When The Zombies Rise...

The house will look much as it does now. There was a Phoenix party here on Saturday that I'd completely forgotten about and there's still detritus lying about. I should really do some tidying...

It left a poor impression for Mark, our former flatmate-who-went-up-to-Auckland-for-a-fortnight-and-ended-up-staying-for-nearly-a-year-but-is-now-visiting-us-for-a-week-while-he-observes-some-tidy-up-sound-recording-for-the-movie-he's-just-finished-editing-which-I've-forgotten-the-name-of-or-I-would-link-to-it-in-IMDB. He's taking it all in his stride, I think and is very welcome, despite the fifteen minutes notice of his arrival we got from Norman-the-Landlord.

Also, many thanks to Mark-the-Latin-Teacher-Dude, who not only answered my question about the bit in Statius where Tydeus eats the head of his not-yet-dead enemy, but found an Illustrative Picture in the process.



And finally, I have had my Zombie Movie Cherry popped. Yes, I finally watched Shaun of the Dead. Everyone who told me to watch it, yes, you were right. It's a very funny movie and a zombie flick, all at the same time.

I can hear muffled shouting from outside my room. Maybe Norman and Fraser are pleased to see Mark. Or...
Night all.

Reflections

I can remember this time last year, quite well actually.

There was Kapcon, and the free concerts in the Botanical Gardens, and lovely summer weather, and playing frisbee in the park. It was also about the time that I was thinking that that John fellow was rather lovely and wishing that he'd notice me.

I also met Morgue right about now, and read his rant on the problems involved in trying to maintain plausible deniability about whether you liked someone or not. It took me a while to follow his advice, but it all worked out rather well in the end.

Thanks Morgue.

Not Poetry, This Time.

In television, what is the difference between a Soap Opera and a Drama?

I've been having a discussion with my flatmates on how to class Norman's favourite addiction, ER. I've always thought of it as a soap, because it's focusing on internal story lines between the characters, but Norman says it isn't, because it's not full of people wailing about having just married their brother by accident. Also, there was some discussion of overarching story lines.

What is the actual distinction? Was Babylon 5 a soap?

Yet more poetry...

Because if people are going to have interesting conversations in comments to your posts, you might as well memorialise it. :-)

Psyche to Eros

Do you think of me then, waiting on the rock?
It was cold – the wind bellied my red mantle, embroidered
with suns and wheels and dandelions. Their
warmth was only pictures; my bare feet bled
on the ragged stones. From the dark hills cold glints
of trumpets bid farewell: they were leaving me, though
my mother had clung like lichen clings, had wept
like water gushing from blank granite.
A beautiful sacrifice, I.

In this dark place – all softness, as a scrap
of thistle-down, as the fluff
of a wild-cat nursing kits – my eyes
are shut with your kisses, your murmuring
willow-voice all I hear. I drink you,
as night drinks blindness from a bowl.

Ah, love,
I dreamed that I married a falcon,
and slept in his feather-soft nest in the cliff
but I looked in his eyes,
sun-yellow,
and knowing me, he fled.

I might travel the hills to find that bird,
and cut my feet on the rocks,
and wear the wind for a mantle.
Until I see you,
you will never know.
--Cat Pegg

Commonplace Book

liberal
Consider this:
      A man who feels for the people.
      A friend to the ill-favoured.
      Never a word against the bar-
barians assuming Roman dress.

Reconcile this:
      A believer in man's potential.
      A voice raised against the games
      where human flesh is sport.
A man whose eyes fill at music.

You might at least concede:
      No man went hungry from my door.
      No woman was molested.
      No child was imposed on.
Humanitas inevitable as breath.

I who might have, have
      never raped, pillaged, extorted;
      abused office or position;
      concealed; interfered with art;
stood between any man and sunset.

And yet as you say,
      I have killed a god. I have made
      of impartiality, a farce.
      I have dabbled in chaos. I,
Pilate. Who vote as you do.
-- Vincent O'Sullivan

Vincent O'Sullivan, in An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English, (eds. Jenny Bornholdt, Gregory Brian, Mark Williams), (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), p228.

Because I Was Asked To Inflict Poetry...

Gilgamesh
There was a young king from Uruk
Whom Enkidu thought was a pillock
They fought a great war
And broke down a door
Then made mighty love on a hillock.
-- Cat Pegg

(Er, I think Catherine wrote it. She's certainly the person who told it to me...)

On Burglar Alarms...

The burglar alarm from the house two doors down went off earlier this afternoon, and did not turn off immediately thereafter in the classic "Oh poot, I forgot to punch in the code" fashion I'm more used to. I found out later that a couple of neighbours also heard it and independently went to check things out, but I was very unheroic and called the police instead. They were prompt, friendly and efficient, a credit to the New Zealand Police Force.

(What happened is that the lady who lives there had hired a minion-for-the-day from Student Job Search, left the garage open so that the minion could access tools, and forgotten to give him the alarm code, so it was actually an entirely innocuous alarm. The policeman I talked to said that it's always best to call in these situations, though, just in case.)

