GIGLIOLA!

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” - John Barrymore

January is nearly over, one twelfth of the new year is already over. How time flies! How our lives flutter by! The earth keeps turning, the moon (full as it is tonight) keeps on shining, only we like candles burn our wax and shortly sputter out.

For Song Saturday a golden oldie from Italy sung by a stupendous singer, Gigliola Cinquetti. Here is the original 1973 version, and below the same song sung many years later by the same singer.



An older but still pretty, and evergreen Gigliola. Her voice is still amazing!



ALLE PORTE DEL SOLE
(Pace - Panzeri - Pilat - Conti)

Un'anima avevo
così candida e pura
che forse per paura con te
l'amore non ho fatto mai.
Cercavo le strade
più strane del mondo
invece da te si arrivava
per chiari sentieri.

E adesso che sento
il tuo corpo vicino
io nel buio ti chiedo
di portarmi con te.
Alle porte del sole
ai confini del mare
quante volte col pensiero
ti ho portato insieme a me
e nel buio sognavo
la tua mano leggera.
Ogni porta che si apriva
mi sembrava primavera.

Alle porte del sole
ai confini del mare
quante volte col pensiero
ti ho portato insieme a me
ti ho portato insieme a me
ti ho portato insieme a me.

Che cosa mi dici?
Che cosa succede?
Mi dici di cercare una casa
per vivere insieme:
un grande giardino
sospeso nel cielo
e mille bambini con gli occhi
dipinti d'amore.

Allora i pensieri
non sono illusioni,
allora è proprio vero che io
sto volando con te.

Alle porte del sole
ai confini del mare
quante volte col pensiero
ti ho portato insieme a me
e nel buio sognavo
la tua mano leggera.
Ogni porta che si apriva
mi sembrava primavera.

Alle porte del sole
ai confini del mare
quante volte col pensiero
ti ho portato insieme a me
e nel buio sognavo
la tua mano leggera.
Ogni porta che si apriva
mi sembrava primavera.

Alle porte del sole
ai confini del mare
quante volte col pensiero
ti ho portato insieme a me
ti ho portato insieme a me
ti ho portato insieme a me
insieme a me.

TO THE GATES OF THE SUN

I had a candid and pure soul,
And perhaps because I was afraid,
I’d never made love with you.
I walked the strangest paths
All over the world,
But it was you who cleared
The way for me.
And now that I feel your body
Near me in the dark,
I ask you to take me with you,

To the gates of the sun,
To the end of the seas.
How many times I brought
My thoughts with me,
Dreaming in the dark
Of your gentle hand.
Every door opening
I thought was spring.

To the gates of the sun,
To the end of the seas.
How many times I brought
My thoughts with me,
I brought my thoughts with me

What do you say?
What has happened?
You tell me to look for a house,
So we can live together?
A big garden
Suspended from the sky
And thousand children
With eyes painted with love.

Then my thoughts
Are no illusions!
It is at last true
That I’m flying with you!

To the gates of the sun,
To the end of the seas.
How many times I brought
My thoughts with me,
Dreaming in the dark
Of your gentle hand.
Every door opening
I thought was spring.

To the gates of the sun,
To the end of the seas.
How many times I brought
My thoughts with me,
I brought my thoughts with me

Have a great weekend!

FOOD FRIDAY - MUFFINS

“There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.” - Ovid

Had a full and busy day at work again today with numerous crises to deal with. At least, I managed to clear my desk and all is ready for next week’s onslaught. A highlight today was being brought a muffin for morning tea by one of my colleagues as a “special Friday treat”. It was delicious and I managed to get the recipe:

Passionfruit Muffins

Ingredients - Muffins
2 cups sifted self-raising flour
125g melted and cooled unsalted butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup caster sugar
100 g chopped white chocolate
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup passionfruit pulp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Passionfruit icing
1 and 1/4 cups pure icing sugar
2 teaspoons hot water
1 and 1/2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp
A few crystals of citric acid

Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C and lightly butter a 12-hole 1/3-cup capacity muffin pan. Combine the flour, sugar and chocolate pieces in a bowl, making a well in the centre.

