.

I read Berryman on rehabilitation centers. When I wake this morning the feeling of dislocation is very strong. I am nervous; my vision is poor; I keep singing Dartmouth songs that I can't have heard for forty years. I am a son of a gun for beeer/I like my whiskey clear and if I had a son sir I'll tell you what he'd do/he would yell to hell with Harvard as his daddy used to do.

P324

So, tomorrow I go to Boston to bury my brother.

Most frequent thought, during the funeral of my brother, is that my thinking is superficial. Any tears I shed are facile. The architecture of teh early-eighteenth-century church is splendid. The smell in the vestibule of wood, the heat, and some salt from the nearby sea is, I think, unique in this part of the world, and it unlocks my memory. The high arched windows with their many lights must make it a cruel place to worship in the winter, but on this splendid summer day they make of the building a frame for trees and the sky. I do not miss my brother at all. I think that he, like my mother, regarded death as no mystery at all. Life had been mysterious and thrilling, I often heard them say, but death was of no consequence. Some clinician would say that, while I part so easily with my brother, I will, for the rest of my life, seek in other men the love he gave to me.

Approaching my fortieth year, I had published well over a hundred short stories that expressed my feeling of life as intense and profoundly broken encounters. I then had two children and was into my fiftieth year of my marriage and hoped, in my first novel, to celebrate a sustained relationship over a long passage of time. I had not lived in New England for more than a decade, and the past of my family....[became significant]....

....I worked four days a week on the "Chronicle,"* with intense happiness. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My weekends went roughly like this. On Saturday mornings I played touch football until the noon whistle blew, when I drank Martinis for an hour or so with friends. On Saturday afternoons, I played Baroque music on the piano or a recorder with an ensemble group. On Saturday nights my wife and I either entertained or were entertained by friends. Eight o'clock Sunday morning found me at the Communion rail, and the Sunday passed pleasantly according to the season, in skiiing, scrub hockey, football, or backgammon. This sport was occasionally interrupted by the fact that I drove the old Mack engine for the volunteer fire department....My happiness was immense...

*Of I think four of his novels. He means The Wapshot Chronicle, which was followed by The Wapshot Scandal. [My mother read both of these and his Bullet Park, I have read mainly his (great stories) and Falconer which I wasn't as impressed with as his stories. I have the two books my mother used to type the books she read often from the local library, or sometimes presents from my sisters or others or books she had, but mostly library books. I have made a point of seeing what books (of what are about 1640+ books. My mother was intelligent and read widely. Not just 'serious' fiction but also travel, sci fi, Sephen King, and many others. Many books she may have read when young perhaps not recorded. Of course the number of books is not important in itself. But it was also an appreciated reading and as writers were chosen regardless whether famous per se, a pretty wide selection of writers was covered. In her later years she used to get me to get them, when she was less able to walk etc. I would look for her signature on the then paper where books were stamped in and out in those, better days, it has to be said.

P 329 *

Alienation seems to be the word. I feel alienated. This is keen but not painful; no more than a premonition of physical pain, which one has experienced and will again...The snow is like nothing, like air; and yet it holds the light that comes from the windows of the house. My daughter arrives in the middle of the storm after a dangerous journey. I much love her, pray for her happiness, and go to bed in my old bed, where I dream of love.

…......................................................................................... ….....................................

THE MAUSOLEUM OF LOVERS

Some of 'The Journals of Hervé Guibert 1976--1991

Corner of wind: empty spot where I will put the manikin of a child if I buy it. But it seems I can already see it, in that empty spot, since I desire it. I could live like this in a destitute decor, contrary to mine surrounded only by desires and the suggestions of objects (I continue to refuse to build a collection).

This notebook took some getting used to: the linage extends further. The surface is less tight, less secret than those of the small notebooks. The main thing is to have managed to give it a fate, to affix some black at the top left of the page.

................... ......................... ........................................ ...............

Evening just the same. I would like for a hot body to crush me gently and push into my ass penetrate me slowly, lick my neck, and only detach from me after having come with a groan, and fall asleep: T.

.......... ................. ................. .................... .....................

I catch everything I read: I read an article on syphilis and am immediately convinced that I have it.....

__________________________________________________

My father had the idea that books, passed between hands, could transmit illnesses.

For two consecutive nights I dream that I am crying because of death, and they're a sort of unknown tears, an infinite sob, in which pure pain is associated with pleasure, a very slow drift that nothing could stop and that carries away the whole body, the whole soul, all of life.

......................................

I shall always refuse to be a photographer: this attraction frightens me, it seems to me that it can quickly turn to madness, because everything is photographable, everything is interesting to photograph, and out of one day of one's life one could cut thousands of instants, thousands of little surfaces, and if one begins why stop?

What strikes me on reading several German Romantics (Goethe, Holderlin, Hoffman, Jean Paul...), is the incomplete, awkward, juvenile character of their works, and beyond the "stunning perfection" of Werther, and Kleist's short stories, their bewildering abundance, their lack of construction, of linearity, that annoying way of juxtaposing unrelated narratives, of garnishing, of deviating from the initial story with tales, examples, long dialogues. The whole of Novalis' oeuvre is incomplete, suspended; Jean Paul's is incredibly unbridled, with neither head nor tail, and jumping from one subject to the other: Hoffman's The Sandman is one of the obvious examples of this failure: after the perfection of the first three stories, written in the form of letters, with Freudian overshadowings (childhood trauma, the missed act etc.), Hoffman admits to his inability to write his tale by revealing his writer's recipes to the reader [although this might be called a postmodern ruse, as with the diversions...cant resist commenting. Since I "discovered" Guibert's diary at the local library I have been picking it up and writing from it or reading it for some years with hiatuses in between. In seemed immediately extraordinary: his mix of these lit. observations, his own plot ideas, cuts to his sex life and indeed to desire, his concerns, some really dark stuff, to beautiful moments, to his observations about his mother and father and sister I think, and his lovers, this is an extraordinary thing that is endless. I can butt into it anywhere and it fascinates: perhaps skip some really wierd stuff, or embrace it (I don't share his homosexuality, nor have I ever had as such a great sex life: nor written any novels, worked on movies or photography : but his journals written up by his sister I think are from 1976 -- 1991. It is a kind of source book of ideas and words and also an insight into an often suffering but very alive mind and soul: clearly a sensitive and alert mind like that of Proust, or Perec or some of the writers he talks of here. I advise a reader toward his writing. His end was tragic but it seems his life was mostly intense (not only in affairs etc but in his minds continous creative and sensitive play. As it happens I have read Goethe's Werther, but no Hoffman, was not impressed by what I did read (coming via Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower) of Novalis's work, although I appreciated his importance, Kleist I don't know. Holderlin I read quite a lot. Heidegger in Poetry Language and Thought writes of him, Rilke (French) and Georg Trakl (the last 2 more modernists than Romantics): John Ashbery was keen on Holderlin also. ] ...., breaks the fascination of the tale through this sort of forced detachment, and returns to the story, where, after a fashion, he imbricates two ideas, two characters and two different stories (the alchemist lawyer Coppelius and Olympia, the false female, that cold-blooded mannequin with a mechanical voice and a clockwork organism) which end up coinciding with overly visible bit stitches. Stifter, at the end of the day, appears, hitherto, with his short stories (The Bachelors, The Forest Path...). as a Romantic spin-off, as an efficient, classical author, who reinserts the ddar magic of Romanticism into linear, faultless narratives, without avowals of failure. But that is perhaps a teacher's remark.

........................................................... ......................................................................

ALL THIS I DID WITHOUT YOU

Gerald Durrell to Lee McGeorge July 31st, 1978

Gerald Durrell and Lee McGeorge first met in1977 when Durrell, a respected

conversationist and author 24 years her senior, was giving a lecture at Duke

University in North Carolina where she was a PhD student. Her area of interest,

animal behaviour, gave them plenty to discuss, and they immediately became

close: two years later they were married. By the time Durrell died in 1995 they

had travelled the world together on numerous conservation expeditions and co-

written two books. A Practical Guide for the Amateur Naturalist and Durrell in

Russia.

In 1978, a year after they first met, Durrell wrote a letter to his

future wife.

My darling McGeorgie,

You said that things seemed clearer when they were written down.

Well, herewith a very boring letter in which I will try and put everything down

so that you may read it and re-read it in horror at your getting involved with me.

Deep breath.

To begin with I love you with a depth of passion that I have felt for

no one else in my life and if it astonishes you it astonishes me as well. Not, hasten

I to say, that you are not worth loving. Far from it. It's just that, first of all, I swore

I would not get involved with another woman. Secondly I have never had such a

feeling before and it is almost frightening......[Durrell continues to extol her at

great length.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[The long letter continues.]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let me tell you something....I have seen a thousand sunsets and

sunrises, on land and where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured

light, at sea where it rises and sets.....I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons

like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swan's

feathers.

