Daily Log

I've boarded the silver bird and landed in Darwin, where I'll be staying in Mr Blue Sky in Darwin City, which I still have to remind myself that I am a co-owner. Co-owner Lara and tenant Adam have been wonderful hosts to me, with Cocoa rabbit, the 11-year-old spritely dwarf, providing great entertainment as always. The weather here is of magnificent quality; consistently in the high twenties, clear skies, and gentle cool breezes off Darwin harbour with delightful views across to the National Park. From this vantage point, it's all rather idyllic.

There are nominal household matters to sort out, but it is a convenient time for the Darwin Festival. I have a lifelong interest in aesthetics, which I have to grudgingly accord myself a modest analytical ability. From metaphor, referentiality, creativity, technique, persistence, and connections, I must also confess some apparent predictive skill when evaluating the future success of self-proclaimed artists. Darwin's contribution to the fine arts is not exactly famous, being small and distant, but there are plenty of opportunities in the programme which will receive a fair review in the week to come.

In the meantime, I was blessed yesterday with a second opportunity to visit to the Menzies School of Health Research (Charles Darwin University) (not to be confused with the Menzies Institute for Medical Research (University of Tasmania), let alone the Menzies Research Centre of the Liberal Party. The Darwin Menzies centre particularly interests me as they have a small high performance computing system, which has a few file system and management issues, but nevertheless great to see that it's there! I was hosted by Anto Trimarsanto, a medical researcher in malaria (specifically Plasmodium vivax), who also dutifully informed me that Menzies has an outpost in Timor-Leste. My brain is now working on how to combine these multiple interests.

What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says: "What flower expresses days go by, and they just keep going by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future. Days go by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future?" And the florist says: "White Lily."

The film is Berlin Alexanderplatz, and the flowers are white carnations. But I think Laurie Anderson cast a better metaphor than Fassbinder in this case. For there is a language of flowers (the best English-language book wit this title is "The Language of Flowers; with Illustrative Poetry") which provides encoded messages between sender and recipient. "By all the token-flowers that tell. What words can never speak so well... Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ!" (Lord Byron, "The Maid of Athens"). It is a well-known convention that white lilies are for funerals, and many may know that it has a symbolic value of remembrance, and fewer still that it is for restoration. But "The Language of Flowers" (p148) says something different. It speaks of, in the continental tradition (fleur-de-lis), of the lily representing nothing less than majesty.

Another tradition which I have become familiar with during my time in Timor-Leste was "hatais metan" ("wear black"). From the information I have received, it is used for those in mourning, in remembrance of those no longer with us, an often expressed in wearing a small square of fabric attached to one's clothes. After a year, the item is removed, "kore metan" ("untying the black") and typically a reflective party is held for those who shared the loss, not unlike the Celtic ceremonial wake. The tradition made a lot of sense to me; it is deeply respectful to mourn a person for a year, but even a departed spirit would want someone to continue to live their life. Besides, as the Sufi comic Nasreddin Hodja pointed out, a lot can happen in a year. Maybe the horse will even learn to sing!

Indeed, a lot has happened in my life since last August. I have travelled to China three times (including visiting Qomolangma-Everest and The Great Wall) and New Zealand once, and presented at three international conferences. I have run 17 workshops on high performance computing and parallel programming, along with additional guest lectures at the University of Melbourne. I've started a climatology doctorate, which I am powering my way through, purchased (half) a property in Darwin and paid off my apartment in Southbank. I conducted a fundraising campaign for the Isla Bell Charitable Fund through the RPG Review Cooperative and also published three issues of the namesake journal. My health has improved "somewhat" with a very strong exercise and diet regimen. And, at the point of being a little ridiculous in my sensitivities, I have two new pet rats in my life.

It all adds to the metaphor; the idea of the days pulling us to the future, a trajectory from remembrance, through restoration, toward majesty. At least it is the wish of the sender of white lilies to their departed recipient. As for the memory? I have also untied my own version of the black cloth. I once received a little cartoon self-portrait that was delightful and beautiful, drawn on a reminder note (just to add to the narrative) with a declaration of affection that I took with the seriousness I accord to such stuff ("dreams are made of"). It has adorned my wall for a year, and every day I looked upon it in remembrance, gratitude, and respect. But now the portraiture has been taken down. The black band has been untied, and today I bought white lillies.

I find myself in the situation where I have a number of "almost finished" diverse projects nearing completion and several social activities worthy of mention, but without a common and unifying theme. The first involves an essay I'm composing out of pure love following several Shakespearean events which my mind raises the question: "Why Shakespeare?" After all, there were many excellent playwrights and other artists during the English Renaissance, but here we are still looking toward The Bard almost five hundred years later. It is an extraordinary achievement by any measure, and I have a few thoughts on the matter which I will circulate in the near future. Also in the "coming soon" category is a review of "Bleak Squad" at the Queenscliff Town Hall, a sort of 90s supergroup made up from members of Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds, Magic Dirt, and Art of Fighting, which I attended with Kate R., who rather delightfully took me out to see them and spend an evening at the 19th century Vue Grand Hotel (their website is so bad I won't link it). Band member Mick Harvey was also present at the lodgings, and I took the opportunity to mention how much I liked his work in "The Birthday Party". The overnight stay was also an opportunity to visit my old friend Lyle A., who now lives in the region, and also to see the famous "Black Lighthouse", apparently one of only four in the world to have such a hue.

On the RPG side of things, I notably joined Liz, Karl, Gavin, Phil, and Dan for an in-person session of "Dragonbane" on Sunday. This game is derived from the almost-mythic "Drakar och Demoner" Swedish RPG from the early 1980s, which itself was "very heavily" derived from Chaosium's Magic World booklet from Worlds of Wonder. The latest incarnation still shows these roots, albeit with some newer innovations, but still with a great deal of style and design elegance. The day previous, my dear friend from Ningxia, Dr Yanping, graced my home for lunch with Kate R., and Mel S., as well (why am I always surrounded by such fabulous women?), where I experimented with an Italian-Chinese fusion cuisine. Yanping has been away from Australia for over a year, so it was a real delight to see her again, and I'm very pleased that she'll be here for an extended period, having acquired some gainful employment at Monash University. Somehow I neglected to mention attendance at Brenda L's birthday gathering in recent entries where I played the role of waiter and provider of cocktails; especially excellent conversation with Brenda, Fiona C., Matthew C. and others. This all does sound like an extensive social life, and to be fair, that has taken a good portion of the past several days. Journaling does provide a gentle reminder that I do have other serious ("boring but important") work to catch up on; the batteries have been recharged.