The day we went to Vienna.

There are many beautiful and marvellous and fantastic pieces to see in the exhibition but in total it left me a bit cold - something staid and 'managed' about the arrangements seems to make it a quaint assembly, rather than the hopeful collective outburst that it was (in its day).

The disparity between the works - both in style and scale, and simply as objects - is difficult to handle perhaps. It is quite possible that, in a couple of the rooms, I was capable of taking in little more than what it was that I was seeing as I walked by each thing - that is a poster, that is a chair, that is a model, that is a drawing, that is a glass, that is a skirt, that is a bust, that is a painting. And beside the numerous great but frankly cumbersome chests and tables (never mind the giant posters that bedeck the NGV's outside walls), some of the exhibition's most provocative works are small, and seem almost wishy-washy.

I will have to go back I will have to go back.

Colour me Fool.

This week for Michi: Sonia Delaunay

Thursday was a good day. I managed to make this simple invitation, and construct five one-line poems with scalpel and glue to submit to Volume Three of Steamer.

I would mention a Vietnamese dinner on Victoria Street but I didn't take in the name of the restaurant, so I can't. Except to say that you take the 109 tram from East Melbourne along Victoria Parade, dismount at Lennox Street and cross the road. You pass by several eateries, wonder to yourself why any proprietor would choose a meaty dahlia pink for the interior walls of their establishment, realise that you really are short of time, stop at the window of a long restaurant that (in your mind now) has a low-level mezzanine - and a choice of green or yellow or black chopsticks - and you enjoy a tasty meal of tea and spring rolls and noodle soups.

Later you forego a tram and hurry up and down Church Street, to find the "ethereal" She Hunter performing at the GB.

Oh and - last week for Michi girl: Banana Yoshimoto inspired by Nadiele's great shirt.

We sat in her courtyard behind her store and watched her small garden and the two chain-of-hearts plants - one that flourishes and another that has a head of grassy hair (but still does better than the one in my kitchen) - and we wondered about blogs and posting pictures of the sky.

 

Before I was tired even of the sky.

This week for Michi: Stevie Smith

I began this blog with some lines from Stevie Smith - I could make her its nominal patron, except that when she is not fun, she is most depressing.