I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue

as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving,

ponderously and murderously.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[He goes on, dare I say it, like Gide of The Fruits of the Earth which is some-

times quite beautiful but one of those things one drifts along not quite sure where

things start or end. But intermitted by beautiful moments and phrases. Durrell's

letter works by repetition and the sheer mass of it but it is too much to type up

entire. I read a lot of his works as a boy. His collecting of animals and amusing

and interesting adventures. My mother and others in the family I think read him a

lot. He mentions somewhere his brother Larry but I don't think he was known then.

I have his (Larry Durrell's) books, or a lot of them, but although people wax

lyrical about some of them, I have to say I have never started any of his books. I

must one day.]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have known silence: the cold, earthly silence of at the bottom of a

newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged

midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye

of the sun, the silence when great music ends.

I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into

your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach

singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling

over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their

way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals

as they sang to their sleek golden wives*, the crisp staccato astonishesment of the

Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer

knee-deep in purple heather, I have heard Wolves baying at a winter's moon. Red

howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak,

purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes.

I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet

blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver

across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have

seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have

seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles

of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge, and sit, trembling,

while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating

in the long grass. I have been dive- bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy

as the Devil's hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around

me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thous-

and wonderful things ... but -

All this I did without you. This was my loss.

All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.

All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of

your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above

all your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which

it is my privilege to delve.

[Gerald Durrell]

..............................................................................................................................

CEDERWOOD COTTAGE

STANFORD DNGLEY

December 1980 Nth. READING

BERKSHIRE RG7 6LR

ENGLAND---------------

Dear Joy -----

I am afraid my overseas mail is never sent off in time, & last year it

got missed altogether ---- am so sorry. You are so good in having kept up the

the Christmas greetings for so many years! I must first thank you not only for

this year's card & letter, but also for last year's nice little N.Z. Calender.

So glad to hear you & family are well -- learning THAI sounds very

difficult, but you are rather nearer that area (in N.Z.) than we are in England.

We only had a fair Summer this year in England -- more rain than is usual,

though this kept all the trees and grass nice and green! I always remember

(even after all these years!) the dark Green of the OROPI bush country & the

pink roofs of the buildings.

Laurence and I both kept going with our various interests. He has 2 Art

Classes in the district, and I join in a few friends for recorder practise every

few weeks, including an occasional CAROL Concert at this time of the year.

We are hoping to have a modest exhibition of our joint paintings some time

next year, in a Large Village Hall in a nearby village. It is very difficult to find

a gallery for art exhibitions, even the small ones we are booked up for years

ahead, strange a s it may seem, in these time of world depressions!

My local history researches are still continuing -- I have traced the old

GLEBE LANDS of Stanford, Dingley church back to the Armada year --- & if

one could only find the records, I think they would go back much further, perhaps

to the Saxon days! Things change so quickly these days -- nobody in the village

here knows the old names of fields etc: and I feel I have started to record certain

items only in the nick of time.

I am sure there must be many changes in N.Z. too, I dare say OROPI has got

built up! One of the worst aspects of change in England, is the increase in

noise, transistor radios, motor-bikes, heavy lorries, helicopters etc: & no doubt

this is happening all over the world.

We have more or less ceased to travel far away for holidays -- by car, the roads

are apt to be crowded & driving manners are bad; even going by train is not

what it was! It is far less worry to stay at home and go out for day trips, & we

are lucky in this district in having some pleasant country pubs that serve

bar-lunches etc.

I still occasionally do a little home dress making -- as one can pay up to

£50 (!) for something like a pure wool COAT -- & shoes are another item that

presents problems to buy -- I was lucky in finding in a small local town, a pair

of BOYS "FELT"-BOOTS ( for walking around here in).

Under a certain size ( 6 ) there is no V.A.T. tax, so I only had to pay 12, a

a mere nothing compared to women's shoes!

I do wish you all good things in 1981 -- and am only sorry this will not reach

you in time for Christmas -- better late than never perhaps!

Love from

Rachel

---------------

( BROADHOUSE)

.........................................................................................................................................

….....................................................................................................................................

CHRISTMAS 1982

Dear Joy and family, [hand written, most of the rest typed]

We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Our 1982

was a good year and we would like to share part of it with you.

[Photograph with hand written: 'Car & trailer parked in front of our house.]

In January we started the year off by going to Dallas to see the Cowboys beat

Tampa Bay at Texas Stadium. First time we had ever attended a pro football game.

Also got to watch Johnny Cash and his wife June tape part of his spring special for

T.V. in our local auditorium. We did not get on T.V. but it was most interesting gett-

ing to see how it is done.

Due to the growth of Kerrville our telephone number will change in May to 895-

2042.

Our family Christmas will be at our house on the 18th. We are very thankful for all

the good things that have come our way. Each of you mean a lot to us.

With our new Olds Delta 88 and new Aluma-Lite 23 ft. trailer in tow we enjoyed

a trip to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, then on to Indianapolis, Indiana

where we visited Mary Margaret's uncle, Kenneth Hall, and his wife Julia, plus

cousins. Attended the Hall reunion in Paoli, Indiana and visits with Auntie Blanche

Jameson and Uncle Chester Hall and his wife Hattie were enjoyed. Visited with

friends going and coming. Spent a few days at Amistad Dam near Del Rio with

friends who have a neat boat. No we did not eat any fish! We also made a number

of other trips -- two of which were to the Coast. Saw Shirley and family in Corpus.

A new granddaughter, Kimberly Louise, arrived August 5th. Rob, Helen and the

boys and Grandpa and Grandma Doyen think she is the greatest. She is a doll!

Took part in only two Arts and Crafts Shows -- the Strawberry Festival in Poteet

in the spring and a big show in Corpus in November. Glen worked at Camp Rio

Vista again this summer. It is now a boy and girl camp.

Went to Mexico with three other couples in April. We crossed the border at

Presidio, took a bus to Chihuahua and then took the train through Cooper Canyon

to Los Mochis. Was very interesting and an experience we will never forget!

We enjoyed a week's visit with Glen's sister and her husband from Michigan. Also

had a visit from the Molidors from California.

Several fun dances were attended and we have made a number of trips to a dinner

playhouse in San Antonio with another local couple. Have seen Van Johnson, Cesar

Romero, Lana Turner, Joan Fontaine, Nanette Fabray, Forrest Tucker and others.

Mary Margaret's mother turned 92 this year and is still at Hilltop Village, She is so

frail and weak but is well cared for of which we are so thankful.

[The next hand written] Our loves, Glenn & Mary Margaret.

….....................................................................................................................................

Feb 18th 1982 L.J.BROADHOUSE

CEDARWOOD

STANFORD DINGLEY

READING BERKS

ENGLAND

Dear Joy Taylor

It is with great sadness that I write to tell you that Ray passed away on Jan 7th

last after a short illness. She had a stroke and died in an Oxford hospital. She was

Her usual fit self until Boxing Day. Her total illness time was only 12 days, and

thus any suffering was mercifully short. As you know, strokes can result in some

cases in disability which it is distressing for the afflicted one, and for her partner.

But at least Ray was spared this. For I am sure she would have like all people hated

any loss of active life she followed in country pursuits, and in using her great talent

as an artist. You were aware of this talent in the cards which she sent.

Ray was buried in this village churchyard within sight of our house, and the

church was v. full for the service with our many friends.

I have been given great kindness & help by neighbours and friends, but of course

Ray's loss is immense. Yet I must be thankful that we had 38 years of happiness

together.

She always appreciated so much your faithful care in in keeping contact after v.

many years since you both met. Thank you for this.

Yours, Laurence Broadhouse.

.............................................................. ..........................................................................

................................................................................................... ...................................

21/11/89 2 Britannia Rd

Kettering

Northhants

NN16 9RX

Dear Joy,

First of all, please forgive the note paper.....

.... Now, thank you very much for sending me the card whilst you were

on holiday -- I was so pleased to receive it -- I'm sorry I haven't replied sooner, but

we have had quite an eventful year this year --

Your holiday must have been lovely, and I am sure you didn't want to leave --

Everywhere sounds so beautiful, with all the exotic flowers and birds, and it makes

Kettering seem so dull.....in comparison....

.....Sadly, mother died.....we must be thankful she is now at peace, & not suffering

any more -- As you know only too well, tho, it is so hard to lose our nearest and

dearest --

The other thing I have to tell you is that, surprise, surprise ,Michael got married

on July 24th! He was 62....

....So I am sad and lonely now, as you must be too, but I am still living here, so

I am very lucky....

Other than that, there really isn't much to tell you.

Poor Ida doesn't improve, in fact she seems to be slowly getting worse, & I

really do believe she has given up -- She has struggled for over 12 years to fight

against this thing, but I think it now beaten her -- She wont go out anywhere, and

really wants to stay in bed all the time -- she cant face anything -- it is terrible --

It is a kind of mental depression --- However please don't say anything when you

write to her, will you, unless she has told anything about it herself,

which I doubt ------- / they try to help her, but no one can ------

What will you be doing this Christmas? I suppose you will be going to one or

the other of the family ----- I, for the first time, wont be cooking a big Christmas

dinner [her son, Michael, it is I presume who has married and left home], because I

will be going to Michael's ----

Well Joy, I think of you often, & I hope so much you are coping alright, & that

things are a bit easier for you ----- I will think of you at Christmas, & I do hope you

have a nice one --

With love,

as always,

Margaret

.........................................................................................................................................

