Image: Past Projections ~ Dan Duggan

I love the Oscars. I’m a big movie buff so watching the Oscars is one of my favourite things each year. It always brings back a lot of memories, particularly of certain films and where I was at that time in my life. I can still remember when Roberto Benigni won; he was so happy and infectious, it made me look for Life is Beautiful, which is now one of my favourite films.

I’ve been looking forward to the Oscars this year. One reason is because I like Steve Martin but it’s also because we’re getting the telecast live this year, which is a bonus. In the past it hasn’t been shown live in Australia, so I’ve usually had to dodge the news and phone calls all day until finally watching a delayed telecast in the evening. This time I’ll be able to watch the whole thing live.

I tend to see most of the nominated films on DVD, so the only one I’ve seen so far is Avatar, and I’ve read the book of Precious (Push). I liked Avatar but to be honest I’m hoping (on reputation) that The Hurt Locker or Up in the Air win. Avatar was fun and it’s a brilliant technical achievement but the script was clichéd and some of the dialogue was terrible. It deserves to win most of the technical awards but I’d rather see The Hurt Locker win Best Picture. And Kathryn Bigelow Best Director. It’s about time a woman won. Finally.

I’d like to see Jeff Bridges win an Oscar at last but apart from that, I’m not really bothered about the other main awards. The one category I’d like to see an upset in is the musical score. I just don’t get Giacchino’s work; it all sounds like blaring horns to me. I think Alexandre Desplat deserves to win but it won’t happen.

Anyway, to get into the Oscar spirit I’ve written several haiku of my favourite films. I’ve tried to capture the spirit of each film and it was a lot of fun – although reducing Gone with the Wind to 17 syllables was very difficult!

There are fifteen haiku and each film was nominated for Best Picture. Only 10 of them actually won the Oscar, though. Can you tell me which ones didn’t win?

Hope you enjoy them. Have you seen many of the Oscar nominated films this year?

The Ring of Power:
A burden none can carry
Except one so small
(The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

Torn between
Love and virtue
Rick sends his love away
While Sam plays on
(Casablanca)

Dorothy dreams
Of witches and Oz
Of the Yellow Brick Road
And home
(The Wizard of Oz)

Mrs. Robinson
Seduces a younger man:
He loves her daughter
(The Graduate)

A love unrequited
Burns like the
Southern sun
And Scarlett’s spirit
(Gone with the Wind)

If life’s like
A box of chocolates
Why does love have
A bitter taste?
(Forrest Gump)

Young woman
Teaches children to sing
And finds love
As Nazis descend
(The Sound of Music)

Boy who walks the sky
Meets pirates and a princess:
The Force is with him
(Star Wars)

The underdog
Finally given his chance
To fly
Finds love instead
(Rocky)

A broken soldier
Finds solace among the Sioux
Before war returns
(Dances With Wolves)

The life of one
Reclusive man
Described in a single word:
Rosebud
(Citizen Kane)

Normandy
Blood on the water
Death in the air:
He still remembers
(Saving Private Ryan)

The life of a Don
Brutal and vicious:
Your son becomes you
(The Godfather)

Former boxer
Finds his voice against
The mob
To become a hero
(On the Waterfront)

Doomed voyage
Ends in icy waters
But their love will last
Forever
(Titanic)

Update: The Oscars finished about an hour ago. I found it disappointing after all that. Steve Martin & Alec Baldwin did quite well but it was too old-fashioned at times. The main problem was it had no momentum. By getting rid of the performances, it just dragged on and on.

Also, did I miss it or was Farrah Fawcett left off the In Memoriam tribute? Very strange. Quite underwhelming overall. But at least Jeff Bridges and Kathryn Bigelow won. About time too.

