Travel News

Just the facts:

• Went Business class from Singapore to London.
• Read Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Read Persuasion
• Watched Layer Cake
• Watched The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• Richard Burton has (had?) an awesome voice
• Watched JCVD
  
• Watched Milk
• Train, Plane, Plane, Train, Train, Train, Taxi
• Currently bound for Birmingham
  

First Ever Birmingham

I'm off to the first Birmingham ever. Birmingham, UK is the first place in the world to be Birmingham in all of history.

I'm there for EuroPython, where I'll be speaking and participating in a Bazaar sprint. Should be back in Sydney next Sunday.

Quester's Tidings

After dispatching my missive on the ethereal winds, I must confess I had little hope. Although my faith in my readers is incalculable, my wanderings have taken me far, and I had begun to believe that I had seen all that has been given to mortal eye to see, and that my readers would be merely recounting tales already well known to me.

But sing a new song, O doubting heart! Through a variety of means -- some humble, some ingenious -- you dear readers have sent word of old books for which the dust of age only strengthens the potency of the enchantments within, like some secret wine. I've heard of other books too, newer perhaps, their charms accordingly more fallible but perhaps not more feeble.

Two books were commended to me, and two names without books commended also. That the numbering of the books matched the numbering of the names seemed auspicious to me. Of the books, the first is called "The Book of the New Sun" as written by Gene Wolfe; the second hight "The Gift" by Alison Croggan, an author from my own country. My hopes for the first are high, for the second, low. Though a prophet is seldom honored in his own town, my bigoted heart says an author is perhaps too honored in her own country.

Two names without books were given. Though there are books to the names, the names were given to me without books and without books they shall be passed on. The names are Charles de Lint and George Macdonald. The second name was given to me by someone who has not read any of my missives, but who has certainly read me.

I have found some of these tomes, and in due course I shall venture into them. Even when all are read and gone, my quest will not be over. Your help, dear reader, is needed now more than ever. I await your reply with eagerness and indeed, hope.

I am etc.,

The Platonic Form

1. Table service
2. Good, consistent coffee
3. Wireless access
4. Power points
5. Proximity

More Readings

• The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin
• Desolation Island, Patrick O'Brian
• Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

There are definitely many worse things than spending a day with Ursula Le Guin's thoughts on rhythm, writing, Tolkien, Woolf, Twain, the Tao and -- of course -- gender.

O'Brian is amazing, I'm not sure how often I'm going to repeat myself there.

Dunces has a great style, the main character reminds me so much of Stewie Griffin that I suspect a direct influence.

Advance Australia Fair, part 2

The Australian national anthem is called Advance Australia Fair. The anthem has two verses, Advance Australia Fair has six or three depending on who you ask. In almost every state and sporting occasion, only one verse is sung.

There are some occasions where singing both verses is required. No one likes those.

This is about the second verse of the anthem. I've already commented on the first verse.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross

The Southern Cross is a constellation that features on the Australian flag and on the sky in the Southern hemisphere. And the Kiwi flag. It's not really our Southern cross, since I'm pretty sure you can see it in
South Africa and the Falkland Islands. That said, it is beautiful, and it does radiate.

We'll toil with hearts and hands;

We'll work together and we'll like it.

To make this Commonwealth of ours renowned of all the lands;

To make Australia famous. We achieved fame domestically quite some time ago, so now our anthem's ambition is to make it famous elsewhere. "Of all the lands" either means that Australia ought to be the most famous country in the world or that Australia ought to be famous in every single other country. I think we're doing pretty well at this, to be honest.

For those who've come across the seas

Either:

• everyone in Australia apart from the Aboriginals, who probably walked


• British people


• those whom we would now call immigrants
  

We've boundless plains to share;

You can stay in the middle of the desert.

With courage let us all combine

Sadly, not like Voltron. More like a Soviet farming collective, or an army, or a football team.

To Advance Australia fair

See previous post.

In joyful strains then let us sing

Explained in previous post. I'd like to point out that no one sings in "strains" any more, and that I've filled out tax returns that are more poetically evocative.

Advance Australia fair

A tad repetitve, no?

To be honest, I prefer the Seekers song.

Advance Australia Fair, part 1

Recently, I've been disappointed to notice myself becoming more patriotic. I don't know if this is a result of aging, or a consequence of frequent international travel. I don't know whether I should do anything about it, nor even what I would do if I wanted to change.

The patriotic fever reached its rabid peak the other day when my rational self caught the other part singing Australia's national anthem. I stopped immediately, of course, but the damage had been done. Perhaps the moment of insanity had be triggered by a conversation I had with a friend about immigration and just who we should let into the country. We disagreed.

Since then, my mind has been wandering. I've been thinking about a New Australian who desires to indoctrinate themselves our national values, and how they might approach the national anthem, "Advance Australia Fair".

To help them along, and maybe to go some way toward resolving the disagreement with my friend, I've decided to go through the Australian national anthem right here, on this blog, line by line.

It's rather a pompous song, written in a mode of "poetic" English that has never been idiomatic and never had any currency among actual poets. Even with my new-found nascent patriotism, I can't bring myself to actually like it.

Here it is:

Australians all let us rejoice,

Be happy Australians!

For we are young and free;

Because our country was founded relatively recently and we have many political freedoms, such as being allowed by our government to watch almost any film and read almost any book.