Tamasin about the age she wrote this letter. Her school work was always great & she has a PhD in Health Science (Psych), and now has three sons & a step daughter.

22 01 90

Dear Grandma

Hi thanks for the card its neat. I have hung it on the wal in my bedroom. Good

luck with the curtians. I wne to my cousin Nicholas and I stayed there for a week

now my best friend Joanne is just about to come here. Because she's coming over

today from Weymouth (I may have spelt it wrong) anyway. Before I went to my

cousin Nicholas I went to Joanne's house because she used to live in Waihe (that's

a three hour drive from here) and she moved to Weymouth with her dad I hadn't

seen her in two years and it was exciting. She has changed a lot in two years and

she said I had too. About ten minutes ago my dad asked me to get the mail and I

saw the envelope with your card in it. I was wondering who it was from. Worse

of all there was no sender's name on the back so I made to guesses and the first

guess was from Mum and the second one was from you. I didn't think it was from

a child because none of my friends write like an Adult. I would know if it was

from Joanne because she writes like me. Oh well I have to go now. I hope this

letter wasn't to boring your letter certainly wasn't.

Good

Bye

Love

from

Tam

[A letter from my daughter Tam to my mother. It has a picture of cats on and the

writing is ebullient and confident. My wife Mary and I had separated in 1989 and

I was then with Tam, Dionne and Victor at 8 Addis Place in Cockle Bay, a large

house near the beach. It has several large bedrooms. The move to their however

was in my view a mistake. I was pressured by my wife to build at Maytime Street

then to buy another house. Despite having to reapply for my job or take money I

decided to leave the NZED where I was a Communication Tech, and try to start a

business. I didn't work. Theereabouts I had started writing poetry etc and studied

a Stage One Paper in Mathematics (Linear Algebra), toying with continuing to do

an Engineering Degree to work in Electronics, Radio, Microwave Systems, or

High Voltage and associated Electronics etc but was persuaded by Anne Kelly

who had known us in Maytime St. and was also separated, to study

English Literature which I did. I did that, Philosophy and Ancient History in

1990, getting my BA in 1994. I had passed my NZCE (Certificate of Engineering) in

Telecoms and Electronics previously, about 1995. My wife Mary previously

obtained a BA in History and some Geography, Anthro etc. Tamasin later gained a

PhD in Psychology and Dionne a BA in English and some Art History. Later in

1990 (May) I sold the house and moved into Mum's house and have been there since

at 22 Court Crescent, Panmure (where I was brought up in the 50s and 60s).

Tamasin lived there with me until 1993 when she joined Dionne and Victor at their

mother's. Later after my mother died in 1998, in 2006 Victor came to live with

me. He has been a huge help and comfort to me. At least once he saved my life and

we help each other. Of course I love him and my two daughters also.. ]

.........................................................................................................................................

……..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[134 Rockingham Rd, Kettering

Northants

NN 16 9AG

Dear Joy

I dreamt about you two nights ago, so you can see tyou are on my mnd because

I know I owe you a letter. Your letter has just arrived, & thank you for it. I hope all

your family are well & happy, and I hope all goes well for Gillian. No doubt you

will miss seeing her. How do you keep track of all your birthdays? Even witha little

book I occasionally miss friend's anniversaries. I would like to thank you for the

lovely needle case you sent me. I must confess, until Margaret pointed it out to me

I didn't realise it was your own work, (and the little pink pochette you sent before).

You are clever. This needle case is particularly attractive, and I have thrown my old

leather one in the fire.

Christmas passed quite well, and I managed to stay on my feet, but I do feel

rather fragile a lot of the time. Different tablets have different, and sometimes dis-

astrous, effects. I have felt like this a long time now. I do hope you friend is feeling

better. Does B.P. stand for blood pressure? -- I'm sure it does. I hope it

isn't troubling you too much. We are all growing older. Margaret had news of Mary

Bailey the other day. Do you remember her? And Margaret sees Peggy & Ron

Brown from time to time when shopping.

There is a very strong, cold wind today but, but a few snowdrops are out. Does

the cricket interest you or Les? Edwin likes to watch it on television. Is your

Summer weather improving? My summer clothes don't get worn out, either. I seem

to live in shirts and pullovers of varying thicknesses. Now I will brave the wind

and go to the post. I don't think it is too late to wish you both a Happy New Year, &

thank you again for my present.

With Love, Ida.

Northants etc

Dear Joy,

Thank you very much for your card and Christmas letter.

I have read it carefully and tried to work out who is who? -Or should it be

"whom".

It is a terrible thing to be left alone but I am so glad you have your

interesting family. Tammy us good at school and sports - as I well remember so

were you, and art as well.

Margaret, when shopping, quite often meets people who were at school with

us -- some I can remember perfectly and others not at all. They meet in the

Supermarkets. But Edwin & I try, (quite virtuously!) to support the little shops.

Our house too

needs things doing to it so I understood your remarks. We just had the kitchen

& pantry decorated. Did you know we live downstairs with just one spare

bedroom upstairs via a small spiral staircase? I like being on one level especially

as I grow older. The flat is unoccupied now.

I sincerely hope you keep as well as possible -- not too many aches and pains.

Old age is not much fun is it? The other day someone said to me "The only way

to avoid it is to die young."

It was nice to hear from you & I hope you will write again.

Good health to all your family. Have a nice Christmas & a good New Year.

With Love,

Edwin & Ida 5th December 1991.

..This heart pain is not a medicine.

tertius said...
The importance of joyce is the life given to the local dialect, accent and dialogue, there is the nationalism... look at the place names of the indigneous...his magnitude lies where the language begins to break down, defragment and become isolated from the rest of the universe and thus he uncovers the flaws in the political activism...where ever it is applied...entropy again...

each line...strengthens the picture but never makes it final.

.........................We accept that as the method of the artist...

...But what physics has done is to show that it is not the only method to knowledge.
There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists
open the door to tragedy.
All information is imperfect_______________________________________

but I am not interested just now in the poem's meaning (meaning is problematic in any case) interested here in the look of the totality of his work as worked through and I then transform it - as things constantly do in life - in fact I went "berserk" with it almost in trance or a fever, a kind of "creative rage" perhaps: creating a new "poem" or text as in the following image-poem-text-enactment: an implication of an infinite and progressive or degressive process ... I got very angry with it:

….............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

P 56 / 57

Like Quincey's opium smoker, I'm starting to have headaches every morning, after having wet my hair (but what would resolve these aches? certainly not opium, then).

I was eating nuts that were giving me mouth ulcers.

This evening G. said to me: "Tomorrow I'm accompanying my mother to the hospital. She'll be out at 5 o'clock. She's having an abortion. She's already had seven children. I'm especially afraid for her vagina and her kidneys."

Jean Genet also gives me absolute liberty (The Miracle of the Rose).

My hair has become unreal to me: it still covers my forehead, but is made of an improbable association, like molecules, like suspension, like bellows, and it is totally false, in the way of a wig, one could touch it, it would all fall apart, turn to dust, the dry, almost transparent hairs, would stay in the hand. I am betraying my world: I am still for them "the boy with the beautiful blond curls," and myself that I am already the bald man. It isn't possible to fix my hair: it's as though it were being decomposed.

Last night I kissed Mathieu on the mouth for the first time, as I was leaving: desire for such small notations, and this afternoon on the bus I saw Francois P. go by on his way back from school with a friend, and he seemed to me to be almost beautiful with the sun staining his face.

[This is all of Genet I have read. It is an amazing book. Deeply beautiful despite or because of it's subject, setting etc.]

P108 Herve Guibert

Questioning her on this subject, my mother reminded me of something I had completely forgotten, of which I still have no memory even though it goes back to a time well after my first memories: I was three years old and she would take me, twice a week, to an establishment in which I was submitted to ultraviolet rays, with the hope of hardening my ossification: I was stripped naked and outfitted with small round glasses that blinded me so that the rays wouldn't burn my eyes, I grumbled and I cried, I was strapped to the table to prevent me from writggling about, my mother had to hold my hand, or stroke my hair. She tells me this with a sort of ache in her voice, as though the memory of this scene aroused her pity, and myself, imagining it at this moment, I catch myself pitying myself.

The people who suffer because they do not write.

I caught up with T. in the hallway to tell him: "I would like my jealousy to become our secret."

I wondered whether I would be insensitive to any death, and whether my own death would be unbearable to me.

The sinister pink part that suddenly appeared, in my hair, at the top of my skull, if I lean back between two mirrors.

The emptiness of this notebook at present; the trip to Brussels; a bad dream. Nothing more seems important. I'm not working, barely the desire to read.

I am trying to read Herzog's Of Walking on Ice, it's beautiful, but I feel as though I've already read it, and very quickly it gets on my nerves.

I am very attached to the dull sound of the record player when it is turned on, but isn't playing any records, like a dull hum, like a light.

