dominic rivron is a bad man

so, off the back of dominic's generous making mp3s link in the last post i get to thinking about the capture of sound, about its notation and reproduction. and while it's true i haven't even dented the previously discussed sound project i do have a piano. yes, i do have a piano.

so off up the stairs to do some plinky plonky explorations. and what fun!

except for the bit where i'm aware that i have to be able to do this again. naturally i can't figure out how the computer connects up to the piano. and naturally it's too much hassle to get the microphone set up and even if i did my tone memory is something so far in the past i don't how reliable it would be, if it ever was.

so i'm left to write down the notes. of course intuitively i should know how they go together, but will i? and what about some sort of time signature. which means of course i need some sheet music rather than the blank page shorthand i'm using. sheet music! i haven't written anything on sheet music for thirty years!

so thank you dominic rivron for introducing yet another time vampire into the time constricted boundaries of my day! and y way of doing so, a big fat smile on my face!

singing and the like

the great potential of the net shows itself yet again with dominic's idea for a web singalong of purcell. it's a great idea and one day i really will need to try and get myself taught to use all that software magubbinry.

particularly because i was very much taken with the soundslides here (and the bike ride of course). i'd highly recommend, no really stop what you're doing and take the time, to have a browse of this guys soundslides. they are great and demonstrate (to me anyway) just how superfluous tv is these days

john clare

Secret Love

I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.

I met her in the greenest dells
Where dewdrops pearl the wood blue bells
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town
Till e'en the breeze would knock me down,
The bees seemed singing ballads oer,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.

it's latin radio

it's a long winter in finland. or it must be something like that....

whatever, back in the day i used to like a listen to the news in latin. years went by, i lost the link and spoken latin seemed to disappear. but not today! thanks to finnish radio there is this

wonderful!

in the ambulance

various thing have been missed. certainly my person's need for beta blocking was discussed at handover but it wasn't done. and when i finally get to ccu they're stressed because 'they've been wanting a review' and while they say they've paged my colleague they haven't paged me, which they always do if they know i'm on.

anyway my mi person, who's been thrombolysed, had good resolution, has decided that the bowels need moving and that valsalva action has got his st's all elevated again. time for a speedy transfer for some angioplasty type action. and he's not looking well, tho better than he does by the time he gets to the ambulance by which time he's gone all bradycardic and dropped his pressure. a swift call to my senior ensues. er, i'm not liking the look of this at all.

we stop his nitrates and give him some atropine. it works a treat. if we have problems my senior says, stop at an a&e along the way. we all look at each other. stop at an a&e say the ambulance guys. blue light i say and no hanging about.

we have various monitor and iv fiddling about to do as the ambulance gets off. sometimes i feel like i'm in a sort of space capsule, the darkness outside and all the world compressed into a point of time inside. you look at the monitor watching for any change in obs. does your person look a bit peaky. normal stuff like breathing you just can't hear over the noise of the van. i realise way too late that i haven't used the monitor/pacing box for weeks and i can't remember quite how it all works. not good.

but my person is fine and the ambulance crews know what they're doing. plus if the worst does come to the worst resuscitation is something we can all do almost without thinking. it's the peri arrest phase that's complicated and difficult. that said when we finally get to the destination and our person is delivered we're all relieved. i have a conversation with the ambulance guys about the importance of not being stressed, or at least the appearance of it. this, i say, is not what we're paid for. so you were calm when we were leaving they ask. we nearly didn't leave i say, smiling and we all laugh at this.

so, finally i get back and find the ccu staff discussing whether their patient might have prinzmetals rather than an mi, a left field bit of diagnosis from them that suggests something overheard rather than reasoned and maybe it's a bit of compensation for not escalating the situation quick enough. whatever. i start working on responding to the shouty anaesthetist who's not happy about some overnight care that somehow he's decided i'm responsible for. maybe he has a point, it's easy to be wise after the fact (or if, in this case, you haven't read the notes!)

it's all in a day's (night's) work. people somehow think i like being in the back of the ambulance but it's not true. if i could send someone else i would but we don't have the staff so more often than not it comes down to me. it's a self reflexive exercise. am i good enough? is there anybody better? what are the risks? if it was me who would i want in the back of the van with me?

for now it's me but there's never a moment when i don't wish that i wasn't sitting back in my office, feet up, reading a book, everybody well, me not needed. bliss indeed!

people ask me

what sort of cycling i like best. all of it but most of all something like the feeling of this, which was already starting to die out when i was young but the notion of which got me out on my bike and keeps me there.

readings

i do two readings this weekend, one in perth and one in edinburgh. the perth one is shorter, an open mic type event and most of the people i know or have met before. we have a few laughs, there's less obvious drunken-ness than the last time and i don't have to do on the spot ad libs which is a relief!

sunday i go off to rob mckenzie's grv night where i'm first up before tessa ransford and rober alan jamieson. i don't do nerves, not since i had the realisation that i spend some forty odd hours of my week speaking to strangers on subjects a sight more tense than a poetry reading, but even so it's a quality line up and i don't want to let the side down. plus colin has made the trip up from dunbar and i'm giving some of the island poems an airing.