We've golden soil

Literally, "we have yellow dirt". Either means that Australia is full of the mineral gold, or that our soil is rich. The latter would imply that Australia is an agriculturally prosperous country, and I believe is the sense of the phrase. Note that Australia is the second driest continent in the world, after Antarctica.

and wealth for toil;

If you work hard in Australia, you'll get rich.

Our home is girt by sea;

"Girt" is a rare word for "surrounded". A girdle girts. "Girth" is a mostly disused word meaning "circumference". If a thing follows the circumference of another thing, the first thing can be said to "gird" the second thing. The second thing is "girt by" the first thing. If it spoke plainly, this line would say that Australia is one or more islands.

The logic up to this point is that Australians should be happy since we're rich, happy, free, young, economically just and ... a bunch of islands. New Zealand, Madagascar, Japan, Great Britain, Iceland and Tonga have never considered this a particular reason for rejoicing. I'm not exactly sure why Australia does.

Our land abounds in nature's gifts

Our country is full of things we didn't put there.

Of beauty rich and rare;

The natural things in our country have a rich beauty, as opposed to a minimalistic beauty, and there are few other things as beautiful as the natural things in Australia. Of course, Australia abounds in them, so they can't be that rare.

Let history's page in every stage, advance Australia fair

Every time anyone writes about stuff that happened, it should promote the cause of the Australian nation, which is beautiful.

In joyful strains then let us sing

Let's sing happy melodies. The composer of the anthem interpreted this metaphorically.

"Advance Australia Fair"

"Australia Fair" isn't a reference to the White Australia policy (I think), but rather a tired "poetic" way of saying "Australia the Beautiful". My unsubstantiated hunch is that "America the Beautiful" was already taken, and that it's much easier to rhyme with "fair" than "beautiful".

Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means.

To advance Australia is a nebulous concept, no matter how often we insist that it's beautiful. It means literally "move Australia forward", but that doesn't really illuminate the author's intent. It can't mean move Australia forward spatially: that would be impossible to achieve and to define, no matter how full of zeal one was. It probably doesn't mean forward technologically either, since none of the other lyrics acknowledge technology's existence. It's not morally either, since the author seems to think we've already arrived. It's probably either wealth or political influence, but that's only speculation.

There you have it. Nothing that bad, but nothing that good either. Mostly it's just a meaningless ditty to bang out too slowly and too sincerely at sporting events.

At a stretch, you could say that it summarizes something of the Australian spirit. We're generally pretty happy and relaxed, united by being in a pretty good country and we're lousy at poetry.

It's still better than God Save The Queen.

Next post, next verse.

My Quest

Dear Reader,

When I wrote to you some weeks ago, I alluded to my quest and promised to tell you of it in my next post. You have certainly noticed that I have not kept my word, and I nurse only the bitter hope that the pain of yet another broken promise has become dull, now that you are accustomed to my small betrayals. Please allow me now to tell you of my quest, however belatedly, and I beg that you keep the doors of your heart open when I ask for your help.

My quest, you might say, is for magic. Not the devilish magic of dark ritual nor yet the uncanny transcendence of Eastern sage, but rather that magic that was called "sub-creation" by one of its masters. Plainly, I mean that I seek books of Fantasy.

Perhaps you might laugh now and say "It is so easy, Jonathan! Why do you call such a trifling task a quest?". Yet I crave a moment's indulgence wherein I can make my difficulties plain. If you must laugh, let your laughter be contained within and for my sake present a solemn exterior as I tell you my story.

I have read hundreds of books. Although I've not kept track, the number might well pass into the thousands. Many of those books have been books of fantasy. I have always loved them, and despite the numerous social stigma attached to them, I love them even today.

The full tale of my readings would be far too long for this missive. Suffice it to say that after falling deep into Tolkien, I read whatever I could find, no matter how poor it was. As I grew older, my tastes matured and I began to demand more of the books I read. It has thus become harder to find books of fantasy that I actually enjoy reading. Further, since I've read so many books already, the pool from which to draw them grows ever shallower.

Dear, dear reader, I must find books of magic that I have not read that are not awful. Well-written books with rich, full characters and deep forests of imagination. My own resources are failing me and I must turn to you for help. Where are these books? I must have them now!

I apologize for the length of this post. In my defense, I can so only that my quest has been longer. Please do not let me fail now.

Yours etc.,

Reading

My reading this month so far:

• HMS Surprise, Patrick O'Brian
• Mauritius Command, Patrick O'Brian
• Smiley's People, John Le Carré
• Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel
• Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson

I love O'Brian's books: they make me want to write. Smiley is perfectly characterized.

Awkward

I recently finished reading Chris Guillebeau's "279 Days to Overnight Success". It's all about how to succeed as a professional blogger. You might want to read it too, since it's quite interesting.

It does, however have this unfortunate section where Guillebeau tries to describe Havi Brooks' work on The Fluent Self. The purpose of her blog is hard to grasp at first, he laments. Convinced that there was something there, he visits Brooks' blog again and again, until at last he shouts his euraka:

I finally "got" it: Havi helps people rewrite their bad patterns and turn them into good ones.

Crystal clear.

Returned from the book shop

Just got back from Kinokuniya, carrying:

• Marvel 1602, Neil Gaiman
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
• Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
• Mauritius Command, Patrick O'Brian
• Smiley's People, John Le Carre
• HMS Surprise, Patrick O'Brian
• The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin

I dipped into Le Guin's essays on the train -- so good! I'm looking forward to enjoying them and the rest of the books over the next few weeks.

Next up, I'll tell you about my Quest and how you can help me.