Sitting in her little house near Tarbes, in the French Pyrenees, Marie-Pierre Manet-Beauzac is talking about her ancestry.
For most people this would be agreeable, perhaps even pleasurable. For the 40-something mother-of-three, the story of her bloodline is marked with a unique sadness: because she belongs to an extraordinary tribe of hidden pariahs, repressed in France for a thousand years.
Marie-Pierre is a Cagot.
From Sean Thomas in The Independent.
Last Saturday was the hottest temperature I have ever experienced. At our house, it reached 47 degrees, which I see is over 116 degrees in the old fahrenheit scale.
In the afternoon, after abandoning the house when it hit 30 degrees inside, we walked a hundred metres from the car to the entrance of a shopping centre looking for shelter from the heat, and I covered my little boy as if radiation was falling from the sky, which it was. Hot wind like a blast-furnace swirled around empty carparks. The sky was yellow and we could smell smoke. I had an intimation of armageddon.
Looking at the images of Marysville and Kinglake, armageddon is about right.
I have been preoccupied by thoughts about the effect of these public disasters and my reaction to them. I’ve been working in the federal Parliament this week, and the sense of despair has been overwhelming as the sheer size of the destruction and the number of lives lost rolls out over the media across several days.
I’m not one to emote very much when the public join in with these festivals of mourning over some dead celebrity, or even when lives are lost in natural disasters. Mostly, I’ve thought my reaction was reasonable and civilised, as these events are part of a larger picture of birth and death, creation and destruction, and a long way from me. And it’s true, they are, but sometimes I have cause to doubt the self-satisfied veneer of my response.
Yesterday, on the plane, I felt an uncontrollable welling in me, a heaviness in the heart that I had to struggle to control. On the video screen, a shot from a helicopter of a large area of burned out grassland, then following a car’s tyre tracks clearly discernable against the black earth. Pulling out to a wider view, a white car, pathetically abandoned at the very edge of a large dam still full of water. It was not known, said the voiceover, whether the person in the car had survived.
The last few days have been spent with the constant din of the television and radio news, cycling and recycling the same stories and bits of information that really aren’t information at all. It’s hard not be cynical as the commercial stations mine this disaster like a seam of gold, as they interview anyone with a story to tell or just an anecdote that will become worn with age and repetition, an emblem of an experience.
I haven’t read anything as thoughtful as David Tiley’s contribution, so I will link to it here.
Barista: ‘We lived again but life was different.‘
I want one.
Bec spotted this in Mother and Baby magazine.
Looking at Modernism: the Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond by Peter Gay, I came across this passage in a discussion of Proust and what Proust called “the intermittences of the heart”:
The expression tersely epitomises one of Proust’s most disheartening, and most irresistible, conclusions about the vicissitudes of existence: the human heart fails when its endurance and judgement are most needed. Life is many things, to be sure, but most conspicuously it adds up to a vast array of mistakes, of mismatches, of sentiments out of phase with realities, of experiences not reflected in feelings. We get experiences wrong; everyone gets experiences wrong… Life therefore, is a perpetual act of revising, of correcting, what we think we know; it is a school for disenchantment.
Somehow I think Michael Leddy might agree.
Feeling exceedingly old today, as my little girl turns 16 years of age. You can probably imagine how that feels, even if you’ve never been in the same position.
Her presents were a hit this morning. The first series of the Mighty Boosh on DVD, and a ticket to see Sir Ian McKellen in King Lear.
I know the second one is not the sort of thing the average 16 year old would be interested in, but then she’s not the average 16 year old. Her obsession with the Boosh, and Noel Fielding in particular, is a recent development. Ian McKellen probably dates back to Gandalf and The Lord of the Rings.
I haven’t told her that apparently Sir Ian gets his kit off. I’m afraid of putting her off the idea.
I’m so thankful that, at least to date, we have remained firm friends. There few other people I would like to spend time with than with my (formerly) little girl.
So for Ellen, here’s a gratuitous picture of the object of her affection.
Spam received today begging me to:
Make your penis better.
What are they proposing to do, attach bells? Paint it blue? Make it a little bonnet that says ‘For someone special’?
Now, bigger I could understand – more attractive, dress it up a bit, but ‘better’?
Last night watching a DVD of Alan Bennett’s series ‘Telling Tales’, in which he simply sits in a chair and tells a meandering tale of his childhood in Leeds, I was struck by a comment he made about the streets of this provincial city in the 1930s.
He was talking about how most children carried around a mental map of their neighbourhood in their heads, especially containing all the hazards a child may encounter on the streets, like aggressive dogs, neighbourhood bullies, tramps and so on. He pointed out that one thing no child had to be concerned about were cars, as there weren’t any.
This immediately reminded me of looking at the catalogue I bought in Sydney recently, ‘City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948’, in which the streets of this now congested city are completely barren of traffic. I always wondered why that might be. I thought it might have been the time of day the pictures were taken, or the length of the exposure. Now I realise it was that there weren’t any cars because no ordinary person owned one.