There was sometimes this sinister idea that the movement of his life was a movement of arrangement, which had progressively evacuated savagery.

From the incessant reading, these three or four days, of Hitchcock's interview with Truffaut, of Duras's interview with Kazan in the Cahiers, of the issue of Education 2000 on photography, of the morcellated reading of Kafka's letters to Felice, of Baby Doll finally, I feel a sort of exultation, of satisfaction. And I know that from there, I can only collide with another black hole, or else do something myself.

While watching Baby Doll, I couldn't especially identify with the characters, but with their desire, as never before. Their desire pushes me to the end of my tether, as though it were my own, and I beg the image for them to kiss, for the sake of my own release.

The boy dressed like a painter, at the cafe. His very blue and distant gaze, divided by a defect of convergence. He quickly drinks his coffee, then puts a coin in the juke-box, and he leans against the column, in front of the window and the passers-by on the street, and he listens to the music (first some very violent rock, then a melancholic David Bowie), his blue gaze, very distant. I watch him fascinated in the mirror: he offers me this music and this gaze, he is wearing it. I would like to tell him simply that I love him, perhaps this boy is in need of company.

...I see only his eyes, and his eyes must be sadder than the whole face...

P158

At the same time we were taking the sickness from the body of the other (the scabs on his face, those wounds on his legs): .....

Fritz Zorn's book (Mars) is a slow demonstration, convoluted, fastidiously fallible: he knows where he is going, the movement of his writing closely follows the movement that gnaws at his body, metastisizes it.

The malady of always having something say about something, to write, to lose nothing (a malady of malice or of posterity?). The risk also, at a moment of writing, of sudden poisoning, unconscious, perhaps worse than total loss (→ Rimbaud), here the fear of intellectualism (set upon feeling).

[I read Zorn's book: he spent his life in a state of depression or an inability of feel for anything, and a lassitude or ennui re his own life and the news he was dying of cancer at least kind of “perked him up”. What Herbert is saying here I have no idea but it sounds good...]

A man who is reading Le Monde, at midnight, on the subway, his wife by his side: at this time, the newspaper should be creased, damaged, but the man handles it with loving and precautionary gestures, slowly pinches the seam between two fingers, folds it, weighs it in his hands, and the reading itself seems of little import, it is this reverent relationship to the object, to the paper, which must reproduce itself daily, like a supreme betrayal if the wife, who solicits my gaze.

Discussion with T. of the purpose of publication, which is incomprehensible to him, in which he sees only a superficial, promotinal and rather ugly interest. I say to him: in horror fantasies, the idea of not being published exceeds the idea of my body being chewed on by worms. It isn't about posterity, but the vague, almost abstract assurance, of an exncounter, in time, with various time zones (not hourly either, bu annual, even centenary), even if the book were never republished, even if the inventory were pulped, even if most of the copies were destroyed in a fire, or softened by sewer water, and most of the letters erased, with one reader, a single reader, a young man or a young girl, an old man, a child, of a salvaged copy taken into those hands, and that this language, this voice will start to live again, for some time, in that body, before congealing again on a dead, compressed, useless surface, that it will once more be redeployed, and celebrated by being read, the physical act of writing, this matter, this lost time, as in prayer, and that the reader will love it, will be sensitive to love, but maybe I am still explaining poorly, I am diminishing it. I would be tempted to say: if there weren't that assurance, that hope for a single reader, one day, I wouldn't write anymore, but would write even less if there weren't a love to recount, because it is love that I want the reader to be able to discern.

------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------

On Christmas day, my sister, more than eight months pregnant, announced to me that she intended to call her son Hervé, and that she was even considering calling him Hervé Guibert since she had recovered he maiden name. I had always imagined my sister to be a balanced person.

[This is comical and gentle. Guibert was dying, of the effects of AIDS. The journal is from 1976 to 1991, I think his sister typed up all the journals into the one book: The Mausoleum of Lovers which I discovered by chance at the Panmure library and have been looking at on and off for about 5 years now.]

Saw my mother again this very afternoon after two years, she is visibly doing very badly, she too is her own skeleton, strange that we are both dying at the same time.

To the question that I am asked practically every day on the street or in public transit: “Are you Hervé Guibert?” Desire henceforth to retort: “Yes, but a little tired of it.”

….................

Disturbance in the night, woken by anxiety: I was an elephant having slid into my bed, my limbs were so heavy and enormous that I could no longer move them, I was paralyzed iron.

I fear they'll make me sleep in paper sheets, under a synthetic cover.

The marvelous or the sordid reflex of life?

Before I was told: “You have beautiful eyes” or “You've got a gorgeous cock;” now nurses say to me: “You have beautiful veins.”...

The blood running from the chest, drawn by a wound to spare the veins.

Every night I want to die.

[Hervé Guibert died on the 27^th of December 1991. He had tried to end his life earlier.]

He ua ki te po he paewai ki te ao

…................................................................................................................................................

Poor Ida doesn't improve, in fact she seems to be slowly getting worse, & I really do believe she has given up -- She has struggled for over 12 years to fight against this thing, but I think it now beaten her -- She wont go out anywhere, and really wants to stay in bed all the time -- she cant face anything -- it is terrible --

It is a kind of mental depression --- However please don't say anything when you write to her, will you, unless she has told anything about it herself, which I doubt ------- / they try to help her, but no one can ------

[From Australia ?]*

Sunday 23rd

Dear Joy,

It's hard to believe it's your birthday already, don't the years go quickly.

...........Jim was diagnosed...................

He had no symptoms so so it was a big shock to us.......The specialist....

.................................................................................................................

....but he is in a lot of pain, so I am not so sure. Our life has certainly changed:

no dancing or bowls....but I go to tennis occasionally as Jim wants me to go out

when I can. Kaye has been a marvellous help but at present has abad cold and is

not comming near. [Because of the danger of infection: Jim had had

chemotherapy.]...

David came over for a week and he's finding it hard to accept.

Sorry to have to include this in your card but I had to tell you, as, having been

through it your self, you would know how I fee. Noel is stil doing well after

his by-pass opp.

Love from

Joyce

........................................................................... ...........................................

................................................. ....................................................................

Dearest Joy -

Herewith two more copies of the "Book" ---- I dont want any

more payments for books or postage --- As I told you in my letter I have kept a

a slow [ ] on what it all has cost your investment of a donation was a generous

one. I will drop a line to Dennis to see if he wants a copy ----

We are going into Redcliffe [?] to see Annabelle to-day and the

house she has moved into.

Lots of love from us both

Frank

28 -4 -93

141 Mill Dr.

Kirwan

Q. 4817

Dear Mum,

I know its been ages since I last wrote (or typed). Probably

last year some time. Received Susan's letter the other day. She says you

have recovered nearly 100% from your slipped disc. That is good news.

Suppose you will have to be more careful getting around now.

I wrote to Susan to say Kent's stay will be no problem and

we look forward to it. The weather should be excellent : we have just started

a long hot summer....

I have both Australian citizenship and a new Kiwi passport! but don't

plan to travel overseas yet.........I almost had a job as a local manager of a

minerals lab in town but didn't throw myself into the interview as I was a

bit suspicious of the place was run and the job. May have to move west to

get a new job.

Richard's friend Raymond* got a job out west in a small town called

Richmond about 500 kms on the road to Mt. Isa.....Before they left he asked

why doesn't Richard come to Townsville for a holiday. Now he is at Richmond

he will be desperate for a visite from anyone.

Tick's restaurant is in Graceville (Brisbane) is not going very well

yet.... Tick, Yai and Dtoo [step sons and daughters of Dennis, Ladda's children.

Dennis married Ladda about 1977 after going to Indo China and then back to

Australia.] are share owners and they are running it, but they ....are already

thinking of selling....

But up here at QLD Nickel we are flat out.The local mine is finished

and we are importing all the ore, apart from a small mine at Rockhampton,

and expanding production and exports....

We went camping at EAster a few kilometres below the Burdekin dam.

Although there is a drought in the area the dam is nearly full and one gate is

open so the river is flowing strongly below the dam....It was excellent at the

river but away from the river the land is bone dry and there is no vegation

between the gum trees tho' the gums themselves are healthy as usual.This area

is the northern most part of the drought in QLD which is in most of the

Midwest and southwest of the state at the moment supposedly the worst this

century in this state.

Bye for now and look after yourself,

Love from

Dennis

*Raymond was the borther of Anne Kelly who I knew better. He was or is

an Electrician.

7 October '93

Dear Grandma Taylor

Neal* is asleep at the moment so I thought I'd try & sneak a quick note

to you & let you know Neal's progress.

At our 6 week check up yesterday Neal weighed 13 pounds 11½ ounces.

His length is 60 cm and he is fine, fit, and healthy.

The photo enclosed was taken when he was only two days old & weighted

weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces. He has certainly grown a lot since then. His

cheeks are a lot fatter & his skin has changed from olive to pale.

He has lots of smiles & grins. He tries to talk and copy Ivan and myself

when we talk to him. He is very strong as he holds his head up & straightens

his back. He stands on his legs and is quite tall for his age. People have comm-

ented that he looks more like a 3 month old.

