Icarus Building a Rocket # 4

Neruda Rising

Yesterday I was in the company of two Australian women I have known for a while now. And over a glass of wine the issue of gender raised its head as they discussed what they would do if they had a penis - goodness, if they only knew. Neruda did when he wrote:

Comes a time when I am tired of being a man...

Comes a time I'm tired of my feet and my fingernails

and my hair and my shadow.

Comes a time I'm tired of being a man.



Yay!



I know just what he means but how do you explain that except as a song or a poem to two Australian professors who are a lot smarter than most and you are soon outspoken (ie they can outspeak you). And then I console myself by reading Neruda's TWENTY LOVE POEMS  and I think - hmm, its not so bad after all. Although instead of lingering on 'I can write the saddest verses' I might stay awhile with, 'I like it when your quiet'. But onwards, today another piece of magic, my first book of 2012 dropped on the mat - yay to it and to me. I guess its not so bad being a man sometimes. But then it cuts in again and there is always another book to be written, so I best get my (wee) buns in gear. And while I was writing this I found myself listening to this song - because my iTunes is on shuffle and it just popped up nicely - its a man song about a river which he sings with his wife.

FiftyFive ~ # 35 (again)

This is a corner in my kitchen today, as I write, and these instruments linger there daily by the wine rack and the basket of snacks and crisps and dipping chips and stuff and I spend lots of time in a chair nearby as food simmers and tatties boil and cabbage comes to the boil (I really like cabbage - is that odd). But there is some nice wine in the rack, all French, for I live close by (indeed some people can swim over, though not not me) and have no more room in the garden to plant trees to offset my carbon footprint so it seems sensible. When I was a postgraduate at the University of Sussex, we used to go to France once a month on the ferry. We would work on the way over on the ferry, reading papers to each other or just reading our research. Then when we landed we would have a huge seafood lunch, like mussels in cider with oodles of wine. Then we would hit the supermarket to buy wine, beer and fags (not me) and get the ferry home. On the way back we would invariably play the "pub quiz" 3-4 PhD students and we only one once in three years, well how am I supposed to get celebrity questions, I hardly watch TV. But this weekend I am showing this picture because it reminds me of my very best friend Gordon (aka Rocky) who sent me a whole bunch of poems this week to celebrate Edinburgh's www.carryapoem.com and he is now a Scottish politician and me a professor and goodness were we wild, remember The Clash in Glasgow and Bruce at the Astoria -and this is for the memory o' the top o' Leith Walk and Bruce and that wonderful gig we went to see, you and me, before the bairns and the middle aged men we became (though aye guid for a' that - even if you're still a Hibbee) - this will provoke a memory - but before I post it, remember The Rezillos - and "...careful with that glass, Eugene?