after the indulgence of a literary minded horror book i thought i'd try something a little low brow, and i picked up this novel which is set just after alien. to my surprise it was very very literate and also a remarkable story. this knocked me down in terms of exciting, i was turning pages faster than ever, what the hell was going to happen and there were so many great characters and dialouge, it was humorous in parts. 

it was easy to imagine these poor people attempting to survive one horror to another, bonding together from environment to environment, and all in the desperate attempt to get to an escape that would have been hell had they made it. the introduction of ripley and jones was a great touch, and the ending was satisfying. it was a great idea and would have made an excellent film in sequence of the greater story arc.

when alien first came out i loved the idea of horror in space, it was new and executed very well. it's a grand story and the introduction of covenant and prometheus take us to bigger questions and a larger universe. in this particular novel the small universe meets the big one but there are no answers, just survival.  

i first read the book in my teens, before i had even seen the movie and i knew it was a fantastic story but i never appreciated how well it was written and put together. it is in fact the same story as the uncut directors version of the film which has a large chuck re edited into the movie that makes it even more detailed. the chunk that is missing is the bits where regan is taken to various medical specialists and the science is followed rational physiology and psychological concepts explored. the actual exorcism happens right at the conclusion of the story and all the way through can be countered with a scientific balance. 

the book is amazing, it really is very good and if you think it's just a horror novel your mistaken, it's about so much more. loss of faith, science vs religion, love and death. even the detective whom features as a sort of minor character is left seemingly lonely and alone and wondering about what he was investigating. 

i wasn't scared reading the book, intrigued at the way wpb had written such a tight philosophical yet page turning novel. 

a friend of mine wants to build a new kinda world, utopia. another wants a better one, and another wants to destroy this one. another just wants to stop things getting worse. me i see it all as spiritual warfare. in simple terms light vs darkness, but the complexities orbit around what defines light and what defines dark.

my own thoughts are light equates to freedom. am i more free in one system of control than another, free to think, free to create, free to be true to my own self. obviously i need to limit the kind of freedom against the will of others freedom, for example is my freedom at the expense of another and what constitutes being better. the answer is in am i free to exit the system that controls me without being controlled.

if you live in a socialist society you cannot create wealth

if you live in a capitalist society you can share your wealth

if you live in a theocracy you are not free to follow an alternative 

if you live in a dictatorship you have no power or control

if you live in a democracy you have some control and some power

these are the awful truths and in order to comprehend them one must wrestle with the simple formula, is ignorance bliss or is ignorance ignorance and bliss bliss. 

does the truth set you free or does it entrap you?

me i like truth, no matter how uncomfortable, it does set you free although it is undoubtably filled with pain often and tears. just like death. just like birth.

having said all of that it's a hard life, just being and navigating other people, dealing with relationships, friendships and family let alone governments, culture and institutions. it's all far to overwhelming and often one has to watch the sunset or sunrise, clip a tree or catch a wave just to get an idea of what it is we are all within. sometimes you have to accept we know nothing about anything and if we do, what use is it. 

i have to write a bucket list. it's going to be a short one.

yesterday evening the local community met down the beach to say goodbye and scatter ashes of a young girl who was murdered and found in the river that runs down the back of my place. the turn out happened to fill the beach, and the drone footage doesn't capture the crowds of people all dressed in white. it was incredible that a community should all respond to a social media campaign so effectively and with such conviction. it was moving and very emotional. we want women to be safe.

there was a strange moment when I heard a rumble that i thought could be an earthquake out at sea, it was very bass heavy and loud. as it turned out it was the local bikkie gang, revving their engines, in a weird sycnronistic ritual. both peter and i exchanged glances and we thought something was very perculiar.

one hour later while indulging in affrigattoes to excess peter receives a text from the mother of audrey the young girl saying the man who had murdered her daughter had been found dead in his cell.

strange but sometimes events complete themselves.

 

they said it was a country album but don't believe that nonsense, what you have here is pure australiana, it is explicit in the lyrics (bar a couple of lines) and implicit in the music. what a great album, a whole collections of songs that in some way are part of a larger whole although not in sequence. i can't fathom the order but that's neither here nor there. it's lovely, very different from steve's other band or collaborations.

for a long time i seeked out the spirit of australia, i found it in christopher koch's book, highways to a war, i found it in a few pop songs, 'great southern land' being the obvious but it's a hard thing to capture, such an ancient vast continent that means so many things to many people, such a new culture still wrestling with itself with an ancient one laying behind everything but there is this conflict or clash where the frontier meets us, it's a strange interline of time clashing and steve kinda captures it in this as does the winged heels. ironically christopher koch's son is a winged heel and he does a marvellous job on guitars. this is kinda symbolic for me, as it brings together elements of australian culture in a new way and as usual steve's lyrics embody something clearly reflecting an environment of small town outback lands where people veer off on tangents and the landscape looks brutal and beautiful. and the strange environment creates strange characters. 