Whisk the butter, milk, egg, passionfruit and vanilla in a jug. Pour into well. Begin by gently mixing the ingredients from the centre until just combined. This gradually incorporates the ingredients to ensure a smooth batter.For a light texture, be careful not to over-mix the batter.

Three-quarter fill the muffin holes with the batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Let to stand in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

For the passionfruit icing: Stir the icing sugar, water and passionfruit in a bowl until smooth. Spoon over muffins, allowing to drizzle down sides. Allow to set and serve.

Enjoy your weekend!

TECHNOPHILIA

“Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.” - Lewis Mumford

OK, I admit it, I am a technophile, a technology junkie! I was eagerly awaiting the announcement of Apple’s new iPad, today. Seeing how I am a dedicated Apple computer user and I have an iPod and iPhone, I thought that this new device would be a fantastic new addition to the armamentarium of my Apple toys. My Apple toys are all wonderful, they talk to each other and I can concentrate on my work without worrying about the hardware and the software. Compared to PCs, my Apple computer allows me to be more productive and I have fun while working (OK, Mr Jobs, my advertising bill is in the mail!).

When the announcement was made, I must admit that I was rather underwhelmed. I had secretly thought that I was going to be one of the first people to invest in one of these new iPads. After seeing it all, I quickly relinquished my urgent desire to obtain one and shelved my ownership plans for a couple of years, at least. My Apple MacBookPro, my iPhone and iPod deliver everything the iPad does and more. For me at least, the iPad broke no new ground and for a seasoned Apple product user, the whole release was a bit of a “ho-hum” affair. “Awww, but all of my toys do all of that, already!”

Now, if I were a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young thing just starting out and not having been exposed to so much technology and to so many Apple computers since year dot, I would be wowed by this iPad and would have pawned my grandmother to get one! Having been nurtured on Apple products since their inception and having set my expectations so very high, I am understandably disappointed.

Much of the disappointment comes from my constant use of my MacBookPro, which I carry about everywhere (I don’t have a desktop computer at home or at work) and this laptop computer does everything I wish it to do on a nice, large, high resolution display. Who needs Apps when one has all the programs that one needs? When one does on it everything that one needs? The internet is accessible everywhere, Skype allows me to talk to anyone I want, I have a DVD drive (grizzle, grizzle – where is that BluRay drive Apple?) that can let me watch movies, or record my own DVDs. I have on it iTunes, iCal, Safari (as well as another three web-browsers), Office, Adobe Creative Suite, my music software, my eBooks, etc, etc.

If I had a clunky old desktop PC running Windows or Doors and having to click left button or right button or search the hard disk for hours to see where my stuff was saved, I could understand that the iPad would be a magical, heavenly, fantastic; a leap into the future. If I had a black and white Kindle with its limited usefulness, I would leap at the iPad and switch to it immediately. If had an old mobile phone or a old iPod, I would quickly ditch them and move towards the Apple solutions of iPhone and/or iPad.

Now if the iPad came with solar charging (;-), and iPhone capabilities in terms of making phone calls, if the iPad were equipped with powerful new apps that were different to the iPhone and Apple apps already in use, if it had a few hundred gigabytes HD storage, if it had a DVD (preferably BluRay drive), I would be queuing to get one. All that of course together with the reasonable under $1,000 price!

Oh, to have a jaded palate. It’s such a tyranny of old age and experience!

technophile |ˈteknəˌfīl| noun
A person who is enthusiastic about new technology (a “technology junkie”).
DERIVATIVES
technophilia |ˌteknəˈfilēə| noun
technophilic |ˌteknəˈfilik| adjective
ORIGIN: From Greek tekhnē ‘art, craft’ + Greek philos ‘loving.’

MIDNIGHT COUNSEL

“Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

What causes us to fall in love? A vexed question, because logic has nothing to do it. It’s all emotions and hormones and first impressions, it’s our expectations and our wish to love and be loved in return. A confection of spun sugar, decorated with flowers and lit by starlight. It’s all twilight and sweet whisperings, a thousand joys shared and even its sorrows are sweet sorrows.