Neal is such a precious jewel & even though at times he can be a little

so & so both Ivan and I love him very much.

Ivan is well if not tired. He stuggles into work after helping me with baby

during the night & early morning. His work is still busy but next year we'll

have a break for his professionals in Auckland so you'll be able to see your

Great Grandson - by then he'll be even bigger.

Please thank Tamasin for the card she made and sent. I loved it. It was

really imaginative. I hope you are all well.

Running out of room. Take Care of yourself, God Bless.

Arohanui Ivan, Paulette & Neal

*This was from Paulette, the wife of Ivan, my nephew, son of Susan (my sister)

McIntosh. Reading this I am a bit sad I didn't get to know her very well. More

recently (it is now 2019) Ivan remarried and has a child to his new wife. With

Paulette (and via other children of the McIntosh family (brothers and sisters of

Kelvin my brother in law, they married Maori so there is some mixing. A good

thing. Hence perhaps a mixing of cultures etc. Neal is now a Policeman and I

assume is now about 27. Neal's brother Daniel (not sure his age) does gaming and

does pretty well and even makes some money (in competitions etc) I believe. Ivan

and Neal etc are keen rugby enthusiasts.]

27.10.93

Dear Joy,

Thank you for the birthday card. I'm afraid my birthday didn't mean anything

to me this year as Jim passed away Sept. 9th.

I am missing him terribly, I have coped fairly well, but the last few days I

seem to be in tears all the time. I'm also finding it difficult to cope with a lot of

things, the pool being the hardest.

I'm also very worried about Noel. While up here for Jim's funeral he had

throat trouble and has since found it is cancer. He and Kath have gone to Melbourne.

I'm going to ring his son tonight to see if I can find out what treatment they can give him.

I feel so sorry for him and Kath. They are in for a bad time.....I have bought a dog...[a German Shepard but it doesn't seem to be much of a guard dog].

I've had a lot of support from family and friends but yet it's hard .

Jim suffered very much but I'm glad I was able to look after him at home &

held his hand right to the end.

If I could erase his suffering I think I could cope better.

Hope you and your family are keeping well.

Love from

Joyce

........................................................................................................................................…..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................….....................................................................................................................................

Mr & Mrs S GODDARD

LONG PARK

DODDISCOMBLEIGH

NR EXETER

DEVON

EX6 7PK

_____________________

Christmas 93

Dear Joy,

We are now having our first real taste of real winter weather.....

…...............................................................................................

….….............................................................................................

It's been a funny old year and I shall be glad to see the back of it, we had a fortnight in Teneriffe at the end of January, which we enjoyed, but Stanley has been ill ever since...myeloma....

........................I think our traveling days are over.....

......Billie and I had a day in Exeter....

With love and best wishes to you and yours

From Beryl and Stanley

24 Heather St

Nth Geelong 3215

11^th May 93

Dear Joy

Thank you very much for your sympathy & kind thoughts, it was all so

sudden, he went to bed on Thursday night after pottering around doing odd jobs

all day & he must have just gone off in his sleep. The Doctor said it would have

been just after seven in the morning just before he was going to get up, and I can

tell you that I got a shock when I called him and he didn't answer, one thing the

doctor said it was a worn out heart, he lifted all sorts of heavy things.

I am living in the same house on my own as the neighbours are wonderful to

me & my only brother & his wife and two married children are great.

Life still goes on the same, will drop a line at

Xmas, hope you are all well.

love Chris

_________

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

141 Mill Dr.

Kirwan

Q. 4817

Dear Mum,

Thanks for the birthday book. I haven't read it yet, saving it

for rainy days; hopefully there will be plenty of them soon. I'm not much of

a moviegoer. Jurrasic Park and Cliffhanger were the first ones I've been to for

years but I get to see a few on video. The only Michael Caine movie I've seen

recently was 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' and Steve Martin was No.1 star of that.

Last August I sold my motor cycle and bought a 4WD, an 88 Nissan

Pathfinder. Ladda was going to go with me to the Northern Territory but her

mother got very ill so she went to Thailand and Yai (oldest son). Her mother

died a few days after she got back; she was 71. Yai was unemployed as he had

left work at Tick's restaurant, which they sold soon after.

We went to Mt. Isa via Three Ways then north to Mataranka. Then to

Katherine gorge where we canoed the first two gorges. Called into a mineral lab

in Pine Creek owned by my former boss at Peko in Tennant Creek (1974), before

going on to Kakadu N.P. Kakadu was dry and dusty and hot in the daytime yet

the creeks and waterfalls were flowing well from the huge tabland of Arnhem

Land and the water was cool and clear.

Jim Jim falls and Twin Falls were magnificent gorges with sheer

rugged cliffs tho' there was not much water flowing. Still had to swim up to

Twin Fallls; most people paddle up in canoes or on water beds but we had

neither. They told us to swim to the right side or the fresh water crocs would

snap at our heels. Saw one at the falls only about 1.5M long (most freshies

are small). Further towards Jabiru the road crosses Jim Jim Creek where it is

wide and salty; it was we saw the biggest croc we are ever likely to see swimming

in the center of the river. When it saw us it dived and disappeared. No swimming

round here! In fact we were scared to stand even stand on the bank near the water.

Further East where the road crosses into Arnhem Land smaller salties cruised up

and down the river edge looking for food in the muddy banks. They are very hard

to see: just one eye and a bit of a head and back sticking out of the water. The rock

art (and the rocks) of Nourlangie and Ubirr were great too but the lack of the

people themselves (the aboriginees) was surprising tho' there were many at Jabiru

the uranium mining town.

From Kakadu (southeast of Darwin) we went straight to Litchfield National

Park southwest of Darwin. It has smaller but pleasant waterfalls and creeks. The

main road thru' is sealed and very good but the dirt and rock road off it to the Lost

City was one of the worst; the last two k's were so bad it was just as quick towalk

which is what some people did. The 'Lost City' (one of the many in Aust.) was an

area of weird rock formations.

The anthills in Litchfield are interesting. In Kakadu and elsewhere in North-

ern Aust. the so called anthills are termite hills roughly rounded in shape, giant

versions that Gillian photographed in Townsville when she visited with Susan.

The hills in Litchfield are and hills: housing big dark red ants. Also they are flat

sided so they are narrow looking edge on and the edges always point north-south;

it is not certain why. We stopped at Porcupine gorge (60K north of Hughenden) on

the way back, another very interesting gorge. Had difficulty dodging the roos on

the the dirt road out there: they were bouncing around all over the place.

I got Ladda into the water witha snorkel at Green Island (off Cairns). She is

not a good swimmer but can float around a bit. She really enjoyed the coral and

varied colours of fish. Despite being visited by millions of tourists over the last

few decades there are still heaps of fish and patches of good coral. We also visit-

ed the Daintree and Cape Trib coast rainforest. Recentlty I've been watching birds

at Paluma Rainforest just north of Townsville. During the nesting season the sounds

are incredible especially the bowerbirds and stagebirds. I hadn't known about

stagebirds before. They are Toothbilled Catbirds; the male makes an oblong flat

clearing and covers it with large green leaves all underside facing up then sits on

a branch above and sings till the female comes and then shows off just like the

bowerbirds at their bowers.

QLD Nickel has another round of retrenchments last month. I was thinking

of volunteering but wouldn't have got it anyway as the lab shifts are very busy

with a Cobalt Purification Plant being developed; perhaps next time. The price of

Nickel is low at the moment and they were going to close down for a couple of

months if other companies agreed to do the same to lower the glut on the world

market. But they didn't agree and so went ahead with retrenchments and gave

staff a 7.5 % salary cut until the price goes up again (that's the theory anyway).

Raymond's sister* went off to Canada to get married. She wrote to Raymond

and said Riichard went off to New York for a while but you didn't mention that

in your last letter(s). Raymond got a 'permanent' job bought a unit then lost that

job but now Pong has a job in a takeaway shop. It's really hot and humid here at

the moment. Had some good rain last month which cooled the place down for a

few days but its hot and humid now and hopefully building up to a good wet

season.

Bye for now and have a good Chrismas and New Year.

Love from Dennis [Handwritten.]

*Anne Kelly (not sure her birth name) who was a friend of mine [Richard] about 1988 to 1993.

........................................................................................................................................

1st March 1994

Dear Joy

I am so sorry for being so late in replying to TWO letters, but I know you will

understand. It has been so hard since Edwin died., so much to do and so little

will. How long since you married Joy? I am quite sure it is something one never

gets over [she means of course the death of a spouse, in my mother's case the

death of my father in 1987 and Ida's husband a few years previous to this letter.]

We had 53 wonderful years together. Edwin looked after me unfailingly and perfectly

& I shall be eternally grateful. It was awful to see him suffer so much.

Life has no meaning and is strange and frightening.

Margaret has been very good, a real friend, but I have discovered she likes to be

alone & live exactly to a timetable without alterations. Of course she preferred

having Michael in the house.

