Ruari Jack Hughes – Page 2

Another 500 Words

Have you ever thought about how fast you speak? Despite English being a fairly slowly spoken language (If you don’t think so, have a listen to someone speaking Spanish in a lively conversation), we, most of us, get through about two hundred words per minute on the average. Unless you’re a hermit or very anti-social, that means you chew up literally thousands upon thousands of words every day in ordinary conversation.

Why is it then so hard for us writers to get a miserable 500 words on paper in a typical day sitting before the computer or scribbling on a pad? I’ve just written slightly more than 100 words (up to here) for this posting in less than ten minutes (in between mouthfuls of a delicious terrine of chicken pate and pistachio paste washed down with a cappuccino). Yet earlier today it took me nearly three hours to produce a barely 500 word extension to a chapter in my novella.

At the beginning of the year I set myself a goal to complete (perhaps I should say extend) this work by approximately 13,000 words by the end of March. After a vigorous editing (and unsentimental pruning), I found I would actually need another 16,000 words. Well, here I am, only a week short of my deadline and nowhere near completion.

Of course I can tick off a string of reasons/excuses/craven attempts at explanation —serious illness involving hospitalisation; unexpected and complicated matters in the daily business of surviving in the madhouse that is contemporary living; sheer procrastination which comes as second nature — but do any of these really point to the core of the problem?

From much that I’ve read in the peregrinations on their work by other poets, novelists, dramatists, as well as the discussions I’ve had with my own writerly associates, it’s clear this difficulty in getting words on paper is a common curse. My question persists. When we can blather on almost ad infinitum, if not ad nauseum, why is it so hard to scratch down a mere 500 of the little blighters on a page? I’m seventy percent of the way to 500 words in this posting and it’s been a doddle. But wait until tomorrow when I try to get another half ton loaded into the novella. It will seem like Sisyphus climbing up that everlasting hill. Two steps forward and roll back down the mount.

One hundred to go! Is this how we should write? Churning it out like some product on a conveyor belt? What happened to creativity? Spontaneity? Serendipity? Is Woody right, that it’s only 10% inspiration and the rest is perspiration? Where’s the Romance? What happened to the Muse who just alights on my shoulder with fully formed, matchless phrases and couplets only needing to be set down on the page, words which just flow from the mind, down the arm and through the fingers to repose in all their beauty and for all time’s ages in the little books which readers will always cherish?

Oh, wotalotarot! Maybe this poem will suit you better?

My Word

Someday I will stop,

And the words will stop / still.

Only one word will be / still.

So many words I gather to me.

I am desperate / for words;

I go on / only by words.

The words, the words!

They gnaw at my body,

They tear at my reason.

They strip me / bare / me

Until only the core is left.

The word was spoken,

It only sounded like a beginning.

The one word of truth

Is the word of death.

In the basis of my being

Was my undoing, my end,

All settled / before it began.

Someday I will stop

And the words will stop / still.

The sentence will be finished.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Parlez-vous Francais?

The Alliance Francais French Film Festival has arrived in Perth. I’ve decided to see a selection of the movies and began this afternoon with an adaptation of a Victor Hugo novel. The movie is L’homme qui rit or The Man Who Laughs. It’s set somewhere in time before the Revolution , even before the Enlightenment, and stars that ubiquitous French actor, Gerard Depardieu. The lesser known actors playing the roles of Gwynplaine (the disfigured laughing man), and Dea, (the blind girl whom he rescues as a child), beautifully embody the tragic lovers of the tale. The film alludes to the decadent society of pre-revolutionary France but could be set anywhere in any time. In a persistently understated manner it powerfully evokes the value of love as the thing which will ultimately carry the soul beyond whatever mortal torments may be experienced in life. Although the focus is on the impoverished of the country, represented in the strolling players and their audiences, in the person of the Duchess, a self-described lost entity, we see how love can also reach through to allow at least pause for reflection, even in one so far gone.

The themes are as relevant today as they were in Victor Hugo’s time and also in the age before that in which he has set his story. At its end, Ursus (Depardieu’s character) who has told us he’s never cried for anything, despite the appalling conditions experienced by his peers all around him, stands silently weeping as he witnesses the death of Dea. Gwynplaine soon follows her. Ursus weeps for the loss of innocence. But his tears are also for joy in recognising that love will finally triumph.