i have the timer on my phone, which is a help as time goes by quicker than i thought. i open with the island poems, do a couple of the science-y poems (which i've subbed last minute for the edinburgh poems as there's not that many edinburgh people there!), three work poems, the black bicycle just to give myself pause, a couple of 'issue' poems and a couple of domesticana poems to finish. which sounds a lot, mainly because it is, but it also meant i missed out on a bunch of other themes.

and it all seemed to go down okay. i did the leonids poem for t, seeing as its one of her favourites and i like reading it more and more, tho there's a sticky line in it still i'm not happy with. the work poems i'd been uncertain about, not just because i haven't read them in public but because of the subject matter which, it has to be said, i'd toned down, or so i'd thought. folk seemed into them tho possibly, as i'd hoped, because it was an area that was new to them. i think my favourite of the night was a list poem where i mull over scottish minerals.

i'd been looking forward to having a blether to colin on that score but he, like us, needed to be off and by that time i was ensconced in various conversations which included one about the exeter book and things old english ( sorry about that colin!), topics i don't often get a chance to get involved in. it turns out tessa had done a poem in connection with the exeter book also, which i'll stick up here at some point as it's rather lovely. it was grand to be able to talk about language just a shame we didn't have more time. esp for colin donati, whose scots version of jabberwocky was t's poem of the night but given, his, mine and tessa's discussion on old english and the like, something she never got to tell him.

a big thanks to rob for sticking me on and, assuming i can get the time off, we look forward to the discussed february date.

william cowper

The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cried--Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

else lasker-schuler

Ein alter Tibetteppich

Deine Seele, die die meine liebet,
Ist verwirkt mit ihr im Teppichtibet.

Strahl in Strahl, verliebte Farben,
Sterne, die sich himmellang umwarben.

Unsere Füße ruhen auf der Kostbarkeit,
Maschentausendabertausendweit.

Süßer Lamasohn auf Moschuspflanzenthron,
Wie lange küßt dein Mund den meinen wohl
Und Wang die Wange buntgeknüpfte Zeiten schon?

An old Tibetan rug

Your soul, which loveth mine,
Is woven with it into a rug-Tibet.

Strand by strand, enamoured colours,
Stars that courted each other across the length of heavens.

Our feet rest on the treasure
Stitches-thousands-and-thousands-across.

Sweet lama-son on your musk-plant-throne
How long has your mouth been kissing mine,
And cheek to cheek colorfully woven times?

trans unknown

thanls to roxana for raising else lasker-schuler on the poetic radar. but really more for maschentausendabertausendweit which must surely be my new favourite german word

ileana malancioiu

The Doctor on Duty

Go away quickly, she said to me, I'm afraid,
you see that Doctor X is on duty
he surely knows what to give me to help me to breathe,
he told me nobody dies while he's on the ward.

And indeed, that very young doctor
who was not as famous as his heart was good
came in the middle of the night and gave her
something that kept her breathing until the next day.

Afterwards she understood
that his shift was finished and we had started
that terrible day about which already
she had begun to say it would never be over.

The one who was on duty looked down
on us without interfering:
I never said that nobody dies
while I am on duty, I am not at fault.

trans eilean ni chuilleanain


My Sister Beyond

My sister beyond
keeps her head bent
near the horse shot dead
frail and bony
his saddle falls.

I can't stay longer
on that bony back ,
I fell
waving a dry branch
even before I crossed
the fatal boundary.

Let your soul stay
near me
like the saddle I mount
and then dismount in spring
when the grass
of the neglected garden greens.

Silently the horse collects
his scattered skeleton
leaving only his spirit
on the other shore
she mounts his saddle
in her velvet dress
he shows her how to hold her seat.

Night comes to the garden
full of strange horse-breathing
that struggles to continue
even when the sun shines.

I hear his hooves tramp
his nostrils snort
as they snorted in times past.
I find the trace
of his wet rolling
where the grass is greenest.

The grass springs back
the trace vanishes
my sister rides the horse
across the plain
and drinks the water of life.

Meekly I approach
the deserted fountain
a broken balance
this is the place
for the midnight struggle.

My sister is beyond
I see her leave
on her magic horse
that was shot one year ago.


trans joanne growney and radu doru cormin

rilke

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me - the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods -
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open windowin a country house - and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon, -
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, seperate, in the evening…


and for the german speakers....

Du im Voraus
verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene,
nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind.
Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt,

zu erkennen. Alle die großen
Bilder in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft,
Städte und Türme und Brücken und un-
vermutete Wendung der Wege
und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern
einst durchwachsenen Länder:
steigt zur Bedeutung in mir
deiner, Entgehende, an.

Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus - , und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich, -
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die Spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild. - Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?

selling a bike

after being unable to sell my (motor) bike earlier in the summer - got to be thankful for the credit crunch for something - it turns out i've got someone interested in my old alpinestars almega that's been sitting as a rebuild project in my garage/shed/flats since about 1997.

and yet when i got it all out yesterday and took pictures for the guy who's going to restore it i couldn't help but get mist eyed. here was the custom lacquered frame of my early mountain biking days, the first really 'fast' bike i'd had, my pride and joy, the scene of many of those early adventures. in the end it got itself replace with a univega y bike that i never really preferred and i stupidly loaned it to an idiot who never cleaned it which is how it ended up in bits. the friendship never really recovered!

it's just a stack of metal and bits yet i feel very attached to it, just like the worn out bits of kit i can't part with and leave out for t to dispose of when i'm not looking. what is it that makes us so attached to inanimate things. i can;t figure it out. whatever, the bike is going, it has to go. at least until i change my mind!

the astronomy

as i ambled my way back into consciousness on saturday the phone rang. geo and fs were up at the bothy. telescopes had been set up. did we want to come? t and i unfurled our inner geeks and set off immediately.

true the quietest and loveliest part of our day was the walk up the glen, geo being a person who fears the quiet, so that the rest of our weekend was accompanied to the sound of constant radio 3 and the winding up of radios but this was small complaint in light of our location, where t had not not been.

i'd talked up fs and his sky knowledge what with him being qualified in the astrphysics and all and he didn't let us down. within an hour the clarity of the sky was letting us seeing the banding on jupiter. as the night fell t managed to spot all manner of other things including andromeda, the beehive cluster. shooting stars and satellites among others. later i'd get a spot of jupiter with all four moons.

but really what beguiled us, as usual, was, in the absence of any significant light pollution, the night sky and how fabulously ignorant we are of it. having a mate to guide you round it and having the time to see how it moves is well worth it. we had a real sense of how truncated our city type life is by not being able to do that thing that most of our ancestors could - looking up and being amazed.

as ever with the astronomy our time was limited by incoming cloud so by morning (the pics above) the glen was much more what you'd expect of an october morning in scotland. what you can't hear is the shouting of the deer...

david crystal

no t in the house to distract me, tv watching creeps insidiously into my tea time. in this case it's the bbc's it's only a theory, a dreadfully formatted programme in which various academic types present theories to a panel and they vote on whether it's valid. awful, esp when you've got someone genuinely interesting on.

in this case, david crystal. i loved crystal's books when i was doing the linguistics bit of my last degree, so much so i'd still really fancy doing more education solely on the topic. but, it struck me as i saw his name pop up in the schedules, i've never actually heard him speak.

brilliant. proper boffin beard, passionate enthusiastic, fighting the corner of the young with respect to language and his theory that texting is good for english, not bad. watch it on iplayer. dreadful programme ( it is tv!) but worth it for him alone. thoughts of dc are available at his blog

what books would i recommend? all of them!

back to work

back to work this week and not just in the sense of yet more days off. it may be that my computer is a bit knackered as a result of favour based shenanigans, it may be i have more money in my bank account as a result of the white space not occupied by the illustrations i'm waiting for. yes, all these things may cause grumpiness but coming back to work dealing with a man younger than me dying (just dying, open and shut as we say) of cancer and another girl, ages with my daughter, who's just out of massive surgery, also for cancer (but really, really interesting cancer the circumstances of which i can't really talk about) and for whom i get to exercise the sort of silky skills i haven't used since my oncology days.

i'm also finding myself quite motivated by the whole shadowing experience still and i have to smile when i hear that i'm getting a reputation for giving them a hard time on the skills front. in a good way! i don't really recognise this person i seem to have become, but it's nice to be in his shoes, even if i feel there is a pressure to live up to him, but a good pressure. even then tho, the sense of change. i have a conversation with one of the senior charge nurses the other day where i was critical of the current vogue to have seniors not actually doing physical work. but, i considered, maybe it's just the role, and maybe it's just the times, and our time is coming to an end.

i have to smile at that. i remember being told, that expectation, you will change things. have i managed that? i've been involved in some fundamental change for sure but the things i wanted to do? deep down that's maybe just an ethos and that, a person either has or they don't. big manoeuvrings with bosses going on this week. i'm unbothered. it's not these people who bother me, more the situation they're in, self inflicted maybe, but which shapes their behaviours. and above them the directors, the executive, all of whom seem to have some sort of gravitation to the shouty, the hectoring, as if that of itself will achieve what they term progress. no, not for those of us who do physical, hands on work it doesn't. insulated form anything but their own self-importance and un-questioned by a local and national media, their apotheosis is, these days, alex salmond who, i heard in a recent story, exemplified their approach in a shouty, finger wagging bit of bluster with the diageo boss. which didn't work. nice one eck.

but you can't change what you can't change. politicians, career managers and their ilk, might consider, rather than just trotting out the words, that public service is a privilege,that caring for people, caring, in some way for the wider society, is indeed deeply fruitful and worthwhile. putting yourself amongst such people, that group you could knowingly refer to as 'the people', doing something, even if it doesn't necessarily succeed, allowing yourself the luxury of belief, that'll do it