Margaret told me you were walking with a stick. Is it because of your slipped

disc, sciatica or both? I do hope you have improved by this time.*

Neither Margaret nor I can fully place your family, but it's lovely you have

them all. Probably it is just you and Richard together now? At 15½, going on 16,

Tammy will be sure she knows all there is to know. That age is too far from us

now. Can you believe we are 76? Unfortunately I am experiencing the anxiety

state again, (perhaps the best description), & trying not to take tranquilizers -- for

therapy I am going to "help" at a Day Centre for people with moderate senile

dementia, but I don't know if it is a good idea.

Isn't there a lot of suffering in the world?

The weather has been very very cold & with snow. The snowdrops are out and

the daffodils are peeping through. I think you know the upstairs of this house

is a self contained flat, but it hasn't been let for five years. There is one bedroom

upstairs, as a spare, reached by a little spiral staircase. Naturally, I sleep on

the ground floor. The garden is big, and I'm no gardener.

. Thank you for your sympathy and nice letter. Keep as well as possible. I

wonder if Margaret has told you Audrey Gunn has died?

My love to you,

Ida

*Unfortunately my mother had had a stroke. At first it wasn't critical, but it slowly

got worse, she had to have a walker and later other aids. I had to help her so I

stopped my job at Ron Riddell's book shop (called The Dead Poet's Book Store,

in Balmoral, near Dominion Road where there was a Kentucky Fried. At the end

of 1994 she called me home in a panic as the washing had flowed over and

she felt frightened and helpless. It was terrible from then on although I tried to

help. But once I found her flat out on the floor. I was drunk. I got angry, saying

she was trying to limit me [!!]. She cried saying that all she wanted was some

sympathy. This shocked me. I couldn't believe how terribly I had acted. I let my

mother down. I failed her. I failed very much in this life. If there is another I

have no knowledge. I didn't show enough love. These lonely, ill old people!

Christ save us.

.........................................................................................................................................

….....................................................................................................................................

5, The Dell

Kempston, Beds

MK 42 7 DL

21. 10. 94.

Dear Joy,

This is just to let you know that Don passed peacefully away in his

sleep on the 7th of July. It sees strange to be living on in this house alone after

53 years together. You have been through it yourself I know so I have thought

about you.

I could not stand the silence although the two girls have been very

kind but cannot be here all the time, so I have acquired a little Yorkshire

Terrier named Frankie. We got him at the Dog Rescue Centre. He was found

wandering as his owner had become too old to look after him. We are two

lonesomes together. He is aged 7 so not a puppy. I wonder if you have your

cat, Shadow, still.

Mrs. Simmonds from 12 [Munro?] Rd*., has been over to England to have

a holiday and stay with her brother, so we went over to Moulden and had a cup

of tea with them, but the next day Don had his heart attack, but we spent a pleasant

afternoon in the garden talking about old times in Woburn. She always got on well

with her brother, Frank, but not quite so well with Mrs. Simmnds as she has

has changed over the years. Frank is waiting to have two hip replacements and

having lost his wife two years ago, he has had a rough time.

I have applied to go into sheltered accommodation, but people tell me not to

do anything in a hurry. It is the garden which is too much for me but I do have a

nice old chap cut the grass and keep the borders tidy. Also a Home Help who is

a friend in need. You see I am 81 now and get to feel a bit shaky at times and find

the nights the worst thing as I do not sleep very well. Do you?

We are lucky to have a family and also near enough to be helpful. One of my

Grand-daughters comes and stays the night when she is on a late duty and an

early morning shift at the Hospital so I look forward to that. Both my daughters,

Liz and Margaret, have jobs as I expect yours do so I feel I must give them some

space at the weekends.

I am sorry I have been so long in writing, but it takes time get sorted out with

such a big change in one's life.

All for now.

Love from Molly.

* This is puzzling but Mrs. Simmonds came from NZ to England to live or stay.

5. The Dell

Kempston

BEDS

MK42 7 DL

Dear Joy,

I was so pleased to get your letter and photographs of your daughter

and her lovely family. What a joy a baby brings. I wonder if she had a baby

brother or sister little Danielle.

How like your mother Susan is as I remember her.

Christmas did not go down too well. I went ot Elisabeth for Christmas

Eve and Christmas Day but unfortunately Mrs. Roberts (Elisabeth's mother-in-

law) fell and dislocated her shoulder so Elisabeth had a house full of oldies.

Mrs. Roberts 85, her friend Lizzie where she was staying when the accident

happened agged 88 and me 81. We were all widows but Liz cooked a lovely

dinner which despite everything we all enjoyed. I went to Margaret on Boxing

Day. Unfortunately I developed a chest infection early in the New Year so that

is when I missed Don most. It has been such a wet winter.

I thought you might like an up to date photograph of my little dog,

Frankie and me. He is such a good pal and being nearly eight years old does not

need a lot of walks and can run about in the garden. By the way my chair cover

looks similar to yours on the settee!

I am sorry you are not in good health. Losing your partner is hard

enough when you are well. It always seems the men go first. I find I am

forgetful and do silly things. It is when I wake up in the morning and realise

there is no one in the house that I get a bit disorientated. I have a good Home

Help once a week and the Health Care Nurse comes and gives me a good wash

so I am kept clean. I am sure I ma very luccky when you hear of some poor folk.

I shall have to buy a Lottery Ticket each week to win enough to come

and visit you. Wouldn't it be a surprise!

All for now and the best wishes to all your family. With love

From Molly.

...................................................................................................................................
….....................................................................................................................................

134 Rockingham Road

Kettering

Northants

NN 16 9AG

18th March, 1993

Dear Joy.

I know on the Christmas card I said I would write to you, and now it is March

and the daffodils are out. In England the councils have planted droves of bulbs on

the soft grass verges, (Northfield Avenue for example), and between the villages.

They look lovely. How are you, Joy? I do hope you are keeping as well as possible.

Old age is creeping on, isn't it? When you are young it doesn't seem posiible or

perhaps even likely, and here we are the older generation. O.A.P.'s

I am looking at the wedding photograph you sent -- probably we should all have

difficulty recognising each other at first -- seeing that our memories are of school

days. Have you worn glasses for a long time? How pretty the bride is, and a lovely

dress. "Off the shoulder" seems to be the fashion now -- not in our day. You must

be a very experienced grandmother!

Something Margaret and I know nothing about.It must be interesting following

their careers and fortunes. I hope Frank and Jean are alright. They sent a Christmas

card. What a horrible shock your garage fire. I hope you were not too terrified, but

as you say, your house was not involved. Were you alone at the time?

I go to see Margaret on Tuesday afternoons just for a talk. We don't do anything,

but it is very pleasant. Margaret is still living in Michael's house in Britannia Road

at the top of our garden. Michael lives in Rethwell, but he usually comes to Sunday

lunch with Margaret. Of course, you know he is married to Valma, and you will

know about his heart trouble. I know Margaret worries about him but please do

not mention this if you write.

Edwin and I go shopping on Tuesdays and Fridays bu no supermarkets. We try

to support the small shops -- a losing battle, I'm aftraid I will go across to the

postbox now, and when I come back I will make a cheesey cake.

Do you find keeping up with the housework quite difficult, because there is

always something that should be done. It is endless.

Do take care of yourself and enjoy your Arts and Crafts.

I will you good fortune.

With Love, Edwin and Ida.

5 The Dell

Kempston, Bedford MK 4 2 7DL

Dec. 1993

Dear Joy,

We have survived another year., but I must say it has been a worrying one,

as the trauma of Don undergoing chemo-therapy at the beginning of the year left

him very low and forgetful. He is much better than he was and we hope will not

need anymore treatment. I think it will be the end of him if he does.

I've been in the wars as well, as had some heart trouble and had to attend the

Hospital where the specialist said I had a leaky valve. I think it was stress did it.

But the tablets I take seem to have got it under control. What can you expect at

80!

Of course Don cannot drive now so I have to depend on either Elizabeth or

Margaret to take me to [ ] for our weekly shop. We have always been so

independent so it comes hard to have to rely on others -- I would like to move to

sheltered accomodation but Don will not leave our house.

We seem to have become acquainted with several old friends again. who are

all in much the same position as ourselves. One is Frank Harwood, now a

widower, whose sister, Mrs Simmonds, lives near you. He has been to tea and

showed us some lovely photographs. I hardly recognised her from when she lived

in [ ] . Frank has taken up Bowls. Another of Don's scouts has taken us for

a drive around the villages in Buckinhamshire ending up with tea at their house.

They have two cats and a Labrador dog.

I often think of you and how your life changed. I expect Tammy is quite grown

up now. I cant keep pace with our six grandchildren, but they are all in work.

Louise takes her final Nursing Exams in the New Year and we hope she goes

through as she has worked hard these three years. Joanne, her sister, is still trying

to get started up in the Nursing Profession but finds the written side hard. Stephen

at [ ] has joined the School Army Cadets and spends quite a lot of nights out

doors. We may have a soldier in the family again yet.

We had our first snow in November -- cant remember it coming so early before.

It was a horrid dull Summer and awful weather in the Autumn. We have a nice old

chap comes to keep our garden tidy, so that is a great help and Don loves talking

to him as Eddy has lived in Kempston all his life.

