domenica, settembre 02, 2012

Asiatica

We took off to Brisbane this weekend past. I needed a little, I don't know. Gallery time, I suppose. Something for me before the baby comes. Galleries and restaurants and hotel sex, like the last 13 years, which are about to come to a crashing, shrieking, uterus-clenching, insomniac, impoverished end. Of course we'll try to break the baby into galleries and restaurants and we'll see how that all goes. My hopes aren't high.

But this weekend was rather lovely, even though I felt like a whale and huffed and puffed my way up stairs and had to have naps and things. We went to GOMA, which is my favourite modern art gallery, as far as modern art galleries go, because it tends to have a lot of Asian modern art in it, which tends toward - at least what makes it to Australia tends toward - the representational and communicative and therefore not the wankery. Here's an excerpt from what was the highlight for me. And of course it's not just the communicativeness, it's communication from a poorly-known other. I spent a good 31 years being a pure Europhile with vague ideas of everything east of the Urals being the place Marco Polo discovered spaghetti.

Asia is making Australia bearable for me in other ways. I've started my contemporary Chinese politics course - the one whose exam I'm deferring until sometime next year as it'll overlap with Ren getting born - and it's fascinating. There's no doubt the terrorism course I did earlier this year was a poor offering, but it was even poorer for me because of its overlap with my graduate studies. But these - as far as Mistress La Spliffe is concerned, these are uncharted and fascinating waters. It's more my job than Australia which has got me into all of it, of course, but Australia and my job aren't really separable at the moment, and it is rather fantastic to have cheap school in English again.

2 commenti:

e.f. bartlam ha detto...

Speaking of child fatigue and hotel sex...I arranged for Martha to stay in a hotel Sunday night.

It was obvious she needed a break.

When she got home she was a new woman. She said it was perfect...except, real cold blooded like, "I needed you for about 15 minutes."

Like I'm some kinda giggilo...get in, do my bidding and get the **** out!

HA!

Mistress La Spliffe ha detto...

That's hilarious. At least she named a fairly charitable amount of time.