What causes us to fall out of love? Perhaps easier to answer, as logic has much to do with it. Love dies of routine and discovery of truths. Love dies when the veil of self-deception is lifted from our eyes, when we experience the other person as they really are… We may fall in love in the twinkling of an eye, in a split second, as a flash of lightning. We fall out of love gradually, slowly, over a long time, while we resist it with all our might.

A poem I wrote several years ago while pondering these questions.

Midnight Counsel

The midnight hours so short in sleep,
Endlessly drag on in sleeplessness.
My life behind me, needles me,
My life in front of me, daunts me.

The sheets so downy soft in dreams,
Are like sandpaper in wakefulness.
My thoughts of yesterday, wrestle with me,
My thoughts at midnight give me poor counsel.

Your soft and even breath in slumber,
Belies your alert belligerence.
My love in seasons past, strong and true
My love tomorrow, a dying species.

Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday, please visit her page for more poems!

AUSTRALIA DAY

“In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold.  In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics.” - Peter Singer

Today, January 26th, is Australia Day. This commemorates that fateful day on January 26th, 1788, when a fleet of English ships landed at what is now Sydney, Australia. The ships were under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip and had brought a load of deported prisoners from England. These prisoners were not all criminals convicted for terrible crimes like murder. Many of them were people who had been arrested because the government didn't like what they had to say and hence represented a perceived threat for the stability of the English political system. Some were people from debtors’ prisons who had been jailed because they owed money and had no means to pay it back.

Nevertheless, these prisoners were the first Europeans to settle in Australia. Before 1783 (when the Americans won the Revolutionary War of Independence) many of Britain’s unwanted criminals had been sent to the United States. A new place had to be found for Britain’s cast offs. Botany Bay in Australia possessed a magnificent harbour, had good resources and appeared fertile and was thought to make a good port of call for British ships travelling in that part of the world. As time proved, Australia's raw materials were an attractive reason for colonising the country.

It soon transpired that Australia was too good to be used as a place for deportation of prisoners and many free settlers were attracted to the bounteous land. Millions more have chosen Australia as their home, my family and I being part of them. Wherever these new settlers are from, they all take part in celebrating Australia Day. In Sydney in particular, the celebrations are very widespread and extremely well-attended. This year, celebrations began at 8am with an indigenous ceremony in the Royal Botanic Gardens, and various other activities are under way in parks throughout Sydney. Hyde Park in Sydney’s centre, is celebrating its 200th birthday by being transformed into Sydney’s biggest backyard, with a huge barbeque that started at 10am. Captain Arthur Phillip's landing in the harbour was reenacted again this year.

As usual, the harbour was a focal point for traditional Australia Day events such as the annual Ferrython at 11am and the Tall Ships Race at 1pm. The skies above the harbour came alive with flyovers from a navy Sea King helicopter towing a giant Australian flag at 1.45pm, an RAAF F-111 flyover at 3pm, followed by a Qantas A380 Superjumbo at 3.10pm.

Thousands of people across NSW officially became Australians at citizens ceremonies, including 3469 in Sydney's Hyde Park at 2pm. Sydney’s celebrations were capped off with a fireworks display at Darling Harbour tonight.

The celebrations around the nation had a similar theme, but ordinary people used the public holiday to enjoy the summer weather with family and friends around a barbeque at home, the beach or parks. We visited a friend who was admitted to hospital yesterday as she had had a bleeding gastric ulcer. Our visit pleased her to no end and it was good to cheer her up. Afterwards, we had a quiet day at home, relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather.