This flashed through my mind this morning while reading Michael Leddy’s post about his town and the sad state of footpaths there. He conjures up a place which is mainly given over to the automobile, with pedestrians a rare sight. Exactly the opposite of the city scene which would have greeted a visitor to Leeds or Sydney in 1938, or I imagine, a provincial orange-growing and movie-making community like Hollywood.
This is the “I have . . .” meme. Supamum didn’t tag me this time, but I thought it might be fun to do anyway.
I’ve answered most of the questions that were already there and added a few all of my own, just to make it interesting.
I have…
(x) smoked a cigarette
(x) crashed a relative’s car
(x) Got drunk with a good friend
( ) stolen a car
(x) been in love
( ) been dumped
(x) shoplifted
(x) been fired
(x) been in a fist fight
(x) snuck out of my parent’s house
(x) seen my child being born
( ) been arrested
(x) gone on a blind date
(x) skipped school
(x) seen someone die
( ) been to Canada
( ) been to Mexico
(x) been on a plane
( ) eaten Sushi
( ) been skiing.. snowboarding
( ) been moshing at a concert
(x) love someone or miss someone right now
(x) lain on my back and watched cloud shapes go by
( ) made a snow angel
(x) flown a kite
(x) built a sand castle
(x) gone puddle jumping
(x) played dress up
(x) jumped into a pile of leaves
(x) gone sledding
(x) cheated while playing a game
(x) been lonely
( ) fallen asleep at work/school
( ) used a fake ID
(x) watched the sun set
( ) felt an earthquake/tremor
( ) touched a snake
(x) slept beneath the stars
(x) been tickled
(x) been robbed
(x) been misunderstood
( ) pet a reindeer/goat
(x) won a contest
(x) run a red light
(x) been suspended from school
(x) been in a car crash
( ) had braces
(x) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) had deja vu
( ) danced in the moonlight
(x) witnessed a crime
(x) questioned my heart
( ) been obsessed with post-it notes
(x) squished barefoot through the mud
(x) been lost
( ) been to the opposite side of the country
(x) swum in the ocean
(x) written a speech
( ) felt like dying
(x) written a song
( ) cried myself to sleep
( ) played cops and robbers
(x) recently coloured with crayons
(x) sung karaoke
(x) been interviewed on the radio
( ) paid for a meal with only coins
(x) done something I told myself I wouldn’t
( ) made prank phone calls
( ) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of my nose
( ) caught a snowflake on my tongue
( ) danced in the rain
(x) sold an drawing to a stranger
( ) written a letter to Santa Claus
( ) been kissed under a mistletoe
(x) watched the sun rise with someone I cared about
(x) blown bubbles
(x) made a bonfire on the beach
( ) crashed a party
(x) gone roller-skating
(x) had a wish come true
( ) worn pearls
( ) jumped off a bridge
( ) ate dog/cat food
(x) been married
(x) told a complete stranger I loved them
( ) kissed a mirror
(x) sung in the shower
(x) run away from home
(x) cheated on someone
(x) had a dream that I married someone
(x) glued my hand to something
( ) got my tongue stuck to a flag pole
( ) kissed a fish
(x) sat on a roof top
(x) screamed at the top of my lungs
( ) done a one-handed cartwheel
( ) talked on the phone for more than 6 hours
(x) stayed up all night
( ) didn’t take a shower for a week
(x) pick and ate an apple right off the tree
(x) climbed a tree
(x) stayed awake for more than three days
( ) had a tree house
( ) believed in ghosts
(x) started a fire
( ) owned more than 30 pairs of shoes
( ) worn a really ugly outfit to school just to see what others say
( ) gone streaking
(x) gone doorbell ditching
( ) played chicken
(x) jumped into a pool/hot tub/lake with all my clothes on
( ) been told I’re hot by a complete stranger
(x) broken a bone
(x) served on a jury
(x) punched an inanimate object
(x) caught a fish then ate it (but I cooked it before eating it)
(x) caught a butterfly
(x) cheated on a test
(x) embarrassed myself on stage
( ) owned a Britney Spears CD
(x) forgotten someone’s name
(x) driven a boat
(x) gone skinny dipping in a pool
(x) gone skinny dipping in the ocean
( ) been kicked out of my house
(x) have had a fantasy over someone I love as a good friend
( ) sun tanned naked
( ) run naked in the rain
(x) loved someone who didn’t love me
What does all this say about me. I have no idea.
Oh dear. I turned the pages of the Herald-Sun today and was greeted by this appalling sight:
Is this a sex-doll? Possibly, but I can say that its name is Danni Minogue.
I mean just look at it. I could not stop laughing. There really are times when words fail to convey the majesty there is to be found in the world…
Sign Language 