It’s a beautiful film. I strongly recommend it.

The other story which brought tears to my own eyes during the last few days is a true one (and all the worse for being so). In the Maldives a fifteen year old girl (about Dea’s age) has been brutalised by her father and other males in her family almost all her life. Constantly raped and abused, when her situation became public knowledge she was immediately condemned for acts of fornication and condemned to receive 100 lashes to be administered before all in her community. This is a situation of almost inconceivable obscenity and yet is entirely in conformity with the country’s laws. Organisations including Amnesty and Avaaz are marshalling the outrage of all sensible people in a program to produce millions of signatures in petition to the Maldivean government to repeal this sentence and the law which allowed it. I pray they will be successful.

The bestiality of one section of society in its acts against another section is as present in our contemporary world as it was in Victor Hugo’s and, to the shame of humankind, has ever been since the beginning of history.

I went to see a film for entertainment. And I was entertained because of the beauty of the story. But the horror lying beyond the entertainment makes me also cry silent tears.

If we haul on the rope, will it be enough to bring the sun above the horizon,

Will this be a day to die and rise, a day when love will be abroad.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Sometimes…

I’m sure you’ve had those days. The ones when you plan what you’re going to do with the next 24 hours and then the whole lot goes to crap in one easy move. Sometimes it’s me; sometimes I just can’t get myself into gear; sometimes I have so many things on my ‘to do’ list that I get overwhelmed and can’t see where to start first.

But sometimes, quite a lot in fact, it’s other people who muck it up. Sometimes that’s a nice thing (like a friend phoning or calling in); sometimes it’s just plain bloodyminded. Business people trying to flog you something you don’t want are just a nuisance — time-wasting but soon dismissed. Worse are those whose incompetence requires you going over matters already supposedly complete but you have to spell it out all over again in words of one syllable. Even more worser is when they still can’t comprehend what they should be doing in return for the typically serious amounts of money they are charging to do it.

Why is it, I wonder, that sometimes we can see things so stunningly obvious yet to others they are apparently more opaque than stygian darkness? This morning it was a financial company unable to see that a new contract to extend a situation in operation for the past five years — and in which there will be no change in the next five years — should be able to be maintained as status quo.

And while I was grumpily reflecting on this piece of nonsense which had occupied an hour on the phone, I checked on one of the news-feeds on my computer and read a number of postings related to the imminent withdrawal of armed forces from Afghanistan. Now, with the wonderful advantage of 20/20 hindsight vision, all the pundits are pointing out the utter senseless waste of more than ten years warfare in that sad country and the most likely outcome being an immediate descent into tribal violence and destabilisation as soon as the withdrawal of the USA, Australia and all the other gung-ho military adventurers is complete.

Sometimes your own problems become rather insignificant when you lift your eyes and re-focus on the broader scenario.

Here’s a couplet which may be worth pondering.

The biding is done, there will be satisfaction for the longing;

The night comes down, and the sun ascends in the dawning.

Ruari Jack Hughes

The Things You Don’t See

I went to the Ozconcert last night. This is an annual event held in Perth to celebrate multiculturalism. It’s been going for 25 years and takes the form of a series of performances in music and dance by a variety of individuals and groups representing many different ethnic and national bodies. This year’s concert included, for example, singers from Australian Aboriginal, PNG, Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern backgrounds and dancers from China, Indonesia, Aboriginal Australia, Croatia, Egypt among others. There were also groups and bands, sometimes playing traditional material and at others, fascinating fusions of Western and non-Western music, several with a jazz underlay.

On a beautiful early Autumn evening in the grounds of the equally beautiful Government House, some seven thousand people spread blankets or sat on low chairs with picnic dinners and drinks of choice set before them, to share in this musical reminder of our hugely varied backgrounds.

We also had a reminder from Dr Eric Tan, the originator of Ozconcert, about his vision in setting it up, of a nation which could move away from historical resistance to others (i.e. non-British) which had often been expressed in outright racism. Ozconcert began in 1989, the year after the bicentenary of European (settlement, occupation, invasion, choose your own denominator) of Australia.

Both these reminders aimed to demonstrate the positive qualities of multiculturalism. The recognition of what each different ethnic group or nation has contributed to the overall mix that is contemporary Australia; the realisation that it’s only complexion and sometimes facial configuration that distinguishes second and third generation Australians from each other since spoken accents and lifestyle behaviours are mostly quite congruent.

