Smell them ... the last days o' freedom

So, my fella asked me yesterday how I was enjoying my last days of freedom. He didn't actually mean it quite like it sounded, but since I've found out that my graduate librarian compatriot isn't starting for another month, the idea of leaving the ol' holidays behind is not so enticing, excited as I am to get my libraryin' on. Just this weekend to go now. Gulp. Meanwhile, my compatriot passes the month in a leisurely fashion. No, I'm not jealous; what makes you think that?

We are going to see Limp Wrist tonight after having seen them in Melbourne on New Year's Eve. They were a surprisingly fun band, and with tracks like Fake fags fuck off, how can you go wrong? Ah, but the Melbourne show: what a display. I haven't seen gen-u-wine crusty punks getting their gear off for quite some years now, but it seems the Arthouse crowd needs no encouragement to de-kit. Oh sure, the band wear some bad-taste skimpy-hot outfits, but a couple of the patrons one-upped them and kept it even realer by simply getting down in the buff, or perhaps just a pair of daks. Rarely have I felt so overdressed. In such an environment, the trusty liber-ma-rarian's tweed skirt would have been quite out of place unless custom-cut to about ass-cheek level. Which would just be sacrilege, don't you think? I can't see Adelaide getting down in quite the same style as the Arthouse crew, but I stand ready to be corrected. Someone may surprise me.

I got my hair done yesterday and very happy with it I am too. It's back to ye olde fiery red, with a choppy short fringe and lots of long layers a la Kate Bush circa 1985. Yes, look at the picture one more time. My question to you: how fabulous is she?

OK, so, getting back to more literary/liberary matters. During these last heady days of freedom, I've been enjoying David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. Set in 1982 with the Falklands War as backdrop, the book encompasses thirteen months in the life of thirteen year old Jason Taylor from the English village of Black Swan Green, an ordinary but articulate young man who writes poems for the parish magazine under a pseudonym and has a stammer. Here are some gorgeous quotes.

1) From Jason about being a poet: "I felt giddy with importance that my words'd captured the attention of this exotic woman. Fear, too. If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin and say, 'When you're ready.'" (p. 183)

2) From Madame Crommelynck, connoisseur of poems: " ... Verse is "made". But the word "make" is unsufficient for a true poem. "Create" is unsufficient. All words are unsufficient. Because of this. The poem exists before it is written ... T.S. Eliot expresses it so - the poem is a raid on the inarticulate ... poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exist here. The realm of the inarticulate." (p. 186)

I am only about halfway through, but mercy me, I'm enjoying it immensely.