Eheu, fugaces...

Postume, Postume, the years slip away and are lost to me, lost to me.

Yikes, I just passed my 9th Chinaversary. A consensus was reached long ago amongst my foreign friends here that Beijing years age you by about 5 years each (though the China life is so much more intense than that lived anywhere else that our lives before China become irrelevant, and our age clock is reset to zero upon our moving here). That means I am now well-and-truly middle-aged. Damn. [Indeed, I am going through the spooky phase where my real age and my 'China age' are the same.]

By happy coincidence, I share this anniversary with my best buddy The Choirboy (a fact we did not discover until a few years ago), so we marked the occasion with a modest two-man bar crawl.... while glumly musing on why we are still here, and how much longer we might stay. The answer to both questions appears to be 'Not sure'. Oh dear.

Sometimes, cheap beer and good friends are all the answer that we need to such troubling questions. Sometimes, but not always. I am starting to consider the road home....

[The frivolous opening quotation is another of my occasional Classical references - a joking translation of the opening line of Horace's Ode 2.14, yet another of the "Life is short; so let's crack open the good wine now" pieces with which Classical Latin poetry abounds.]

Another absinthe poem

I have been meaning for ages to dig out some more poems on absinthe, but I only just got around to applying myself to this task. I rather like this fine evocation of the feeling of being pleasantly wasted during the daytime - a feeling I haven't known in... a year or two, I would guess. For all its image as a non-stop party town, Beijing doesn't seem to be a place where people indulge in daytime drinking.

The Absinthe Drinker

Gently I wave the visible world away.
Far off, I hear a roar, afar yet near,
Far off and strange, a voice is in my ear,
And is the voice my own? the words I say
Fall strangely, like a dream, across the day;
And the dim sunshine is a dream. How clear,
New as the world to lovers' eyes, appear
The men and women passing on their way.

The world is very fair. The hours are all
Linked in a dance of mere forgetfulness.
I am at peace with God and man. O glide,
Sands of the hour-glass that I count not, fall
Serenely: scarce I feel your soft caress,
Rocked on this dreamy and indifferent tide.

Arthur Symons (1865-1945)

[Picasso's Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto (The Absinthe Drinker) sold at Christie's a few months ago for $51.2 million.]

Larkin, again

I only just stumbled across this one, hadn't known it before.



Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.


Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

The weekly bon mot (and possibly a 'Website of the Month' too)

My flame has gone out.
My fuel has been spent.
I forgot how to love.
I can't pay the rent.


Hugh MacLeod

I haven't had much of a chance to check out his website (book, art, cartoons) yet - but it looks like some very promising stuff. I already gave it a shout-out on Froogville last week. His sensibilities, his worldview seem to be a kind of a cross between Scott Adams and XKCD. And apparently my No.1 Blog Fan, the inestimable JES, has been a subscriber to his newsletter for quite a while - which is an excellent recommendation. [However, he looks disconcertingly like Jim Boyce. Is this one of Boyce's aliases, I wonder; is this how he really makes his money??]

A poetic bon mot for the week

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius a better discerning.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)

Slurring

Under The Affluence of Incohol

I go to the fridge looking for some words to drink.
Nothing there.
I call my friends."The pub! I'll bring the thesaurus." Agreed.
A stubbie. Exchange a few similes. Another stubbie.
Mix a few metaphors.

Hey, my friends say, "your slurds are starting to whirr.
You're under the affluence of incohol."
"No way," I reply, "I'm jober as a sudge."
My friends say I'm angling the queen's minglish.
I foe a threw insults back.
They call me a posspit.
They say "you know, Mir and better fours don't mix!"
What would nay though?

I have a bew more fears.
Febore I know it, the club is posing.
I'd stunk my last drubbie.
"Where's the posest club?" I ask.
"New hose? Let's wind fun."

We stralk along the wheat.
A cur lease par barses pie.
"Ello hoffy sir" I call out, ta rick you lately.
"Looking for mubble trakers?"

The cur lease par sterns and tops.
A blan in moo gets out and talks ooh ward me.
He holds out a rape tea corder.
He says
"Talk into this please until I say stop."
He is forking tunny.
"Could you gay that a sen?" I say.
He pea-reats simhelf.
"Fot the wuck moo do yean, pork into this tlease?
Eak spoper prenglish!"

