Crawling Days

*

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
John Keats.

http://www.enotes.com/bright-star

In the summer of 1819 Keats and his friend James Rice left for an extended stay on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England. Keats had spent time alone on the Isle in the spring of 1817, reading Shakespeare and receiving the inspiration that led to the long poem "Endymion" as well as some of his most famous insights about the nature of art. He hoped the 1819 journey would prove equally invigorating, but he was distracted by his troubled love for Fanny Brawne. Keats had met her in December, 1818, but he was having trouble fully committing to their relationship. He wrote several letters to Fanny during his stay on the Isle, and one in particular seems to give insight into "Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art." In the letter, he writes, "I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute." Keats's biographer Aileen Ward writes that while composing the letter, Keats witnessed the planet Venus rising outside his window. At that moment, Ward says, "doubt and distraction left him; it was only beauty, Fanny's and the star's, that mattered."

Jane Campion's film Bright Star has just been released in Australia.

A tiny figure skated out from beneath the crashing waves. They had been cruel days, but only for the fading, battered selves. It's that time of year, with the build up to the Australian Open. Jelena Dockic is playing in the Brisbane International. The nation holds its breath; after being trashed by Pakistan in the cricket. Now her serve has been broken. And all our hopes for the underdog are broken; and heroes die as they should have been born. There are backpackers everywhere. The ridiculous cost of everything; the nightmare imposed from above. It was so cruel; that's all he could say. It was all so devestating. He didn't know who he was anymore. If they were heartbroken; there was no showing it. The young, the restless, the beautiful, they were everywhere.

Everywhere but where he was, everywhere but in his soul. We're in the final furlong; Michael kept saying. Maybe it was true. The long climb led nowhere. Circling whirls of confusion; darkness and collapse. Everything had been so black; inky in its astonishing darkness. He wasn't going to be compromised. There had to be a way to rebuild the old self. There had to be a way to start again. But everyone was trapped in these fragile frames. There wasn't going to be an easy way out. He couldn't see his way clear. There was disappointment; everywhere. But he wanted to tell simple stories; paint pictures with words. He wanted to be born again. The viciousness and contempt which had been dished out; he could knife those who had betrayed him; the young guns who had been out to overthrow him; the fragile determination which had been so easily overturned.

It was a wonderful party; wasn't it; Polly slurred. He looked out at the puffs of smoke drifting across the city; the red glow from the fading fireworks as 2010 began; not just a new year but a new decade. They were in the court circle; the Rabelaisian scenes as partygoers filled the apartments with their spectacular views of Sydney. Weirdo's outside, the kids said, despite his repeated lectures on showing some respect towards their mother. I know she's a difficult person, he said. But it doesn't matter. But it did matter, of course. They were angry at the chaos, the madness that had been imposed upon them. He might be lost, but there were others even more lost. He might feel as if he was surrounded by people decades younger and thousands of times happier; but there were others who had never come back.

There was a curious mix at the final party of the year. We were all compromised. 2009; everyone sighed. Terrible year; it was generally agreed. He became even more silent, crossing his legs in a sign of sophistication; but wordless. Silence had been his only defence; always. As he was beaten he retreated behind every vale he could possible pull. As a young teenager he had walked along the beach, waiting to die after swallowing a couple of packets of aspirin, and when he didn't die, suffering instead a sore stomach for years afterwards, he trundled home, only to beaten again, looking up in agony through a veil of tears thinking; one day I'll write about this, one day I'll be somebody; one day I won't be hurt, I won't be punished for being myself; no one will beat me. It was only ever partially true.

In the final decades he had become a Calamity Jane; attracting disaster and zero sympathy. Nothing but an odd ball. Some people attract disaster. He attracted catastrophe. I've never known anyone so unhappy for so long; the photographer said, and he shrugged it off as he shrugged off everything. Nothing made any sense. If there had been any purpose, any mission, it was impossible to determine exactly what it was. He painted himself as the observer; here to watch, record, document, here to paint the pain and smile at the wicked courtesies of those around him. Flashing bodies. Astonishing good looks. They were everywhere. And there was no continuous narrative structure. Nothing could be recorded. He would not be rewarded for such savage discontent, such savage thought disorder. If only their narrative had survived.