Image: Elephant Skeleton ~ Mike Richardson

When I close my eyes
I dream of deepest Africa
The Motherland
Our ancestral home
Where the orange sun rises
Over the plantation lands
And the hot winds blow
Across the Serengeti plains

Deep in the wilderness
Vultures hover over an elephant graveyard
Swooping to pick at the flesh
Of all that remains
Their bones lie everywhere
Scattered and broken
Discarded by thieves in their search
For precious ivory

What happened to them I do not know
Perhaps it was starvation
Or disease
Or the lust and greed of man
But if you look closely
Sometimes you can still see them
And hear their mighty trumpets
Echoing through the night

Away in the city
Amongst the towers and smog
An elephant calf sits
In a concrete cage
The last of its kind
It sits and stares at the world
And remembers a time
When it was free

Licenced under a Creative Commons Licence

You can also listen to the poem below or at AudioBoo

Originally I started writing this poem for Blog Action Day but due to my health, I wasn’t able to finish it in time. So I’m posting it now instead.

It was inspired by a dream I had where I was standing in a pit, surrounded by the bones of hundreds of animals. It was extremely vivid; I kept thinking about the dream for days afterwards and thought about using it in a short story before deciding on a poem instead.

Over the last decade the threat of extinction has increased dramatically for many species, particularly for elephants in Africa. It’s largely due to poaching but also partially due to climate change; as droughts have worsened and their habitats have continued to be lost due to conditions and human encroachment, more elephants have had to search for food and water in new areas, where they often starve to death or are more easily targeted by poachers.

Some elephant populations have decreased by as much as two thirds in recent years and it’s thought that African elephants could be extinct by 2020. Whether people believe in the science of climate change or not, it’s clear that many species are becoming increasingly threatened on multiple fronts and if we do nothing, we could lose them forever.

That was what I wanted to represent in my poem. I wanted to leave the reader to decide what caused the extinction itself; I was more interested in showing what we have to lose. I hope you liked the poem. – CJ.

Image: I Am Another You ~ Jeff Robinson

I am many things
A son, a writer, a boy, a man, a friend
I am all those things and I am nothing
On myself, I depend

I am a memory that will be forgotten
I am a face that will fade away
I long to be remembered
But even night must fade into day

I am a student, always learning
I am a child looking at the sky
I seek neither knowledge or power
Just the means to open my eyes

I am a dreamer of great dreams
I am the voice of all sorrows
I live for the simplest of things
A laugh, your smile; gone tomorrow

I am an atheist, asking questions
I am a soldier seeking peace
I do not fear death, or darkness,
I welcome its release

I am the wind howling in the treetops
I am the voice whispering in your ear
My anger can be quiet and unspoken
Or fill your heart with fear

I am the beggar on the street corner
I am the insect crushed beneath your feet
Pity me, for I am no one,
A lost soul in full retreat

I am a chameleon with many faces
I am a prisoner suffering on my own
I struggle silently behind my mask
But cry when I am alone

I am wise and I am stupid
I am a writer lost for words
My past haunts my footsteps
My story is waiting to be heard

I am honest like a true friend
I am jealous like the gods of old
Hurt me with tears and I am forgiving
But words make my heart grow cold

I am the fire burning brightly
I am the thunder and the rain
Everywhere I leave death and destruction
In my wake life grows again

I am a child born at the wrong time
I am the remnant of another age
I long for an end to violence
But war is history’s stage

I am a walking contradiction
I am everything I should not be
Proud; arrogant; ugly; beautiful
I am me

Licenced under a Creative Commons Licence

You can also listen to the poem at AudioBoo

If you’re wondering what inspired this poem, I wanted to write something different than I had written before. I have been feeling unwell recently and I wanted to write an honest examination of life, with all of its ups and downs.

It’s about me, an exploration of who I am as a person, but it’s also about everyone. I wanted it to feel personal but also to mean something different to everyone who reads it.

I hope you enjoyed the poem and that it means something unique to you, as it does to me.
~ CJ

Image: Fire in Upper Ferntree Gully ~ jsarcadia

This is a follow up to the poem I posted earlier about Black Saturday and the bushfires in Victoria. I wrote the poem as a way of trying to move through the horror I felt in the days following the tragedy. There were so many images, so many stories, it was overwhelming and this felt like the only way I could make sense of it. Writing has always been cathartic for me and while I would have liked to have done more with it, I think the simplicity suits the poem… the starkness seems to capture the devastation of what happened.