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm arresting you for having a spoonerism level above the legal limit of 0.08 per hundred words. You will have to accompany me to the station."

Now I'm in sheep dit.
What started out as a bite with the noise, because of no fear in the bridge,
has nurned Terry, Terry vasty.
In the norming, I have to gee the sudge.
I have a very whore said.

"How do you plead?"

"Got nilty, whore onya" I say.
Whoops. He is pot rimnessed.

"I sentence you to four months silence.
Officer, take away his thesaurus.
You will be eligible for a dictionary no earlier than two months from now."

Dot will I woo? Fry mends won't mork to tea. I'm din is grace.
Cow will I hope with more funths of
license?


David Peetz

Don't be a Chinese child

Today is a sad day - the 15th anniversary of the Karamay theatre fire, one of the worst man-made disasters in China's recent history, which left 325 people dead, most of them young schoolchildren. I've written about it today on Froogville, too.

This is the very cool Chinese folk singer Zhou Yunpeng (who quite often hangs out at favourite neighbourhood music bar, Jianghu) performing a particularly savage piece called Don't Be A Chinese Child, which references the Karamay tragedy along with a number of other notorious stories of the abuse or death of children. [It's quite a long clip; the first song is the Karamay one.]


http://www.youmaker.com/video/sv?id=073f9470162b49feaf7c8686a492bd03001

Here's an English translation of the lyrics (via the Wikipedia article on the Karamay fire; unfortunately, the translator is uncredited):

Don't Ever Be A Chinese Child

Don't be a child of Karamay,
whose burns would scorch a mother's heart.
Don't be a child of Salan Town
who finds no rest beneath dark waters.
Don't be a child of Chengdu
who waits for mum's return
after her week-long binge.

Chorus (children laughing)

Don't be a child of Henan
where AIDS cackles in the blood.
Don't be a child of Shanxi
where mines turn dads
into baskets of coal.

Chorus (laughter)

Don't be a child of Karamay
Don't be a child of Salan Town
Don't be a child of Chengdu
Don't be a child of Henan...

Don't ever be a Chinese child,
or the grown-ups will
eat you when they starve.

At least in the wild, mountain goats
are fierce enough to protect their kids.

Don't ever be a Chinese child,
because mommy and daddy are cowards;
when the theatre caught fire,
they steeled their hearts
and let the cadres exit first.

Madder music

Blog friend JES the other day reminded me of this, and it seemed so appropriate to this blog. Dowson, in fact, can probably be counted as another of my 'Unsuitable Role Models': a tremendous poet, but he drank himself to death with wine and laudanum in his early thirties. Madder music and more wine, indeed! Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)

Obsession

I just happened on this while rooting around in some old files.  I do love Belloc.  And god, do I know this feeling!     Juliet   How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you: Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster's party go? Juliet was next to me and I do not know.   Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

Great Drinking Songs (17)

Waiting For Herb, the first Pogues album after the sacking of wayward frontman Shane MacGowan, was a very pleasant surprise. Shane had always seemed to define the band's personality, and liked to represent himself as its main, if not sole creative force. In fact, everyone in the band was a fine musician, and a number of them had contributed some decent songs to the earlier albums. Some of them could sing rather better than Shane, too. And I suspect that Jem Finer, rather than Shane, had been responsible for most of the music. The vital Shane MacGowan element was his distinctive drunkenly slurred vocal delivery and the mad poetry of his stream-of-consciousness lyrics. We fans had feared that these qualities would be irreplaceable, and that the band would be emasculated without him.

But then, they come up with this, Drunken Boat - a very Shane-like song, in fact written by the accordionist Jimmy Fearnley. This is very nearly my favourite Pogues song ever. The Herb album happened to come out just before I went off on my backpacking year, so this song, with its dreams of world travel, acquired a special resonance for me - particularly, of course, the second verse, touching on the pain of separation from home and family: "I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead."

There are many other fantastic lines and images in this, a terrible melancholy about it. And I love the way that a life of adventure sailing the oceans becomes warped into a metaphor for alcoholism. I really think this is as good as, or maybe even a little better than anything of Shane's; it's one of those very few songs that actually stands up without the music, that can be read as poetry.