They might be in the final furlong but none of the disparate elements had been sewn together. Surrender to the program; they said; and he couldn't think of a bigger load of garbage or a greater array of idiots to which to surrender. It was clear insanity. Trust no one. Betray yourself. Come hither, up from the depths. It was time to leave the city he had lived in all his life. It was time to end one story and begin another. Friends dismissed, shadows chased. We were so cruel, fitful, easily punished, easily quashed. All that wealth; he could hear the laughter from the neighbouring towers. The Bridge, the Opera House, the glistening harbour. The fireworks blossomed in balls of colour across the city. Cheers drifted up from the apartments below. The surrounding partygoers cheered; he was alone; always alone; and smiled when a drunk gay man groped him as his boyfriend watched.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,26548375-2682,00.html

AN HISTORIC monoplane - a relic of Sir Douglas Mawson's 1911-14 expedition - has been found in Antarctica thanks to freakish luck after a three-year search.

An Australian heritage carpenter stumbled on the remains of the craft - the first Vickers aircraft ever made - on New Year's Day at Cape Denison.

The cast iron framework of the plane was revealed by an unusually low tide and reduced ice cover.

``It's a remarkable find in remarkable circumstances,'' chairman of the Mawson's Huts Foundation David Jensen said.

``We began the search three summers ago and thought we might have a reasonable chance of finding it with all the equipment provided to us by sponsors.''

Nearly a century after it was abandoned by Mawson, the old Vickers was spotted sitting among rocks in a few centimetres of water during one of the lowest tides recorded at Commonwealth Bay.

``They would not have been found had the tide not been so low and the ice cover at Cape Denison at its lowest for several years - it was a fluke find,'' Mr Jensen said in a statement.

``The Vickers was an historic aircraft and part of Mawson's remarkable story of Antarctic exploration.''

The aircraft, built just eight years after the Wright brothers' first flight and the first produced by the Vickers factory in Britain, was also the first to be taken to a polar region.

http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/pakistan-attack-crushes-australia-20100103-lmzj.html

Ricky Ponting’s decision to bat first on a rain-affected SCG pitch backfired badly as Australia was bowled out for 127 on the first day of the rain-affected second Test against Pakistan at the SCG.

Mitchell Johnson top-scored with 38 and was one of just four Australians to reach double figures.

Sami removed Phillip Hughes and Ponting for ducks in successive deliveries in the day’s fourth over. Hughes was caught at second slip, playing a typically full-blooded drive.

For the second successive Test against Pakistan, Ponting fell caught on the leg-side boundary, flicking a ball off his hip as the crowd watched in horror.

The shot raised doubts over whether Ponting has recovered from the elbow injury which he carried into last week’s first Test against Pakistan in Melbourne.

Sami narrowly missed having Shane Watson lbw next ball to claim a hat-trick.

A nervous Hughes, recalled for his sixth Test for the injured Simon Katich (elbow), gave a simple chance to gully from his first ball but Umar Akmal dropped it cold off Sami’s bowling in the second over.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/kurt-westergaard-cartoon-muhammad-denmark

Danish police admitted yesterday that a Somalian caught breaking into the home of a cartoonist whose work sparked riots across the Muslim world five years ago was a would-be assassin with links to al-Qaida.

The 28-year-old had an axe and a knife when he was shot and wounded by police late on Friday night after cartoonist Kurt Westergaard heard windows being broken and pressed a panic alarm at his house in Aarhus.

News of the attack on Westergaard, 74, who was with his five-year-old granddaughter at the time, shocked many in Denmark who had believed the country's brush with Islamist extremism was consigned to the past.

Westergaard told his employer, the Jyllands-Posten daily, that he had locked himself and the child in the bathroom as the assailant shouted "revenge" and "blood" and tried to smash his way into the house. "My grandchild did fine," he told the newspaper. "It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it."

Westergaard has lived amid tight security with a special "safe room" inside his house ever since his caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was first published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005. Islamic law prohibits any depiction of the prophet for fear it would lead to idolatry. The cartoon, one of 12, outraged many Muslims, who make up around 3% of Denmark's 5.5 million population.

It provoked a vigorous debate about free speech then, when other newspapers reprinted the caricatures in 2006 as an act of solidarity with the heavily criticised Jyllands-Posten, it triggered violence in a number of countries.

Three Danish embassies were attacked and at least 50 people died in rioting in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Several young Muslims have since been convicted in Denmark of planning bomb attacks, partly in protest at the cartoons. In 2008, Osama bin Laden said that Europe would be punished for the cartoons.