20.12.07







                               Jan McKemmish, writer and academic                                           1950 - 2007

Only four weeks after becoming ill with cancer, my friend of thirty-one years and my co-writer of various performance texts,
Jan McKemmish, died at the Freemasons' Hospital in East Melbourne on the evening of Xmas Eve. My partner Jane and
I deeply mourn her death.



(poster by jan mackay)



Rumi
A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
And be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
To see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
If you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

*

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.


Michael Hurley read these selections from Rumi’s poems at Jan’s funeral
in Richmond, Melbourne on Saturday 29th December.
















Jan McKemmish, Redfern, Sydney in the mid 1980s
(fotos by Margot Nash)
































16.12.07




This snap of an oniomaniac, (that is the word, isn't it Melissa?) shopaholic, (well, the trolleys must have been full once), alcoholic, kinda bleak-yet-arty Australian xmas tree arrived in my inbox today, via the University of Technology Sydney academic staff's xmas-greeting emails. I hope visitors to the deletions can appreciate it and meanwhile, I'll wish you, my three or four (five or six?) friendly, faithful readers, all the best for the silly season and for 2008

Santa says 'remember, click on pic to enlarge'






15.12.07



  I heart UbuWeb
  http://www.ubu.com


There is so much on UbuWeb and it's entirely free.
You just need to make the time.
Factor it in, if you're planning a festive season break.



(does that read like a commercial?)








7.12.07

wonderama fluoroama diorama


A museum in a town called Mount Victoria - it's kind of Victorian




Stuffed, embarrassed or bashful, fauna



click on the images to enlarge them, if you're game



1.12.07


Adelaide, the Athens of the South, has been hosting an international guitar festival that wraps up this weekend. If you stay on in town until Tuesday night you can catch the final in the Lee Marvin Readings - for details CLICK HERE


                        'I'm looking forward to Tuesday night'- Lee Marvin



Also - just published -
The last issue of Jacket magazine for 2007
(special stocking-stuffer issue!)

Click Here To Read Jacket 34

Editor: John Tranter | Associate Editor: Pam Brown