It’s one week later now and in many ways I still don’t know what to make of it all. I have lived through several bushfires before but none as ferocious as this; it was like the entire southern coast of Australia was on fire and there was smoke around Sydney for days, as well as the overwhelming scents of various native plants, which will always remind me of the fires now.

The tolls keep increasing; 1,800 homes have been destroyed and 181 people have lost their lives so far – that may go as high as 300. As someone who respects the Australian landscape so much, to see it so devastated is awful; some parts of Victoria resemble craters more than bushland and over a million animals may have perished. Many fires are believed to have been caused by arson as well. For that terrible day, it truly was hell on Earth.

Am I angry? I’m more sad than anything else. Sad at the loss of life and property; sad that in many cases the warning signs weren’t heeded. Sad that it’s taken another tragedy for us to realise how fragile life can be. I’m also very grateful for the amount of good that people are doing, the way they’re helping and coming together; the donations and support, making quilts and toys, auctions for charities, giving blood. The way people have responded, here and overseas, has been incredible and filled me with a lot of hope.

I do understand the anger, though. When so many lives have been lost and homes destroyed, you feel helpless and anger is a natural response. I think we need to be careful not to deflect blame, though. There’ll be time for a closer examination of what went wrong but right now it seems like arson is all the media cares about. Arson is awful but we shouldn’t be so fast to deflect all of our anger onto it – there’ll be many factors contributing to this tragedy and what we really want is to make sure this never happens again, rather than to strike out in vengeance. Right now we need time to grieve.

Sam the koala and firefighter David Tree

For me I think this photo is going to be the main image that stays with me from these fires. It’s amazing; the koala almost looks like a baby being fed from a bottle, and the fireman is being so gentle. There’s been some confusion about when exactly it was taken but it’s still an image that shows you how devastating fire can be and the compassion it can bring out in people. It shows that even in the darkest of situations you can find some hope, which I wanted to reflect in my writing as well.

Sam and her rescuer seem to have become the global face of the bushfires; I know the photo has been featured in a lot of blogs and newspapers around the world. That’s largely because there has been so little good news coming out of these fires and something like this really raises all of our spirits, which is what we need right now.

That’s why I was disappointed when TMZ mocked the photo recently. I detest TMZ anyway but mocking a selfless gesture – twice – when people have died and lost their homes seems very tasteless. How about some sensitivity for what people are going through? That’s TMZ for you, I guess.

At least we know Sam is being cared for now and hopefully will recover. Sadly many other animals haven’t been as lucky. They are the forgotten victims in this tragedy, in many ways.

In any case, I wanted to post this and my poem today to mark the week since the tragedy. I’ve not been able to concentrate on much else; everything else seems rather trivial at the moment, particularly when you think about the amount of money spent on Valentine’s Day when people have nothing.

I hope my poem is respectful; I wanted to try and work through that day in my mind and to be evocative of the landscape. I hope in some small way it speaks for what we’re all feeling at the moment.

I don’t think any of us can ever really understand what it must have been like on that day but I found this video by someone who filmed the Churchill fire; it killed 21 people, 1 near where she was filming at Jeeralang. It really brings the impact home, particularly when you hear the wind howling.

It really was hell on Earth.

Image: Smoke Clouds ~ Jety

Red sunrise burning
Wind howling amongst the trees:
Nature is unleashed

The beauty of fire:
An unstoppable fury
Dancing in the wind

Eucalypt forest:
Ancient trees of memory
Scorched by angry flames

Smoke clouding the sky:
Embers falling like raindrops
In the darkest light

Twenty years of life
Reduced to rubble and ash:
We have each other

A fallen tree trunk:
Cars abandoned by the road
Toys scattered inside

Amidst the burnt grass
A single flower remains:
A lone miracle

The sadness of night:
Survivors gather to pray
Tears fall down your face

A city of tents:
Shelter and home to many
Memories survive

Red sunset fading
Raindrops falling to the ground:
A young country mourns

Licenced under a Creative Commons Licence

This is my first post in a while. I’ve had a lot on my mind recently; I’ve been ill for most of the year now and if that wasn’t  a big enough distraction, we had a fire last week that destroyed a lot of property in our block.

