Thursday, February 26, 2009

Links for my Mum

Here are some things I want to share with my mum, that I thought some of you would like to look at too.

The first one is this piece of writing about The Flying Nun. It's lovely and affecting and surprising - did you (that's a plural you, not just my mum, but I'd love to know her answer too) know it was a book first? I am going to try and track it down.

The next link is to the wonderful Barista blog, authored by David Tiley, a film maker (and historian? He doesn't say but he certainly seems to have a passion for archives). Many other blogs have already linked to his moving and intelligent immediate response to the Black Saturday fires We Lived Again but Life was Different; all his subsequent posts about the fire have been equally moving, beautifully rendered out of primary material with an unsentimental but clearly emotive commentary in the face of utter black empty loss. The way David holds history up to the light, the way he uses it, like a lens, to meaningfully and elegantly illuminate the present (and in turn creating a historical document himself) makes me literally hold my breath.

And then I love the Internet and I'm glad I waste so much time on it, because it helps me uncover real beauty and make sense of the world.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks Penni. Am looking at some of his pics of Marysville now. It's kind of bittersweet to see the place as it was. I'd always planned on visiting since I saw the beautiful village on tv years back. Nearly got there once... now I wish I'd made the extra effort to detour there.

    But, isn't it also a little sad that we are more affected by the loss of beautiful places? If Frankston (which some call Frankghanistan) vanished...

    On the other hand, I suppose the appreciation of beauty, nature, etc, is a good thing. Can't imagine one's life perspective being without it.

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  2. I wonder if the uncomplicated beauty of the place gives us a shape for our grief, or a place for it to coalesce (like the image of a lost child). It's hard grieving for large stretches of unknown bush. If Frankston was gone we'd miss it. We might not remember it for its beauty, but we would mourn its loss just the same.

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  3. Anonymous11:41 PM

    I wrote this really long thought filled comment and it disappeared totally.

    Thank you for the post. I didn't know The Flying Nun was a book. I don't think I would have read it aloud to my grade 6 at George Town.

    I'm not a gread fan of nuns in film and story. So sad that the author lost her son in that dreadful war.

    Your blogs about the fires have been great. So much has been said but only a few people do it well. You have picked out some of the best. I read the transcript of Kerry O'Brien's interview with the journalist and his wife. That was powerful stuff. So much of the commercial coverage was so attrocious I stopped watching tv.

    Keep up the good work.

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