I hope you are well and not working yourself too hard.

A happy Christmas to you all

with love

from Molly

______

NN 16 9AG

Dear Joy,

I hope all goes well with you and your family.

Also I wish you a happy Christmas & good fortune in the New Year.

I expect, like me, you are lonely. I miss Edwin dreadfully all the time.

Friends are kind, & I see Margaret on a regular basis.

Life is so different now I seem to struggle on from day to day .

I am taking steroids (because of inflamation to the arteries of the eyes),

and my face is growing more square or fat!

Frank & Jean sent a card.

Write if you have time. I shall like to hear to hear how you are. Can you

believe we are approaching 80?

Love from Ida

[In 1993 Mum (Joy) was 76. I was 45. I went to N.Y. in 1993 as Mary had paid back money I had lent for her mortgage. The money was part of half of the money we got for the sale of 8 Addis Place in Cockle Bay, which happened in 1990 when I and Tam came to Court Cres, Panmure in May. Perhaps this letter was about 1994 and Ida's husband Edwin had died. I think she was a cousin of my grandmother Beatrice Miller (born Gray) , or she may have been (and or / also) at school with Mum around

1926 when she returned to England from Ocean Island. Later she returned to Australia (Melbourne) and times on Ocean Island (Banaba).]

. Northants

NN 16 GAG.

Dear Joy,

Here is Christmas approaching - inevitably. I hope you have a nice one with your

family. Of course when we lose our life long partners life can never be the same.

(There are so many widows around).

I see Margaret quite regularly. She has various ills, her other hip is troubling her

now. Occasionally I see Meg Joyce (Hakewill). She often goes to South Africa to

stay with her daughter

Are you keeping well Joy? I'm sure your family keeps you intrested.

I'm still taking steroids because of inflamation in the arteries to the eyes, & I

have to go for tests every three weeks. Just now I have bronchitis - the first time

ever, I believe. I don't usually cough. My doctor now is young and trendy. , some

times he has his hair up, sometimes down, & sometimes a bit of both.

We all find home visits are discouraged - not like in the old days. Do you find

the same in New Zealand? To-day is gloomy and quite cold, & it is windy. I

don't like wind at all.

Going through the Christmas card list is sad, so many names crossed out.

I hope to hear from you with your news. Take care of yourself.

With Love,

Ida

Xmas Post Card. Inscription (describing the picture on the front):

'The legend of St. Christopher, from a 15th Century

French Book of Hours in the Reed Collection,

Dunedin Public Library.'

[Written ca. 1995]

45 Stirling St.

Dunedin

Dear Joy,

Thank you for your card. Did I send you one last year?

I went into Dunedin hospital straignt after the New Year, for an op to remove

a cancerous growth from my bowl. Then I went onto Chemotherapy injections

for six months -- stopped these in October just prior to my 80th Birhtday. I am

feeling so much better, but it is now a life lived trusting in God, for however

much longer he needs me on earth! At least you and I are still able to live in

our own homes -- I still get so much pleasure out of the rhododendrons and now

the roses. I have help of 2 hours each week with the garden. This will be late

for Christmas. I hop you have a blessed time and keep well and are able to cope

still in your own home in 1996 -- and here's hoping we both make it to the year

2000!!

Love from Bennie.

[Xmas card from my Aunt Joyce. My uncle Geoff, brother of my father, Leslie Stuart Taylor, had died recent to this I think around 1999 but I am not sure.]

"To Joy CHRISTMAS GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR with love from Joyce T.

Dear Joy,

I was so pleased that Dennis and his little wife called in to see me --

I was just coming home when I met them leaving here so it was lucky that we met

up.

Life for me without Geoff goes on & I'm just so fortunate that Alison and

Barbara also live in Christchurch -- they are a great help and comfort & I'm

enjoying seeing some of my grandchildren grow up.

I do hope you are keeping well although I guess you are finding, like me, that the advancing years are not all "fun".

Yours,

Joyce.

And the tale was unfinished...the illusion of democracy...a greek philosophy, an ideal but a reality not then or now...in political terms there are republics with monarchies or military juntas or state bodies...democracy you machiviellian tragedy...you evasive woman...you coy/virgin...democracy.......you........licentious............whore

maybe a shadow sleeps in your hand, but it is not known to the divergent multitude, who are cross with destiny. Our quarrel is not so direct, or our bubbles so gloating in their rise.

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

A baby emits a cry of life on being thrust into a cold, bright world.
Gone is the dark warmth of the mother's womb.
The umbilical cord is severed and closed off.

tertius said...
Language poets break down all meaning and strive to sleep with democracy...the pillow talk bleeds all structure and the orgasm cries to the progeny...whats left is the mumble and the ramblings of the vagrant striving for food as he talks to the statute of david in the garden of the church where he was buried a thousand years ago...

loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

ichard,

I collapse exhasted into my armchair, and begin to write to you , as

the wind howls around the house and the rain gathers energy for another burst. The tiredness is not earned, as today I've not done a great deal, but the builders have been knocking about all day; they are making me a big workshop (garage and a laundry at the back of the house. ) They're doing a great job, and are turning my property into something much more attractive than it was, and they are both pleasant characters. But I'm finding the process very wearying, it's now in its fourth week. The dog finds each day invariably exciting, but I can't wait for it to come to an end, which it will do next week. Starting it off was trying, with the legalities and bureaucratic hurdles, and finishing it will be a strenous exertion or will in ensuring that the builders complete all before they leave, or they will be making expensive and disruptive visits for the next few months

Your 'Intro. to Lit. Theory' by Eagleton rings no bells wit e, and does not rest in my shelves, I think. Though my shelves do have a knack of swallowing books whole, and then disgorging them months later, & I have not managed to catch them out with this one. I do send you another - 'A Wedding in Tintown', in the hope that your patience is not too tried, and that you might make the effort to read it and make a critique. Tintown was an old mining town on the plateau near here, and only a chimney or two still stands as evidence of it; this is an account of a wedding I officiated at about two years ago in Millerton, and is suggested by William Colenso's essay on the Maori People in 1867. It has lain on my desk for about a year, as I lost confidence in it, but now I think it has a defininite merit and have printed a few copies. Unfortunately, as I now realise, I have not done it justice.

The Buller Arts Council has offered to pay for the publication of 'Things to do with [cant decipher or guess word]. They say they like the idea of doing something for 'a real poet' and came to me with the offer. I find it gratifying, as poets are not usually noticed in their own community. Apart from this, not very much is happening to me, nor has done so. I'm very much of a local fixture. to the degree that the newspaper published an article about me in which it stated that I have been the parish priest at Millerton for forty years. There was no interest in making nay connection -- that is how they want it to be, even though my whole recorded history will have to be rewritten.

Kindest regards.

Leicester.

______________________________________________________________

Leicester Kyle, Residential: Calliope Rd., Millerton. Ph (03) 782 8608.

Postal: C?O Postal Agency, Ngakawau, Buller. New Zealand.

The loss of dialogue in philosophy has been a central problem since Plato; Cavell, applying this to his own work, and that of Thoreau, talks about the dialogue of a “text answerable to itself”. Certainly Philosophical Investigations is the primary instance of such a text in this century, and also a primary instance of taking this practice as method. I can easily imagine more extreme forms of this: where
fingers

like leafic fingers –
And the silence: you -
you would never know that silence:

You struggle toward the word,
but it dashes thru time, spinning, and blurring;
- and, I cant. I try though:
I shove my hand into the Nothing Flower

contrasting moods and styles of argument, shifting styles and perspectives, would surface the individual the individual modes and perspectives, would surface the individual modes and their meaning in individual ways, and perhaps further Heidegger’s call for an investigation into “pure thinking” (Thinking is also construction.) Indeed, I can imagine a writing that would provide a philosophic insight but would keep essentially a fabric of
dance – logopoeia – where truth would not be to the validity of argument but to the ontological truthfulness of its meaning.

Richard Comments – they don’t break down all meaning – there is still semantic significance whether in the frame of what they say or in the language potential of the multiplex utterances they devise and their challenge to conventional “linear” meaning – the sign either takes center stage or the conjunction of signs – as it is put – “the materiality of the signifier” – and in the most exploded text there is significance. By being conventionally meaningful there is a danger of total absorption that tactics such as “ostranie” counterattack…and there is much else.

There is danger of too much meaning – too much coercive truth or assertion.

These comments highlight some of the pitfalls.

But even since Modernism –ambiguity has been essential for the rejuvenation of intense and significant language that struggles against the
ubiquity of
The Text
and
received History

– the Fascism of Enlightenment struggles

with the wonderful beauty of undecidability – the Humanist strangulation of

creative Anarchy.

...........The immense power and Awe of the Vacuum into which the spider and the shopkeeper equally peer….

