By baruk on March 5, 2012
i constantly think about death. i wonder what it would feel like to be dead, and the different ways i might go. when ecstatic, it seems good to die at the height of one’s joy. when in the dumps, death seems a release. this is a bit of an improvement, actually…i used to wonder what it would be like if various people in my life were to die. i did not wish them dead, just wondered how i would feel if they did.
morbid, certainly, and somehow…strange.
then i read ‘daytripper’. the series of 10 stories follows the various deaths of Bras de Oliva Domingos, at various stages/ages in his life (heh). the stories range from the mystical to the innocent to the hopeful to the gritty. in quite a few of them Bras is an obituarist, and each of the stories ends with a short obit. the series is beautifully drawn+coloured, and complements the text very well.
i feel less strange now.
go here for another review. and here for what would have been an awesome obit.
buy, steal, borrow.
Posted in uncategorised | Tagged daytripper, death, review(ish) |
By baruk on January 11, 2012
and you know it’s all getting a bit much
when auckland-in-the-rain just looks like
…auckland.
Posted in photos, uncategorised | Tagged auckland, bus, cellphone photography, newmarket, rain |
By baruk on December 21, 2011
an interesting thing happened while we were watching the finals of the rugby world cup on marsden wharf earlier this year. this was the third wharf set up with large screens, but there was still a massive crowd, and this about an hour before the game started. we thought we were lucky to get to the front…till we realised that the crowd was mostly drunk teens whooping it up, in the mistaken notion that we were remotely interested in how they had painted their chests to look like the all blacks jerseys. i tried a few times to get them to sit bloody down, and was beginning to lose my patience. then the anthems (of france and aotearoa nz) came on.
now my experience of hearing the national anthem sung in public is that you can hardly hear people sing the māori part of the anthem, while the english bit is bellowed out, usually loud enough to raise the dead. i was very touched, and rather surprised, to hear no audible difference in the volume of the crowd’s singing the english and māori parts! the kids obviously knew the entire anthem well, and were glad to sing it out loud!
the point? as i watch the battle auckland council and businesses wage against street art, i sometimes despair. there is a marked preference for fascist gray over the swirls and swoops of the muticolour pacific. then i remember the rugby finals and the kids singing, and realise that change WILL come. change will come as long as a) the kids learn a better way, and b) we old bastards die.
yay.
Posted in uncategorised | Tagged aotearoa new zealand, auckland, graffiti, maori, street art
By baruk on November 6, 2011
auckland playback theatre acting out the story of how arul and i gatecrashed a wedding the first (second?) time we met in person.
a few weeks ago, arul died.
i refuse to mourn. i miss him, and there is much i wish we could have talked about, and maybe i could have been less ‘tough’ with him…but i refuse to mourn a hardcase who left a flash job at microsoft to write songs in trichy, who habitually pointed out that none of the emperors had any clothes on, who died doing what he bloody *believed, not what he was told to do.
wherever you are, my brother, i know you are making them *squirm. you’ll need to, you are always ta’fxkz.
Posted in uncategorised | Tagged arul baliah, auckland playback theatre, ta'fxkz |
By baruk on October 6, 2011
dee and i went for some pottery classes recently, and these are my results. the ones i like, anyway. awesome experience, and something i am considering continuing. there is something primal about the whole thing that i find very attractive. i love that most pottery is functional, that it takes hard(ish) physical work, that it takes years to master, that it uses fire to turn earth into stone, that the studio is in onehunga…
the website of the auckland studio potters society
Posted in etc | Tagged auckland studio potters, onehunga, pottery
By baruk on September 12, 2011
2010
2011
some days work is a chore to get through. it *can get tiring to be constantly nice to people, specially when so many of those people seem to think it is somehow your privilege to be nice to them and clean up after them and answer a million questions because they can’t be arsed reading the goddamn manual. then there is comic month and cosplay, and things aren’t as bad any more. staff who are on their weekend come in *in costume, and things are turning positively mushy. a *whole bunch of people (many from auckland university cosplay club) turn up for the event and hey… it is *awesome to work at onehunga library again! perspective, huh?
here’s the album on the onehunga library facebook page, and the only video it occurred to us to take. is gonna get SO much better next year!
Posted in uncategorised | Tagged comic book month, cosplay, dress up, library, onehunga |
By baruk on August 30, 2011
the wind whispers
and there is no smell of ash
or the creaking sounds
of a world turning to rust
the wind howls
and there is no smell of ash
or the creaking sounds
of a world turning to rust
and in the end
everything changes
and everything
remains the same
Posted in poems | Tagged as, change, rust, wind, world |
By baruk on July 22, 2011
travelling is nice. while away, i learned that
- kissing is prohibited on kuala lumpur trains.
- maharashtrians sometimes burn tobacco and use it to clean their teeth.
- in telugu, the the honorofic ‘garu‘ can be used for both men and women.
- water is boiled with cardamom in kerala, giving the water a subtle flavour like green tea.
- in bengaluru/bangalore, rum is sometimes sold in tetra-packs.
most importantly, though,
- in a pinch, you can use shampoo to wash a tee shirt.
Posted in uncategorised |
By baruk on June 14, 2011
photo copyleft nick wheeler
taking a bit of a break. in the meantime, you might
read the sly company of people who care, go the fuck to sleep, yellow face or kenji;
listen to b-side beats, found sounds, or ta’fxkz;
watch theo jansen or two cars, one night;
see you in six(ish) weeks!
Posted in uncategorised |
