death
FRIGHT Friday - Parenting, Fear, Hope and Salvation
Dr Joshua Hordern gives a talk for the FRIGHT Friday series of talks, held in the Ashmolean Museum on 25th November 2016.
FRIGHT Friday - Embodying Life and Death
Professor Cathy Morgan gives a talk for the FRIGHT Friday series of talks, held in the Ashmolean Museum on 25th November 2016.
The Death Masks of Macbeth
Professor Simon Palfrey discusses the deaths and afterlives of Oliver Cromwell and Macbeth In this short talk Simon Palfrey explores the deathly afterlives of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ and reads extracts from his novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth'.
Simon Palfrey is Professor of English Literature at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. His recent work explores the unique kinds of life generated by dramatic, poetic, and fictional forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more philosophically adventurous and formally imaginative criticism. As well as 'Demons Land', his current projects include a semi-autobiographical exploration of romantic poetry, 'The Mental Travellers', and a critical fiction written with Ewan Fernie, 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (Bloomsbury, 2016).
Murder
I just murdered the four red chooks. They had been guilty of eating all their own menstrual waste and tearing the feathers off each others breasts. I rung their necks. The first one was patchy, she had lost most of her feathers to the others. She had a skinny neck which softly crunched as I twisted it. It felt like grinding pepper. She struggled weakly and went limp. I laid her body on the ground. I was premature, she wasted no time and ran away. I could not catch her again easily so I grabbed another. I did not stop twisting until I felt the neck start to come apart under my fingers. She lay still when I released her. I quickly caught the patchy chook and finished her off too. Whilst trying to catch the third chook the two chooks whose necks I had already rung got to their feet. They ran with their heads hanging loosely at their sides, beaks opening and closing soundlessly. Small quantities of blood splashed the ground and loose feathers swirled around them. The paler of the two remaining chooks, disregarding the death throes of her sisters, was excitedly feasting upon the loose feathers. I grabbed her neck, wrenched and twisted it. She lay still for a moment then ran and hopped around the pen bumping into me. I instinctively grabbed her and pushed her to the back of the pen towards her now dead sisters. She turned straight back towards me her head swinging by her side her neck bulging and bleeding. I deflected her again. The smell of chicken shit, blood and my own sweat mingled in the dust. My spit tasted like iron. I turned to the last chook, she was the alpha of the flock. Her feathers were lustrous, she stood proudly and fixed me with an unforgiving yellow stare. I knew she was the reason I’d decided to kill them all. She taught them all their bad habits. She was the queen of the pen and I wished I’d killed her first. Her neck was thicker and harder to break than all the others. Even as I pulled and twisted I was afraid of her cold eyes and rank smell. Her head came away in my tightly gripped right hand and I felt dirty to my core.
When the bodies had gone flaccid I lowered them into an old rice sack and tied it tightly with some old video cables. I threw them in the bin and will take them to the city dump today. Afterwards I went inside and showered. I scrubbed myself like Pontius Pilate.
His Ancient Beach
John Lee was a friend of mine who died of old age. I say old age but the hospital would tell you it was stroke. John would have told you it was because his body betrayed him.
After going for a run this morning I climbed down the 74 steps for a morning swim. The water was cold and the waves messy. I ducked, floated and dived before finally letting the waves wash me back in. As I walked back up the steps struggling with my damp t-shirt I thought about John. He loved Murrays beach, he pulled out the bitou bushes, to give the native plants a chance, and he picked up the rubbish people left behind. He planted grass and pandanaus palms to stabilise the sand dunes, he wrote many lovely poems about his ‘ancient beach’.
I hope his family won’t mind if I share one here:
My Ancient Beach
The over-arching vault of peerless blue sky.
The metamorphic tongue of blackened rock
lancing the beach of spangling brightness
to islands beyond the surf,
now rookeries for tern and gull.
The pineappled pandanus standing stark
its roots tracking nutrients and water
as it leaches back to the sea.Crackling waves kiss the beach today
swirling round the polished pebbles
which I Agrippa ple for my Shinto garden.
The search for tranquility in my life
comes closer to fruition here
and like some druid admiring Nature
I leave offerings by taking rubbish away
pulling out weeds and starting out
a host of young pandanus
to reach out and touch the sky.
John
John amongst the flora of his ancient beach
That’s that then
A friend of mine died last night, John was an old fellow who lived up Coro Ave. Eighty five years old he was. We became friends after he mentored Choppy and I down on the sand dunes. He was passionate about regenerating the foreshores of our local beach, he showed us the Bitou bush and how to kill them. He shared with me his love for Sawtell.
Over the years the knobbly knees on his long gangly legs began to grate and grind. Johns knees were buggered and constantly frustrated him. With the aid of a wheely frame we tried walking together down to the surf club, it was incredibly difficult for him. He knew it was his last walk to the surf club saying simply, “That’s that then”.
The next day a visiting health worker told him he would have to go into care. John fell into a final depression which ended a few days later with him tumbling out of bed and cracking his head. He had been popping the warfarin like lollies so he bled freely and fell unconscious. I visited John a few times during the day in the hospital. He never regained consciousness and died in the evening surrounded by his lovely family who had rushed to be with him.
John on one of his delightful visits in our kitchen
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