The fire was scary but it could have been much worse; this was the third major fire we’ve had in several years. Eventually something serious is going to happen but getting our strata to fix it is proving very difficult.

Because of that I haven’t felt up to posting until now, but I wanted to do a Christmas post. I enjoy the time of year and I have a lot of fond memories of past Christmases with my family; hot and summery and typically Australian.

So I came up with this Aussie take on a Christmas classic. Hope you enjoy it; it was a lot of fun to write.

On the first day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
A kookaburra in a gum tree

On the second day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the third day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the fourth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the fifth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the sixth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the seventh day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the eighth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Eight emus a-running
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the ninth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Nine sharks a-biting
Eight emus a-running
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the tenth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Ten echidnas a-digging
Nine sharks a-biting
Eight emus a-running
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the eleventh day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Eleven possums a-playing
Ten echidnas a-digging
Nine sharks a-biting
Eight emus a-running
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My good mate sent to me
Twelve wombats a-wambling
Eleven possums a-playing
Ten echidnas a-digging
Nine sharks a-biting
Eight emus a-running
Seven koalas a-sleeping
Six kangaroos a-hopping
Five Russell Crowes
Four cockatoos
Three black swans
Two platypuses
And a kookaburra in a gum tree!

Update: It’s December 25th now so I just wanted to add that I hope everyone has a joyous Christmas and my sincerest wishes for a peaceful and safe New Year. I’ll see you all in a couple of days.

Images from Wikimedia Commons

The next day of life:
Sorrow rising with the sun
A broken heart mourns

Memories of you:
A kiss under candlelight
Our daughter’s first smile

Clothes in the closet
Sleeping in an empty bed:
An intense longing

Faces on billboards
Flags unmoving in the breeze:
Two towers falling

One among thousands
Lying in a smoky grave:
Irreplaceable

A river of dreams:
Thoughts of a different life
I shall not forget

Our children playing:
Moments of laughter and joy
Love lasts forever

Rain striking windows
Sunset on the horizon:
Life begins again

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When I started this blog two years ago I had a different idea of what I wanted it to be about. You see, ever since I’ve been young I’ve wanted to be a journalist. If you asked me why, I’m not sure I could say; maybe I just wanted to be like Clark Kent (I had glasses too) but I remember being interested in the news and knowing that was what I wanted to do with my life. It probably helped that I had an interest in writing, but even then my style was more suited to essays than fiction or poetry. In high school I wrote an article about life in the 60s which became my first publication and that just confirmed my feelings.

In the end it didn’t work out the way I had planned. My last few years of school were miserable; I was ill and and by the time I had finished, my dream of a journalistic career had faded away. For a while I was bitterly disappointed but after a couple of months I threw myself into the next best thing: my fiction and within a few months had several stories published and started studying philosophy on the side. Basically that has been my routine ever since but I never stopped wanting to be a journalist. In many ways it’s my biggest regret.

I had maintained a website for several years, a CV with links to my work, and in 2006 I decided it was time for a redesign… but then I had an idea. One of the problems I had was that my work was speculative fiction; I’d had feedback that publishers liked my writing but didn’t get what I was writing about. But what if I created a column on my site which explored the same themes? That way I’d have something else I could show to publishers as well, to show that my writing was about an examination of life and philosophy, not just science. And so I created an early version of A Writer’s Life, and moved it to WordPress in 2007.

A Writer’s Life was never meant to be a blog as such; it wasn’t meant to be updated frequently and I didn’t expect comments or care about stats. My early posts were like a newspaper column and the blog’s purpose was just to exist for my work. But then a funny thing happened. Some of my posts started getting picked up by other sites. Suddenly I was being cited as CJ Writer, not CJ Levinson. And then people started commenting. To be honest those first comments freaked me out and I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t written those posts to be read and suddenly people were asking me questions! Help!