LAST CHANCE HARVEY

“Men are no more immune from emotions than women; we think women are more emotional because the culture lets them give free vent to certain feelings, “feminine” ones, that is, no anger please, but it’s okay to turn on the waterworks.” - Una Stannard

We sat and watched the 2008 Joel Hopkins “chick flick” “Last Chance Harvey” last weekend. As a term, I detest the characterisation “chick flick”, however, it is widely used. Speaking to some women friends, I was surprised to learn that they are OK with the use of the term and that in these liberated times, it seems to be regarded as a bit of a convenient joke. New age women are more likely to embrace their femininity and celebrate the characteristics that separate them from men. “Vive la difference”, it seems, and if a certain type of literature or art or films appeals more to women than men, then so be it, as long as it of good quality! There is nothing of course to prevent men enjoying “chick flicks” as well or women watching with pleasure films that are more appealing to men (the obvious “dick flick”). But I digress…

“Last Chance Harvey” has two big names in it: Dustin Hoffmann and Emma Thompson. There are some other familiar faces in secondary, supporting roles (e.g. James Brolin). The movie is a typical autumnal romance and as the lovers, Thomson and Hoffmann don’t have much chemistry going for them. They do a great job acting, but sadly, it works better when they don’t share the limelight. Thompson especially gives a sterling performance as the fragile, spinsterish Kate, a Londoner who has to deal with a heavily dependent mother and with several unsatisfactory liaisons in her history. Her typical British “stiff upper lip” and her brave front, her forced optimism and various coping strategies make her emotional discharges all the more powerful and pathetic to watch.

Hoffman (at 71 years!) plays Harvey, a divorced American who visits London for his daughter’s wedding and has to deal with his ex, happily remarried to Brain (Brolin) and his daughter who seemingly has rejected him as she has found a better father figure in the paternal Brian. The unlikely romance with Kate has him blossoming out in a fit of almost teenagerish abandon and as the action unfolds, we are reminded somewhat of his earlier filmic successes (I don’t know why, but I kept thinking of him playing Ben in the classic 1967 movie “The Graduate”. In any case, the roles are reversed here).

The film is conventional in plot (with even a reference to the classic tear-jerker “An Affair to Remember”) and directed in a rather pedestrian, if unoffensive way. The music does the right things at the right time, the production is slick, London looks quite gorgeous and the film ticks all the right “chick flick” boxes. I watched it with interest, but my brain was in neutral and I sketched out some work meeting agendas in my mind while watching parts of it. It was difficult for me to get emotional over it, but Emma Thompson was certainly worth seeing in it, and she had some quite amusing one-liners to recite in the film.

I got my own back the next day when we watched “Eraser” – Classic Schwarzenegger and typical “dick flick” – yeah!

ART SUNDAY - MEMENTO MORI

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.” - Euripides

For Art Sunday today, a painting by an American contemporary artist, Sean Delonas. He is a cartoonist, illustrator and talented artist, with some beautiful works in his oeuvre, as well as many humorous and quirky ones. He is best known for his cartoons that appear daily on page six of the New York Post.

The painting I have selected for today, is a typical “memento mori” work, which in the past was an extremely common and morally edifying genre of painting. “Memento mori” means in Latin “remember that you will die”. Its purpose was to remind the onlooker that whatever your present happy state, your death is inescapable. The art may convey the message “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die”, however, in most Christian art, in which the theme is seen often, it is more of a reminder of the vanity of earthly glory and pleasure. For this reason, these still life paintings were also known as “Vanitas” (vanity).

Typical symbols that are used in such paintings include skulls, hourglasses, snuffed candles, wilting flowers or fruit past their prime, and insects. Anything related to the passage of time can be a memento mori, and many public clocks once included memento mori phrases such as “tempus fugit” meaning “time flies”, or used an automated figure of Death to strike the bell on the hour. Personal watches were also often adorned with symbols of death, such as skulls. Other small memento mori objects were intended to be carried on one’s person as a reminder of mortality. For example, a coffin that opens on a scene of a rich man, in Hell.

Delonas’ painting is a typical vanitas, with numerous symbols of memento mori. The obvious skull, which is the face of death; the watch signifying the passage of time; the cracked egg indicating the fragility of our existence; the stack of old books, meaning that not even knowledge or wisdom will help one evade death. The painting also has elements of “trompe l’oeil” or a visual illusion as used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.