i was wondering about the english people who have travelled from their early years and now lived in australia for a long time, it must shape them in ways living in england wouldn't. i arrived here in 1988, i was 24 years old. but i had been living away from england for at least 6 years before travelling around making my base in new york, montreal, mexico city, parts of europe especially west berlin which was and then i ended up here in sydney. so my englishness had been corrupted by alien cultures and environments, i had lost that connection to one single geographic location and found myself building one here in sydney, meeting australians, being influenced by australian landscapes, culture and people and i adapted to it in ways i could never adapt to europa. at that time it was frontier land, and anything was possible. it was inhabited by people who seemed eccentric and rebellious, they were characters, and there was that immense other character the landscape that shaped and contoured everything. i began to match the land with the people and see how the conditions drew out something from the characters i met, and in time i think i may have become one of them. 

so as i listen to this piece of music i feel the strange people i once knew return, their outback adventures, their rage against nature, the beauty of a sunrise, the horror of remote town arrests, the wait for rain, the beer and the drunkenness, 'walk a mile in my fucking shoes' doesn't get more australian. 

musically we are in rich territory but not as we know it jim, this is far removed from the church but very very good, equal but different, very different. it would be hard to choose fave songs as they all seem excellent, i love the whole project. 'there's an island sea, where whales are swimming around.' 

there's no explicit aborigionality here but i can feel it, behind the scenes in percussion and timbre, it's strong and strange and seeps through the cracks. 'i ve seen gold nuggets bigger than your fists, the beer and blood, silver ingots disappear in the mist, you should cross it off your wish list.' 

yes steve captures something in these tunes, he's done something quite remarkable, a concept album with no real concept, other than he wrote this to go with a film project and then went on a bus journey with a bunch of art people to strange places attempting to get a movie done and dusted. the movie disappeared into the either, it was never made but these songs tell many stories and in many ways are much better than a movie, you can close your eyes and see the films yourself. 

sometimes you have to look to the light to see the dark, sometimes you have to look to the dark to see the light, it's one of those paradoxes that make up spiritual growth and life on earth. some people claim to be one or the other, especially those light worker nut jobs who parade around with their kart tolls literature and half assed understandings of quite complex concepts. i'm not saying you need to be an expert in any form of spiritual understanding, the most spiritual are just gardeners and labourers not priests or healers. the truth is a a light worker cannot say they work in the light, they bring light or they are the embodiment of light, they cannot claim any more divinity than anyone else, and if they were honest they would say they are dark workers but that has not got that nice middle class housewife ring to it, it's not quite the envy generating terminology that attracts friends and the neighbour. light worker is safer and deflects the reality of the actual work. that's why i dig witches, an ancient term for energy worker. there's something sexy about that kinda authenticity. 

there's a lot going on for me, conflicts as ego's clash against my own strength, miscommunications because people cannot understand complex english, or hear what they want to hear, avoidance and attempts to embarrass, what's that term for people who like to get the last word in....i can't recall it. anyways that's wok at the moment where i am the challenger and manager by proxy dealing with various complex personalities and generally lazy staff who do anything they can to avoid work which generally means i have to do it.

roll on may when i take a month off and follow my heart.

 

 

god the great creator controls the motion of the universe

using this idea can be incorporated into void magick, the rotas being the void. opera being the ritual, effort or energy, tenet being the controlling force (the magick). arepo being the motion and sator being the magickian. 

i've always liked this formula and was taken aback when christopher nolan incorporated into the plot of tenent, in fact it's more than the plot, it is the movie.all the elements of this formula are embedded within the film.

trouble at work, drama coming down the line

keep hold of the wheel, things will work out just fine

it's no personality clash

it's not an conflict of interests

just the same old conditions 

returning in a frenzy

jealously and envy

no matter the weather, there's always a storm

you gotta sail on though since the day you were born

no use complaining, shedding tears or wailing

wouldn't even loose any sleep howling at the moon

tomorrow will be here soon and you will see, two twins

envy and jealously.

my friend agent wilde is out of hospital after a few harrowing days, she still has a few treatments before she is in the clear, but at least she is out. the priority as soon as she is mobile and in better health is to get her out and into her new life. the blue mountains. yeah, it's far away and that will present a few new challenges but she will be in the new. ha, most people say stay in the now, i say stay in the new. i guess the new is the now but without that wanky middle class suburban housewife stain. 

anyways agent wilde is a very cool friend and my mission is to get her into the new. 

well if you like a dark thriller with a literate bent and clever twists and turns this is excellent. the first book i've read in ages that i'd say was a page turner and i couldn't put down.  

bad things happen in 3's right? or does it just seem that way?

here we have female protagonists attempting to decipher their history and the events surrounding their trauma, and each character is nested inside one another individual story, it's a great read and sam ripley is an intelligent writer that knows what his reader needs, to be challenged, surprised and entertained.
 

the name of this game is a kidnapping by keigo higashino is a a brilliantly executed crime novel about disgruntled employee sakuma who although always cool headed is a ragingly seeking revenge after loosing out to a work contract. it's easy reading but enjoyable with a quick pace and intriguing plot as we follow our anti hero strategies his game of kidnapping up until the final twist at the end. 

i enjoyed this one, it's light with good characters and kept me guessing what the twist would be, i kinda saw it coming as i reached the final part but it was a great ending nonetheless.