But slowly I realised people were responding because they liked what I wrote and their comments made my posts much richer than if I had just turned the comments off. Over several months I started to look at blogging as an outlet and a means of communication rather than as a tool, and my writing style changed to reflect that. Blogging became part of my routine; I looked forward to it and A Writer’s Life started to take on a life of its own.

But several months ago that changed. It started with a comment I received on my blog about my name, that I used CJ rather than Christopher. It was just a troll and it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did; and then a few months ago I was viciously abused in a comment I deleted – only for the commenter to come back, accuse me of censorship and make the first lot of abuse look eloquent. I deleted that too but I started to wonder if it was really worth the effort. Blogging had started to feel like a chore.

At the same time as all this I have been very ill; I’m only just starting to recover now and the result was that I decided to have a break for a couple of months, have a think about things and hopefully come back feeling refreshed. What I didn’t realise was that people would start to wonder if something was wrong and I’m sorry if I worried anyone. I appreciate all your comments and emails; they’ve helped me more than you can know.

But now I’m back! I’ve had time to think and I’m looking forward to writing some new posts. For a while I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to come back but in the end A Writer’s Life still represents, if only in a small way, the life I never had. I’m not ready to let go of that yet. But I will be making some changes to the blog over the next few weeks. I might not post as frequently and I’m looking at ways to stop these trolls – and splogs. I also plan to share some of my photography as well, which I’ve never done before. Scary.

So that’s the story of how I came to blogging. I never really wanted to be a blogger but in the end blogging has given me the chance to fulfil a part of my childhood dream and that’s been a wonderful thing. The blog continues to evolve as I evolve as a person; it’s no longer a column as much as a reflection of my life and philosophy and there have been more positives than negatives. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that – but then, what dream ever turns out exactly the way we’d planned?

There are many childhood dreams I’d love to fulfil. I’ve always wanted to see more of the world; to own my own home; to have a novel published; to start a small bookshop; to meet someone to spend my life with. We’ll just have to see how those go. My dream of becoming a journalist won’t happen but in this blog I get to write about the topics I would have written about. I get to live a small part of my dream; not many people can say that.

Our dreams guide us and I think it’s the attempt that matters most, that we try to reach them even if we never do. They’re the reason I write; they’re why I started this blog after one of my dreams died. And they’ve helped me to meet people like you, who I’d never have met. Doesn’t seem like a bad trade-off now, does it?

A lone voice crying:
Tears of sorrow on the wind
A dream forgotten

A lone voice singing:
Music of laughter and joy
A future revealed

The Galleon
CJ Levinson

In my dreams I see a distant land
Surrounded by a vast ocean and shadows
On the sands of that desolate place
Lies the wreck of an old galleon
Tall and shattered, all that remains
Is its weathered and half-buried frame
A relic from an ancient past
That no one remembers

What brought it here I do not know
Nor what became of its prized cargo
Of gold, sandalwood and cinnamon,
And slaves taken far from their homes
It seems a sad fate; but if you listen carefully
Sometimes you can still hear its stories
Whispered on the wind
Whilst it stands sentry over the night

Far in the distance a small cemetery
Marks the last resting place of the dead,
A wooden cross beside each grave
Watching over their nameless remains
How many survived and for how long
Is something only the sands can know;
I can only imagine how it must have felt
To be destined to die alone

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The Garden’s End
CJ Levinson

Unlock the chains around your heart
Let me find a way inside
Let me see where your thoughts begin
And where your hopes and dreams die
Everything you wanted means nothing now
No one noticed you but me
I’ll dream of you · tonight

If I could raise the dead with words
And see through your lonely eyes
Find you again at the garden’s end
Would you still occupy my mind?
Cast out from everything you know
There is nowhere you’d rather be
I’ll weep for you · tonight

Once I dreamt of another world
Of the sun and moon and stars
Walking beside you, I was a better man
But all dreams fade with time
And this place could never have been our home

Do you lie awake next to him
Surrounded by your sorrows in the night?
No one wanted this after so many years
But your heart knows it’s the only way
It’s too late to start again
And too hard to say goodbye

If I could hold you now
Look upon your face
There’s so much I would say
My heart goes with you · tonight

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