Senses working overtime #273

1 Superman upgraded

2 For the Sake of Strangers

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another—a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them—
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

Dorianne Laux (1994)

3 How to read more books

4 Portland

The scarey version.

5 San Francisco's Covid-19 response derailed

Be interested in Samantha and Jesse's take on this.

Extra texture: King Crimson's Lizard

Got the Steven Wilson redux version on vinyl this week from

Spellbound Wax Company (of Gisborne - you should check them out - excellent personal service and great prices).

Prince Rupert Awakes, with Jon Anderson from Yes on vocals, is a revelatory experience.

Prince Rupert Awakes

Senses working overtime #272

1 Roadtrips

I love a good roadtrip.

2 Nostalgia

3 Room in Brooklyn

This
slow 
day
moves
Along the room
I
hear
its
axles
go
A gradual dazzle
upon
the
ceiling
Gives me that
racy
blueishyellow
feeling
As hours
blow
the
wide
way
Down my afternoon.

Anne Carson (2000)

4 Worried about a difficult conversation?

Here's some advice from a former hostage negotiator. Everything you need.

5 Werner Herzog

Overtime: Roy Harper

Senses working overtime # 271

Recently, Jacky and I spent a few days in Wellington. Visits to the regular haunts were must dos:

1 Slow Boat Records

2 Arty Bees Books

3 Unity Books

4 Rough Peel Music

5 DoubleTree by Hilton (where we stayed and can recommend)

Overtime: Selfie time

Senses working overtime #270

1 Loving John

Current reading matter is Loving John - May Pang's book. I've never read it before! Scandalous!! 

She's pretty good at setting the scene.

2 Belief and plans

Steve Jobs on those things is really interesting.

3 Love Poem: Centaur

Nothing approaches a field like me. Hard gallop, hard chest – hooves and mane and flicking tail. My love: I apprehend each flower, each winged body, saturated in a light that burnishes. I would make a burnishing  of you, by which I mean a field in flower, by which i mean, a breaching – my hands making an arrow of themselves, rooting the loosened dirt. I would make for you the barest of sounds, wing against wing, there, at the point of articulation. Love,  I pound the earth for you. I pound the earth.  Donika Kelly (2017)

4 Dylan interview

He has a new album out. That's a big deal when you're nearly 80 and you've a cultural icon for six decades.

5 Solitude

Overtime: She'll be right, Icelandic style.

Senses working overtime #269

1 Lazy

Photo by howling red on Unsplash

This week I'm pulling the lazy card. We've just finished a 12 week term which included unprecedented moments like a Covid-19 Lockdown in NZ. That's starting to fade in the memory, never-the-less, it resulted in a totally knackering term. I'm pretty empty and really tired. The last two weeks especially have been of the smell-of-a-oily-rag variety.

So - laziness abounds in this edition.

2 RIP Milton Glaser

He created/designed a huge number of record covers like the Jan Hammer cover. God bless you Milton.

3 RIP Carl Reiner

4  Anne Lamott

5 Memory

Overtime: Splash mountain's makeover

Senses working overtime #268

1 Little Frimley Kitchen's donuts

The theme for this week is that prince of foods...the donut. Yes, just like a hamburger is the perfect meal, donuts are the perfect snack. So - find yourself one from the many on sale at Little Frimley Kitchen, order your favourite coffee, sit back, relax, check the latest football news from The Guardian on your phone, and enjoy!

2 Donut King

As great as LFK is, Donut King in North Hollywood, where Samantha used to live, is donut heaven. I realise it's a chain (there is even a Donut King in Palmerston North) but the North Hollywood one is special!

3 Mmmmmm

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

4 Mmmmmm too

5 Donuts

Overtime: Fascination

It all began in the mid sixties, on a family trip to Sydney, and specifically down an underground ramp with lots of shops, on the way to get a train on the City Circle line, as my brother and I peered through a shop front window and watched the donuts being made.

We walked down the ramp, a little hyperactive, and excited to be in alien surroundings: an underground bitumen ramp going under the street, with shops along the sides, and with the prospect of going on a train. Those were all new sensations for us.

Underground smells are unique (and just like the London Underground smells). As we walked downhill down the ramp, surrounded by those new smells, we spied a shop window with a machine making donuts behind it. I distinctly remember watching the donuts being made in the frying section, being turned over and then tavelling on a little conveyor belt to drop into a cinnamon bath.

Mum and dad would purchase some donuts for us all and we would eat them from the brown paper bag as we walked to the train, the excess cinnamon dropping to the bottom of the bags.

Whenever I have a donut from Little Frimley Kitchen, I get a happy flashback to those innocent days in Sydney.

Senses working overtime #267

1 Being a dad

2 Poetry Corner

little prayer let ruin end here let him find honey where there was once a slaughter let him enter the lion’s cage & find a field of lilacs let this be the healing & if not   let it be Danez Smith (2017)

3 The end of Tourism?

Rome is empty

4 The five mental states that hold us back in life

5 Rebranding racial stereotypes

Overtime: Sweet Caroline