Mark Young is a New Zealander now living in Sydney, Australia. Published widely in both countries during the sixties and first half of the seventies, but then drifted away from writing. Was brought back to it a couple of years ago by a request to include his work in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand poems 1960-1975. He then assembled a selection of work from that time to form - The right foot of the giant, published by Bumper Books in 1999 - and has started writing again. |
The Dichotomous Key for Lauren If it has these attributes then it is this. Otherwise it is not this. & if it is not this, but has these other attributes then it is that. Otherwise it is not that. If it is not that but possesses another set of characteristics then.. & so on down the line, eliminating the alternatives by counting in turn the wings, legs, body segments, etc. so that you start off with the spider & end up with the fly. The One Percent Philosopher The outlaw motorcyclist who has just overtaken me has the long white beard of a chinese sage. Pushed out at right angles by the crosswind it is then forced back by his forward motion so that it wraps around his throat like Isadora Duncan's scarf, living testimony to the polarity of yin & yang, & how they achieve an existential balance. The sight stays with me as bike & rider draw away; & I wonder how different the world of philosophy might have been if Confucius & Lao-Tze had been able to get around on a Harley, or if Aristotle & Plato had had the advantage of a Sony Walkman so they could have taken music with them wherever they went. Although, alternatively, would anyone have paid much attention to the output of someone who wore leathers & rode a hog, or who was best known for losing track of what was going on around them & almost being trampled by walking straight out in front of the crowd surging towards the arena to see the Sophocles & Walt Disney co-production of Oedipus on Ice? The Science Lesson The constructs. Had been unaware that he carried them round with him until some small thing escaped & he had to put it back. Found the traces of them then, in finding that he did not know where that single item went. Realised these were probably not things that came back at him out of a mirror. Still it was the first place he went looking. He saw nothing in his reflection; but behind & beside him were dried flowers in a twist & an origami bird of folded alfoil. Also some Escher drawings which evoked the similar symmetries of the tiles of the Alhambra but without the strange loops. He recalled a photograph of that "square brutal fortress" in Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, the sky behind it turquoise. No clouds. Thought Spain, thought music, wondered which version of the Concierto de Aranjuez he liked best. Remembered the first record he ever bought. Realised that he had grown up unaware of the Sierra Nevada on the opposite side of the world. There were more mountains in there somewhere plus rivers & the winter sea. Tamarind trees in North Queensland & the mouthfeel of a mango (though these came later). Silk - or was it cinnamon? Aretha Franklin singing. A lion statuette from Sri Lanka. The sound of bees. It was his first lesson in the nature of constructs. Why I am not writing I am re-reading James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, am re-reading Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, am reading the sub-titles to the opening titles of the animated manga Neon Genesis Evangelion when Mayakovsky rings to say he will not be coming around today. I scan the TV guide & plot an alternative itinerary. I think about opening Word & end up opening Solitaire instead. I listen to the humming of the PC but it tells me nothing. It sounds like the refrigerator but that only hums at intervals & does not give me card games as a built-in option - it is too dedicated in its purpose. I think about work, where I have been listening to the presentations of consultants to decide who will be the anointed ones to whom we will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to rewrite our planning & information systems. I have yet to hear anything new, decide I'm in the wrong business. But the arrival of the consultants is serendipitous in that it loosely coincides with one of the subjects I have to do at university next semester. I plan to use the aggregated data in my major assignment - at least I will get some value from what I consider to be an obscene outlay of money. & I am reading & re-reading my textbooks as the exams draw nearer. Though they & the other books are shelved in some sort of order, the CDs are jumbled. I am working my way through them from the top of the stack on down, sorting them out by listening to each one in turn then putting it back in the place where it was. I have just listened to Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus; now I am listening to Revolver & decide again that this album & not Sergeant Pepper marked the paradigm shift for The Beatles even though for me when I first heard them the order was reversed. & in passing I want to thank Thomas Kuhn for developing the concept of paradigm shifts & for redefining the term paradigm. When words change meaning they are re- energised, & if I were writing I would hope to be using energetic words. But instead I am singing along with Eleanor Rigby & the refrigerator is humming along in harmony & the Red Queen is shouting from the PC "Lay me on the Black King! Lay me!" She is off her head. But I already knew that, was told by Jefferson Airplane many years ago & reminded of it by the inclusion of White Rabbit on the Greatest Hits of the Sixties compilation I listened to three CDs ago. Then Mayakovsky rings to say he has changed his mind. I start to tidy up the house. (c) Mark Young 2002 |