One Day at Tourney...

This weekend I shall be at the Grail of Chivalry World Invitational Jousting Tournament. It will be Very Cool. In fact, I shall be there with bells on. (When I agreed to be part of the entertainment, nobody said anything about the bells.)

It's open to the public for $5 a pop. If you're interested, or would just like to go out to the park on a nice sunny (I hope) day, come right along.

On New Year's Day I Muse on the Incongruity of Wearing a Winter Coat and Gloves...

I understand from Neil Gaiman's blog that the weather in North America is unseasonally warm. Give us back our summer, damn your eyes!!!

Happy New Year.

EDIT: I have changed from Old Blogger to New Blogger. This means that the RSS feed into LJ has temporarily gone haywire, sorry for spamming you guys with old posts.

On Travel...

First off, I was not in this: 7 in Head On Collision despite being in that region of highway at the operative time. ReptonInfinity and I got to the queue of stalled cars, watched three police cars, two fire engines and a pair of ambulances go by and decided to take the alternate route, which was to go back to Waikanae and head off into the wilds of New Zealand mountains on the Akatarawa Rd. This is extremely narrow and twisty and long, and on the course of the drive Repton came to tell me the story of his one time in detention as a worked example of why taking the route that is longer may be more time consuming but also more interesting. From the timestamp on this article, however, (only quarter of an hour before we got home) in which they still hadn't cleared a lane for traffic, I think we made the right choice. Actually, it wasn't too bad a drive, we were early adopters of the alternate route so proceeded as Mother Ducks to a very long queue of cars.

My best wishes to the people in the car crash and their families. As flippant as my above post is, I know that this is a very difficult time for you.

I'm Back

Hi all,

This is just to say that I've arrived safely. There's not much to say about the flights home apart from: they were long. At Bangkok, I could have seized the opportunity to see a strange, exciting and vibrant city, but instead concluded that I was fed up with crowds and hung around the airport for 14 hours. The people who did go said that they had a really interesting time, although they were rather confused when the taxi driver led them up a narrow stair, past a large number of men staring at them, and presented them with a tailor who said he could make fitted clothes for them and deliver them to the airport before they flew out.

I'm a new fan of homeopathic jetlag pills. I'm feeling astonishingly good, compared to other long haul flights of my experience, a little bit spacy right now, but not as bad as a cold, and I could work or sit an exam if I had to. ReptonInfinity came to the airport to meet me off the plane, and showed a gentlemanly enthusiasm for helping me stay awake yesterday evening, as well as taking me out for a long walk in the sun this morning. Have I mentioned lately what a lovely guy John is?

By the Way...

I should have mentioned this before, but Mark, one of our lecturers has been posting photos in his blog, if anyone is interested. I have photos, but I won't be putting them up until I get home.

Reporting In, Again

Hi all,

I've been offline for the last four or five days (I forget exactly), so this is just to say that I'm still alive and all. We've been doing large amounts on the Pelopponessos, combined with study for the course test, which had us all thoroughly terrified. On Friday, the evening before, we were so worried that we started writing summary sheets on the sites we'd presented and taping them to our doors, sort of like a modern day Wall of Eponymous Heroes. When Mark and Diana (the lecturers) got back from dinner, they realised what we were doing, said "Look at our babies!" and wrote up short sheets of their own. Yesterday evening immediately after the test, it took me an hour and a half to stop bouncing, I was so happy it was over. Alasdair and I even found somewhere to throw a frisbee around (actually quite hard over here), in the central court of the hotel we were staying at. The name of the hotel is Amallia, but you need to have some passing knowledge of the Bronze Age in the Aegean to know why the fact that it has a central court is funny.

The worst travel day was when we drove from Sparta to Pylos to Bassae to Olympia, all in one day, over terrible terrible roads. There were not a few places on the route where the road had four or five switchbacks, just to get up the hill. The front of the bus was rather more full than usual, as everyone with a tendency to carsickness got chummy with Mark and Diana who had the front seats. Olympia was wonderful, although the lovely, beautiful, clean, exquisite air was bone dry and it hurt to breathe, so I was fairly glum and uncommunicative that day, which is a shame. (Stupid asthma.) There I saw what is now my absolute favourite statue, the one of Hermes holding the baby Dionysos which is totally more fantastic in real life than in pictures, because you can pick out the details, and the three-dimensionality, and the lovely curve of Hermes' back. Just lovely. Delphi was also truly wonderful. There and Olympia were the ancient world's two favourite places to buy splosh pressents for, so there is a significant amount of Really Cool things to look at there.

Anyway, my love to all, I'll be back on the late afternoon of the 20th. Take care.

Still Alive...

