God’s silence
triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13)
The theory of loose parts - Simon Nicholson. He promotes the opposite of a world of fixed elements, of museums of cabinets, a society of no touching, excessive signage, and fixed seating. Instead, variables open to creative thinking, spontaneity, collaboration and change.
In England, leaving a gathering without saying goodbye is called "a French exit" or "an Irish goodbye". To slip away in France is to “filer à l'anglaise”, to leave the English way. In Germany, one might make
“Polnischen Abgang” - a Polish departure. In the Netherlands, the phrase is “de rattentaxi nemen” - to take the rat taxi.
The false freedom of excess.
It is Wednesday and I am in the middle of dying.
Though its roots date back to the outlaw culture of the 1920s, hot-rodding - the practice of modifying cars for greater speed and power - gained traction during the Great Depression and surged again after the second world war, as veterans returned home with mechanical skills and a need for thrills and adrenaline.
Dench pays touching tribute to departed friends including the late Maggie Smith, whom she says was "a very complex person - intensely private, and I suspect quite lonely at times; she'd occasionally erect an electric fence around herself"
“I'm trying to write about footy and my grandson and me," explains Garner midway through this slender volume. "About boys at dusk. A little life-hymn. A poem. A record of a season we are spending together before he turns into a man and I die." Helen Garner
I hope we never find her. I hope we never stop looking