Drunken Boat

The wind was whipping shingles through the windows in the town,
A hail of stones across the roofs, the slates came raining down.
A blade of light upon the spit came sweeping through the roar,
With me head inside a barrel and me leg screwed in the floor.

Mother, pack me bag, because I'm off to foreign parts.
Don't ask me where I'm going, 'cause I'm sure it's off the charts.
I'll pin your likeness on the wall right by my sleeping head.
I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead.

By this time in a week I should be far away from home,
Trailing fingers through the phosphor or asleep in flowers of foam.
From Macau to Acapulco, from Havana to Seville,
We'll see monoliths and bridges and the Christ up on the hill.

An aria with the Russians at the piano in the bar;
With ice floes through the window, we raised glasses to the Czar;
We squared off on a dockside with a coupla hundred Finns;
We dallied in the 'Dilly and we soaked ourselves in gin.

Now the only deck I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.

We sailed through constellations and were rutted by the storm.
I crumbled under cudgel blows, and finally came ashore.
I spent the next two years or more just staring at the wall.
We went to sea to see the world - what do you think we saw?

If we turned the table upside down and sailed around the bed,
Clamped knives between our teeth and tied bandanas round our heads,
With the wainscot our horizon and the ceiling as the sky,
You'd not expect that anyone would go and fuckin' die.

Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.

At night we passed the bottle round and drank to our lost friends.
We lay alone upon our bunks, afraid that this would end.
A wall of moving shadows, with rows of swinging keys!
We dreamed that whole Leviathans lay rotting in the reefs.

There's a sound that comes from miles away, if you lean your head to hear:
A ship's bell rings on board a wreck when the air is still and clear.
And up above that means another angel's got his wings,
But all below it signifies is a ship's gone in the drink.

Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.

James Fearnley

I had thought that I'd have to content myself with just posting the lyrics to this. The last time I checked, it was not on YouTube. But, what do you know - someone just put it up there last month (no video as such; just a montage of sea pictures). [Although, YouTube's unbelievably crappy search engine still doesn't recognise it as a Pogues song. I mean, what is with that? No returns for "pogues"+"drunken boat", but you might be interested in this video called 'Drunken Boat' by The Pogues??!! I despair of YouTube sometimes.] Enjoy. Try not to get too depressed.

Knowing the feeling

The Weeble's powers of memory and recitation can be quite daunting. Now I find he can even outdo me on Tom Waits lyrics. This cannot be allowed. I feel it is necessary for me to revise a few of my favourites, and get back in practice.

This one, of course, is the bar-room recitation classic. (I might dig out a video for it one day, if I can ever get YouTube to work for me again.) [Well, I eventually managed to turn it up here; audio only, though.]

Frank's Wild Years

Frank settled down in the Valley, and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead. He sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road, assumed a $30,000 loan at fifteen-and-a-quarter percent, and put a downpayment on a little two-bedroom place. His wife was a spent piece of used jet-trash; made good Bloody Marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time. Had this little chihuahua named Carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind. They had a thoroughly modern kitchen: self-cleaning oven, the whole bit. Frank drove a little sedan. They were so happy.

One night, Frank was on his way home from work; stopped at the liquor store, picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouths; drank 'em in the car on his way to the Shell station. He got a gallon of gas in a can. Drove home, doused everything in the house, torched it. Parked across the street laughing, watching it burn - all Halloween orange and chiminey red.

Frank put on a Top 40 station, got on the Hollywood freeway, headed North.

Never could stand that dog.

Sitting in taverns - a Sunday poem

We haven't had any A.E. for a while. And this one is so seasonally appropriate. The third stanza is superb.

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of our little store.
May will be fine next year as like as not:
Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

In Absentia

Nightclub

After the legshows and the brandies
And all the pick-me-ups for tired
Men there is a feeling
Something more is required.

The lights go down, and eyes
Look up across the room;
Salome comes in, bearing
The head of God knows whom.

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

This is what I always feel like on a night out in Yabaolu: the ennui that pulls up short of boredom, the mild discomfort that doesn't like to call itself disgust.

The 'Norman No-Mates' Poetry Corner

New Friends and Old Friends

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.
Friendships that have stood the test -
Time and change - are surely best;
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.
For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die;
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast -
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.