Today we went to Epidauros (or Epidavros if you speak Modern vs Ancient Greek). This should be on everyone's must-see lists for Greece. The Theatre has the best acoustics I've ever heard in my life. One of the girls on this trip, Alissa, has a very beautiful singing voice, and was bullied into singing for us as we headed out into the far reaches of the audience seating. No change in volume, and just lovely sound quality. Also the two people presenting the site performed a short extract from the Aristophanes play Wealth, with cross dressing, a fake and very long penis, and lots of jokes about members of the audience. The other main site there is the Sanctuary to Aesclepius, which has a very different feel. Walking in, surrounded by pine trees, in a slightly damp morning, we could almost have been in NZ, although the sheep over the fence had long ears and tails, and there were bells on the minder dogs. I walked around in there by myself after we'd been let loose to wander about, and it's a very calming, tranquil place. There's a guy called Henry Miller who talked about hearing the heart of the world beating, in the great calm and stillness. I so totally get what he meant.

Take care all.

Christ, O Thou Pelican

I just saw a Pelican!!! It was so cute and pink and fluffy and, and, and...

I'm currently in Sitia, which is quite small, about 9,000 people but has a nice waterfront. Not much to say apart from that this morning in Aghios Nicholaos (ie St Nicholas) was a public holiday to celebrate the Feast of St Nicholas. The other Steffany and I walked up to the town cathedral to see if we were in time for the procession (we weren't) but the people clustered outside were so friendly (they gave us bread tied with purple ribbons, even) that we asked if we could go inside, and lit candles for the people back at home. It was lovely inside, and I'm very glad I went.

Back in the land of Nod

Well, back in the land of cheap internet access. Against my expectation Kolimbari did in fact have some terminals available for hire, just quite expensive ones. Ah Freshness Cafe... you made a lot of money out of us. (We went there for food quite frequently as well.)

The trip is going well, particularly as we had a couple of days off in the last week in which I slept much and am feeling considerably happier about life, the universe and everything. Yesterday we went olive picking, which actually consists of hitting a tree with a big stick.

I am gutted that I couldn't make the finale Mordavia game. Ah, well, people can tell me all about it at the After Larp.

Going Off Line

Hi all,

Tomorrow the lot of us CLAS320/420ers are shifting to Kolibari for six days. It's on the western tip of Crete, and is quite small, so I doubt there'll be internet access. So this is to say to those who've been checking for regular updates that I'm just fine, and have not been hit by a tidal wave, or a rogue riot, or kidnapped by a wandering drunken centaur, or worse, a libidinous Greek deity.

This morning we wandered around a Minoan cemetery. The site presenter, Steffany, who is a goth, made a point of climbing into one of the Mycenean stone paved graves and did a zombie impersonation. Diana, our chief lecturer, says that we have an unnatural and disturbingly recurring interest in zombies and cannibalism.

Take care,

Steph

(See you on the flip side.)

Not much to say ...

... except we've moved to Heraklion (on the tickets) or Iraklion (on the street signs). This place is so much nicer than Athens, you wouldn't believe it. The air tastes so good. I can walk around at night without rousting out someone to walk with me. (Not actually that difficult, the women in the group developed an unspoken agreement that we didn't have to go out by ourselves, because we found the solid clusters of young men standing around staring at us, combined with the almost compete lack of local women on the streets after five somewhat unnerving.) It's nice to go for a walk by myself again.

Today we went to Knossos, which was much coolness, particularly as one of the archaologists working on the site came out and gave us a very in depth tour of it.

I am feeling very homesick.

Take care all.

The Rains Have Come

Yesterday night, a good solid soaking into dry ground. This wasn't a complete surprise to the locals, the weather had been overcast all day, and spitting a little, and it's the time of year when they expect rains. According to one of the books I read for my site presentation, the growing season for grain here is autumn and winter, when there's enough water to keep it alive, which is appropriate, as I gave my site presentation yesterday (on Eleusis, the site of a cult to Demeter, Goddess of Agriculture). It went pretty well, with one hasty rearrangement of material when we thought it might rain earlier in the day that turned out to be a false alarm, and I was feeling a little spaced out at the time due to the beginnings of a cold. I thought of John often, and fondly, becauce a random handkerchief he'd lent me some time ago had turned out to be in my jacket pocket just when I really really needed it. The site itself was fantastic, although I didn't have nearly enough time to look at it properly because we had to get on the bus for the next site. Who cares about stupid old graveyards, anyway. One of the things I almost missed was walking down a pathway along the excavations of one of the old retaining walls and realising the sheer amount of earth that was brought on to the site, so that they could have a bigger temple on severely sloping ground, because it was the sacred spot associated with Demeter.

Today is our last day in Athens, we fly to Crete at midday, and I'm finding it very relaxing not having a 9am (or 8am or 7.30am) morning call for once.

Take care all.

I'm Still Alive

(But don't have much time to post.)

Yesterday we went to the Island of Aigina, which fits, I think, most people's image of what Greece is like: hot sun, blue mellow sea, white houses and narrow streets. It was incredibly laidback, and there was a lot of fish, and many people selling pistachio nuts. The Best Bit was clambering around in a neolithic village on the Hill of the Colonna (Hill of the Column) which I enjoyed greatly until someone said "Hey, we might see snakes!" (We didn't.)

Today we see more museums. Take care all.