Clive James interviewed about his works in progress

Clive James talks about his works in progress with the NYT Book Review blog - Paper Cuts.
Read the interview

Land and Sea

There is enough, there is enough.
There's enough beat to eat up the road.
To let the wheels spin again and again and again around and around the sound of the wheels in a constant ripping of the road a single constant pound of rubber on bitumen.
The scrub we pass on this hot stretch is melting into a single grey, window high blur on the sideway. I hear the cruel rasp of the engine in the heat, feel the hot wind through the vents. It's dog with his head out the window, snout to the wind, weather. And the music is blues and country and the state of being is dry. Dry and slow is all you can be, dry and slow; unless you are powered by gasoline, when you are hot and fast.

The sea. Ahh, she cradles me.. i float.
I am an earthly floating being.
I belong.
I am swallowed.
I am whole, taken in, in the water.
I am a lightened being in the ocean.

Living with Expression

I am suffering from a terrible disease: Expression. It is the worst of diseases and the best of diseases. No one can understand the depths of a truly serrious Expression. Everything around you seems like a cloud of uncertainty. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple. Everything wants an analogy, a metaphor for itself. Everything needs a pun. Everything serious is hilarious and the sufferer is prone to outbursts of giggling that he or she is the only one capable of understanding. Everything sublime is prone to bring about a spontaneous tear. Expression is lonely, it is isolating. Expression makes an otherwise simple world complicated. It leads to wasting of the body and, a sort of over thought induced numbing of the brain.

Expression is deadly, it is a kind of obsession of thoughts. Everything is something else, everything is worthy of attention, everything is everything and nothing is nothing. When nothing is nothing it is very hard to throw out things and to stop staring at something. Expression is paralyzing.

The Arrival of Claudius Beef

Claudius Beef was delivered today. He moved quickly to the truck door as it opened, but paused before going down the ramp. He could smell the wet grass and the cattle out there but wasn't going to be tricked again. The bumpy ride in that noisy cage had him rattled.

'Next time they won't load me so easily' he said, in the quiet way of a bull.

He is testy as bulls often are. He steps out quickly, half expecting the shouts of people and the flurry of activity when they try to push him where he doesn't want to go - and he will fight (they don't doubt it).

Down the ramp now and through the narrow race and out into...

Ahh. Merciful spacious pen and the soft turf underfoot. But wait, he can hardly believe it, there is another open gate and beyond it open pasture and the distinctive smell of cows.

He won't rush. It would be unseemly to rush.

He is Claudius Beef, he rushes for no-one. So he saunters, briskly, toward his open gate.

Chemotherapy

"Give him another round of chemo";
the physician peers out the window.
Silent sheets hang from the craggy frame they hide:
Invisible grey flesh,
silent tears of resignation.
A long cold winter
Longer and colder is made.
The physician playing god,
so rarely changes the outcome,
but so easily the weather.

'Feel the dark side Luke'

Two trees in Tamworth, NSW who love Star Wars

Effortful malingering is all this broken soul is capable of.
He is a shadow, a little tissue paper man with empty spaces all through him.
He wonders: who is the keeper of the birds who sends a thousand pecking spears after me;
every day.