Joseph Parry (1841-1903)



Particularly pertinent advice, this, for our situation here in Beijing, I fear, where all is transience and change, friends leaving, moving on every few years. At least I'm not at an advanced enough age that my friends are dying off; but I am in that zone where most of them are married with kids, or thinking about it soon, or at least starting to "get serious" about their relationships and their careers.

I have nothing against any of that. It just doesn't leave much time for drinking, that's all. Or for pool. Or for generally hanging out.

New Year bon mot - a Chinese poem

花间一壶酒。
独酌无相亲。
举杯邀明月。
对影成三人。

Among the flowers is a jug of wine.
With no friend at hand, I pour a cup alone.
I raise a toast to the brilliant moon.
My shadow makes a fellowship of three.


Li Bai (701-762)

Yes, him.... again.

(Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar, you know.)

A poem for the dead of winter

The Park Drunk

He opens his eyes to a hard frost,
the morning's soft amnesia of snow.

The thorned stems of gorse
are starred crystal; each bud
like a candied fruit, its yellow
picked out and lit
by the low pulse
of blood-orange
riding in the eastern trees.

What the snow has furred
to silence, uniformity,
frost has amplified, made singular;
giving every form a sound,
an edge, as if
frost wants to know
what snow tries to forget.

And so he drinks for the winter,
for the coming year,
for all the beautiful tiny doors
in their craquelure of frost;
and he drinks
like the snow falling, trying
to close the biggest door of all.


Robin Robertson

Inspiration for the New Year

I was thinking of giving up drinking this month. Not for ever, you understand; just for a few weeks, maybe a month or two.

But then.... I was reminded of this old English pub favourite (my brother used to have it on his bedroom wall!), and I thought, Why bother?



The horse and cow live thirty years,
And nothing know of wines and beers.
The goat and sheep at twenty die,
And never taste of Scotch or rye.
The sow drinks water by the ton,
And at eighteen is nearly done.
The dog at fifteen cashes in,
Without the aid of rum or gin.
The cat in milk and water soaks,
And then at twelve short years it croaks.
The modest, sober bone dry hen
Lays eggs for years, then dies at ten.
All animals are strictly dry;
They sinless live and quickly die.
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten;
And some of us, the mighty few,
Stay pickled till we're ninety-two!

Anon

Some poetic advice

never blame the booze

as i go up and down the town
hither to and fro i gather many a
smile and frown and talk of
thus and so i lately
listened and i heard two chaps
their luck bewail life did not get
a pleasant word they
told an awful tale for one of them
had just been fired he
glummed and wondered why he cried
into his beer
aspired to punch the boss his eye too
true the other one exclaimed this
world s a burning shame the
game of living has been framed it is
a rotten game and ever as they railed
at fate and wooed the sombre muse
they steadily absorbed a great
sufficiency of booze but neither one
that cursed his luck and beat the burning bean
would blame the downfall on the truck
that passed his lips between
and as i listened there i thought it were
more candid far to give its dues to what they bought
across the varnished bar they should indeed
be far more frank about their hard lucks boss
they should remark
each genial tank unto their bosses faces
you can t expect a man to drink as much as i do boss
and have much time to work and think
and put the job across
oh boss you ask too much of me
i do the best i can but who can lush
continually and be a working man
you can t expect a man to booze from morning
until night and feel quite nimble
in his shoes and add his figures right oh boss
you ask too much of us we have no flair for toil
we d rather daily dally thus imbibing joyful oil
you can t expect a man to souse
and do work for your business house so do not be unjust
twere more like reason if they said such words
unto their bosses than tear the hair
and beat the head and blame luck
for their losses

Dom Marquis (1878-1937), from archy and mehitabel

A Chinese drinking poem

Mountain Drinking Song

To drown the ancient sorrows,
we drank a hundred jugs of wine
there in the beauty of the night.
We couldn't go to bed with the moon so bright.

Then finally the wine overcame us
and we lay down on the empty mountainside -
the earth for a pillow,
and a blanket made of heaven.


Li Bai (701-762)

Bon mot for the week

"Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where."

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)

I assume this is from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, but it's a long time since I read it. Online quotation lists with no proper attributions are the bane of my life just lately.