.....................WHAT AM I DOING HERE ?

tertius said...
The revelation and dissemblence of the nobody..'i think therefore i am a dinosaur'. Democracy spread your pillars and lets enter your chamber...there is a gift here...ready to be opened...

eternal sections golden dark eye light black light light black eternal red sections eternal eyelight thinking into black light white light light eternal eternal quia sections who know dark light white eternal dark eye golden black light sections sections eye light light red green black light sections sections eye light light red green scream section perpendicular dark redicular dark bipedal forked light red who golden sections green light green gold black quia sections old dark old gold black black black white ablaze sections

….....................................................................................................................................

Noon. Humid. A glass sky glaring, no air. Shadows clipped, faded. The canteen empty. The tomato yellow. It tastes of sun. Hard tack like musty hay. The road is dust white. I'm walking. A bridge. Wooden. Under the bridge a river. No water, dried-out clay. I'm walking. A bend. Huts. A well, empty.

In the hut, twilight. An army shirt, sleeves rolled up, peeling potatoes. No words. I sit down - pressed clay, giving off cold. I want to sleep. I think...who'll get these potatoes? I want to eat. A hand takes a potato from the basket, in the other a knife. Fast, skilled. A spiral-grey outside, inside whit hangs from the knife and drops into a bowl. I think...for a pig. Potato cut into quarters. I think...who'll get these potatoes? I want to eat. The quarters drop into the bucket. In the bucket-water. Pling, pling, pling...

I want to sleep. The clay hard, cool. Bare feet. I think...why so many potatoes?

The bucket full. Pling, pling, pling....

We are walking, night. The moon flat and thin, cut from foil. No sky, only air. It is shining with moon. We are walking, she before me, bare feet. I behind. She takes my hand, I think...why so many potatoes? I want to eat. Under the bridge the moon again, but spilled. The night is shining with moon, she was well. We are walking. The bridge ends. Beyond the bridge, the moon. The road is shining with moon. It's cool. I want to eat. The water tastes of moon. It's cool. I want to eat. The water tastes of moon., the potatoes of fried fat. I ask...where are we going? Home. We've already passed it. We'll come back. She is walking on, I behind her. She takes my hand. It's shining with moon. I'm looking at the sky. No sky – moon. I ask ... where to? She is silent. I am walking behind her, behind the moon. The moon is leading me, it takes my hand. I'm walking...No road – as moon. It shines with cold. It's blue. So am I. Translucent. So am I. I am floating. Over me – bridge. I am floating...

'The intense prolongation of a gaze into infinity.' Imogen Holst.

Imogen Holst on her father Gustave Holst's The Planets.

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions. I am

alone here every night after 9 pm, the family are early to bedders – and I sit alone

with my books and think of this long war and all the lonely women throughout the

world and the men in camps and holes in the ground tormented with

hunger for women.

Four years and six hundred thousand lives after the firing on Fort Sumpter, the South was lost with cities burned – the worst, by the way, being Richmond, torched by the Confederates as they evacuated – its fields ravaged, its...

________________________

The fact that I need to explain all of that tells me how much that awful war still sears the soil and soul of the South.

“I never speak directly about the Holocaust in my work, but of course my work comes from the Holocaust...The Holocaust taught me that we are not better than we were in the past.”

--------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

...An utter silence reigned where they stood. Not even the sound of water reached them. ….The way was difficult and dangerous...., undulating....mostly level. It was no wonder....for this surface was everywhere crowded with shadows. It was a sea of shadows. The mass was chiefly made up of the shadows of leaves innumerable, of all lovely and imaginative forms, waving to and fro, floating and quivering in the breath of a breeze whose motion was unfelt, whose sound was unheard...

--------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

-------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------

In this dream play...the Author has sought to reproduce the disconnected but apparently logical form of a dream. Anything can happen; everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist; on a slight groundwork of reality, imagination spins and weaves new patterns made up of memories, experiences, unfettered fancies, absurdities and innovations.

The characters are split, double and multiply; they evaporate, crystallise, scatter and converge. But a single consciousness holds sway over them all – that of the dreamer. For him there are no secrets, no incongruities, no scruples and no law, He neither condemns nor acquits, but only relates, and since on the whole, there is more pain than pleasure in the dream, a tone of melancholy, and of compassion for all living things, runs through the swaying narrative. Sleep, the liberator, often appears as a torturer, but when the pain is at its worst, the sufferer awakes – and is reconciled with reality. For however agonising real life may be, at this moment, compared with the tormenting dream, it a joy.

--------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------

--------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

The priest peered short-sightedly ...and began the service in Latin. His thin, lisping voice seemed to evaporate in the shimmering air. He was not of the island, and Latin was not of the islanders. How could he know what the death of an islander meant?*

The bearers sweated and grunted as they slowly lowered the coffin into the grave. There was a silence as the priest prepared to deliver the oration, but as he spoke in Spanish, very few would be able to understand what he said. He began timidly, then paused for a breath. As he paused, a huge voice seemed to burst in the air and descend over the assembly.

“By their fruits shall we know them, that is my text and by this ye shall judge. By their fruits shall ye know them. Some for this reason and others for reasons more than one and yet another for reason simple. All like Graciella that we now lay to rest that has lost confidence in men and Christianity and form of vanity; they have departed from the true sense.

“They have departed and lost the true image of God in their souls. Nothing can appeal to them. The voices of the little children crying for bread? But no. I cant understand it at all, how men can claim to be made in the image of the Maker and Creator can be that instrument. Something is going on radically wrong in our world.

“I don't know what to say, but the Scriptures say in Revelations. Revelation – I wonder ye know that book? I know thy work, that thou are neither hot or cold, but because thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out of my mouth...The Catholic translation says I will vomit thee out of my mouth. Lukewarm. The Almighty God is taken to the heart. Spew him out of his mouth. That's why he can become this brutal, hear now? That's the only reason how they may become this brutal. The spirit of the living God is imparted, that what's happening in our world, the spirit of the living God is fast being withdrawn.

“They live in a state of concealed iniquity and sin. 'They shall not prosper,' thus saith the Scriptures. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

“Well, the only thing can help you is you're a prophet. Jesus Christ weeping over Jerusalem that killest the Prophet and them that are sent. How oft would I have gathered thee, as a hen gathers her brood under her wing. But he would not. Behold the house is left unto desolation, and I was making a survey to see whether Jesus Christ has returned unto that desolate place. I cant find it. I can find Him. No wonder he can do all this and more too. Led by the spirit of demons.

“Grassy is lying there, led by the spirit of demons. She gave them much respect and she had a reverential tongue. Now she is fallen into rest, but she has given away councils to guide the mischievous footsteps and to shun the rut. She said 'Son' – when breathing out her last – 'see these men leaving their own wives, may you never enter into that.'

“The religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ liberates men and dos not harness them behind asylum walls, nor mash up their families. Nor like this sweating priest here, the pirate of Rome and Government that speaks in behind-the-back language. He must learn better how to adapt himself, being a fool with the fools, and a fisherman, and in every way to cooperate and operate.

“And maybe we'll divorce, we'll separate till they shall find the right woman of their choice to build a nation. God bless our sons with moral minds. This is their privilege, but with mothers modelled whom their children children may call blessed, their husband and father present, for they are the best. By their fruits shall ye know them.”

Oscar stayed around for a week or so. He never spoke of Graciella, the funeral, or his oration....

-------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------

Corner of the window: empty spot where I will put the manik in of a child if I buy it. But it seems I can already see it, in that empty spot, since I desire ir. I could live like this in a destitute decor, contrary to mine, surrounded by desires and the suggestions of objects (I continue to refuse to build a collection.)

This notebook takes some getting used to: the linage extends further. The surface is less tight, less secret than those of small notebooks. The main thing is to have managed to have given it a fate, to affix some black at the top left hand of the page.

_________________________

Each injection is nonetheless an attack against the body, even if it doesn't hurt: I am afraid that as the liquid enters the skin it will split the flesh, and that, contrite, it will reject the liquid it is made to accept, that it will turn blue, stagnate, that it wil no longer be able to assimilate it, and that it will remain like a wound, a bruise, forever: after this scar on my forehead, I imagine that I am fabricating my dead body (my trafficked body: death pending).

----- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really think loneliness is the worst of all human afflictions.

---------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

...The original fault

will not be undone by fire.

The original fault was whether wickedness

was soluble in art.

--------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------

59 Let Bukki rejoice with the Buzzard, who is clever, with the reputation of a silly

fellow.

Let Michal rejoice with Leucocrutas who is a mixture of beauty and

magnanimity.

60 Let Abiah rejoice with Morpheus who is a bird of passage to the Heavens.

Let Hur rejoice with the Water-wag-tail, who is a neighbour, and loves to be

looked at.

Let Dodo rejoice with the purple Worm, who is cloathed sumptuously, tho he

fares meanly.

62 For Silly fellow! Silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor my

family.

For he that scorneth the scorner hath condescended to my low estate.

For Abiah is the father of Joab and Joab of all Romans and English Men.

========================== =============== =================

I want to sleep. The clay hard, cool. Bare feet. I think...why so many potatoes?

The bucket full. Pling, pling, pling....

=================== ================================ ===============

loneliness

the worst of

human

afflictions

worst ....

….............. ................... …..... ......... …......... …................