Yet, as I looked around me, it was obvious that the audience was frequently composed in smaller groups which represented specific ethnicities and that there weren’t many groups made up of a haphazard mixing of people from obviously different backgrounds.

And also, although I didn’t go into the city last night after the concert, I know that had I done so, I would soon have been confronted by more examples than I cared to see (because one would be too many) of bigotry and racial intolerance. Police patrols which can too easily pick out aboriginal kids and harass them; gangs of particular ethnicities antagonising each other; taunting comments thrown at those who are deemed different and therefore less.

When I turn from the streetscape, there are immediately attitudes (such as “Turn back the boat people”; “Put foreign workers last in the job queue”) by governments and politicians, business interests and media pundits, those who like to be heard on radio talk-back programs, and a plenitude of other sources, all telling me that I must be wrong, that multiculturalism is just an idea, style without substance, like so much more in our 21st century Australia.

I enjoyed the concert last night. I went home feeling pretty good about it. I’d like to believe that the concert was a good picture of where we’ve got to in Australia in 2013. If it had that impact on me, perhaps it did also on the rest of the seven thousand who were there, and perhaps that can become the dominant view of who we are as a people.

Here’s another way to see the picture:

There was a time when…

There was a time when dragons flew in the skies,

Ice castles shone in the bright sunshine

Of fabulous tropical lands,

Birds called to each other in descants,

And animals spoke in poetry.

A time when people tall as houses

Walked the town roads, the country lanes,

And tiny ones, little men and women,

Stood easily on their giant neighbours’ palms.

All these things were quite ordinary,

Though you might be amazed to hear it.

If you had been there, you would not have wondered

For it was not something to wonder.

There was a time when people similar to us,

With skins of many different colours

Lived together in the towns,

Where people wore veils shielding their faces,

And their uncovered neighbours smiled.

A time when people worshipped their God

In church, synagogue, temple and mosque,

And everyone, children, men and women,

Were freely welcome in each other’s lands.

All these things were quite ordinary,

Though you are amazed to hear it.

If you had been there, surely you would not have wondered,

Surely it should not be something to wonder.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Ain’t Love Grand?!

She’s back! After three days of stooging around on my own, my lady is home. She’s been away at a conference about stuff on which she is some sort of wizard and about which I couldn’t even begin to comment. Computer stuff — something I’ve decided you either have in your blood or you don’t. I most definitely don’t.

It’s interesting how you get involved with another person and you know it’s right. There’s something which connects you and you can’t really define it or put any explanation to why this one rather than the million or more others out there who are reasonably available no matter what age you are, what you look like or any other criterion which you may think matters. We all call it love largely for want of more imagination since the word is so hopelessly debased in current usage. Still, it’s a word that’s been around a long time and I reckon it does fairly well to get the idea across about how there is this someone in your life that you can’t imagine not being there and you still surviving. Well, not for too long anyway.

But while all that’s said, there’s still this strange business that we never fully know the other one. No matter how long you’ve been together (in our case it’s a very long time), how many places you’ve been to, how many things you’ve done, how many arguments you’ve had, how many times you’ve forgotten why you even had the argument, how many times you’ve slept together (and how many of those times were after you had sex), there is still a mystery. Maybe that’s what keeps you together. That ultimate unknowability of the other. The fascination of someone who isn’t you, has a separate being and personality, a unique take on the world.

For very many years I have known that every day brings forth something new. Almost never do I pull the sheets up and nod off to dreamland without recognising that today I had a new experience unlike any before. Or I learnt a new fact. Or the one I love revealed yet another facet of herself that I hadn’t seen previously. It’s quite wonderful and apparently it’s an endless possibility. So I’m very glad she’s back.

Here’s a poem to finish, and since it’s about love, it had to be a sonnet, Right?

Can it be Different Now?

Know that you were loved
In the break of day
When sunlight had moved
The shadows from where you lay
And as the night fell
Scattering stars in its wake
Like the casting of a spell
Love was there for you to take.

Can it be different now?
Only the years have passed by
Day and night are the same
Can anything here disallow
The moon to rise or the sun to lie
Or love to echo the sound of your name?

Ruari Jack Hughes