The Maltese Falcon still the stuff of dreams

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Just watched film noir classic The Maltese Falcon with Josiah. Still an excellent, face paced movie that keeps you in despite the lack of Avatar-like effects.

When Humphrey Bogart grimaces the line, “The stuff that dreams are made of” and stares longingly into the distance at the close of the movie, there is just a moment when we all look with him, and wonder.

Anyway, I’m still a sucker for a 1930s gangster movie. Must have been all that time watching movies while doing a Film Study major at UTS a million years ago…

Bogart’s line is a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148-158

I wonder if Prospero grimaced?

Speaking of grimacing, The Sydney Festival  has created a few (grimaces that is) with its inclusion of Hamlet in German this month. Many are wondering what good is an English classic in a foreign language?

Given that this most quoted of plays is set in Denmark, perhaps German is closer to reality. In any case the amazing set, mesmerising acting of lead actor Lars Eidinger and direction of Thomas Ostermeier has led to these exuberant reviews:

‘Hamlet rages and blows across the stage, a Gollum on ecstasy, a mama’s boy, spoiled brat, an exploding nerd, who takes his feigned madness so far that it becomes his undoing.’ – Süddeutsche Zeitung

‘Startlingly and shockingly replete with the issues of the here and now… It is a tour de force.’ – British Theatre Guide

And if all else fails, according to the Sydney Festival website, there are subtitles…

If that all is all too much, settle for 12 seconds of Bogart and sit back and contemplate, what are dreams made of?

PH

PS What is the collective noun for grimaces?

Today I…

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Today I- followed up a young person we rescued from a dangerous situation on the weekend; listened as an elderly believer shared her life story with me; lifted chairs with a man from our community lunch who used to swear constantly but now only says ‘bloody’; helped a neighbour park a car; started setting up our office after re-location; picked my wife up from work, on time; remembered to book dinner our for our anniversary tomorrow night; drove to Bowral and back for the wedding rehearsal of a young couple I’m marrying on Saturday; froze as the mist descended; hugged a friend just returned from overseas; watered my tomatoes; learned that the father of a friend has tragically died from injuries sustained in a car accident; prayed.

You’re breathing in
The highs and lows
We call it living

In this needle and haystack life
I found miracles there in your eyes
It’s no accident we’re here tonight
We are once in a lifetime

Switchfoot
Needle and Haystack Life
Hello Hurricane

PH

Rain on Uluru

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I have been searching for video of the December 23, 2009 downpour that covered Uluru. Not easy to find, but…Click here  for a short video on zimbio.com, courtesy of Reuters.
God has refreshed the geographic heart of our nation, and it feels to me that something similar is occurring spiritually…

Hardware handshake

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There are two competing hardware stores on opposite corners of Booth St, Annandale and I’ve always wondered how they survive in such a small shopping area and how they get along.

Both stores appear fiercely competitive for the passing trade and it would not have surprised me if their was animosity between the two. Afterall, hardware is serious business…

On January 2 as a I drove up Booth St, I saw salesmen from the opposing stores standing on their respective corners staring at each other.

Were they about to draw nail guns at 30 paces? Had one of them tipped over the other’s ladder display?

As I watched in the rear view mirror for hand gestures or ‘f’ words, I saw one of the men, clad in his shop colours, pace across the road, and, to my surprise, enjoy a hearty handshake with his counterpart, with not a flashing screwdriver in sight.

Good old Aussie mateship, in a small way like leaving the trenches in WWI to celebrate Christmas with the enemy.

Who said there’s no hope in the world?

Learn to depend on me more

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The late Canon Jim Glenon went through a severe personal crisis earlier in his life during which he reported hearing the indelible voice of God say: ‘You are to learn to depend on me more’. A ‘transposition’ ocuured in his life: ‘Instead of the previous idea of God helping me with my difficulties, now my difficulties were helping me with God… This meant that, instead of homing in on my problems, my problems were enable me to home in on God. This is what I was to learn; this is what I had to do’. PH

What are you growing this year?

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We grow what we feed. We feed what we see. We see what we choose.

Rediscovered roseI have a miniature rose in a pot in the front courtyard of our home. I had paid it little attention in the past 12 months until late October when I decided to move my tomato planting efforts to this same courtyard (inner city vegetable growing is a ‘particular’ art).

Each day as I watered, fertilised and generally yearned over my tomatoes, I would give a similar treatment to the random plants that happened to be in the same location.

The tomatoes plants duly bore fruit but what really surprised me was the literal revival in the other plants, especially the long neglected rose. It grew bushy and is now covered in about a dozen flowers.

Which illustrates well: we grow what we feed; we feed what we see; we see what we choose.

What will you see in 2010? Your choice. You may have something in the courtyard of your life waiting to flourish, but unnoticed.

Having seen it, how will you feed it? Your words, your prayers, your faith, your time, your action.

Having fed it, there is no question – it will grow. So make sure what you focus on and feed is the very will of God.

Strangely, my rose is flowering because I focused on the fruitfulness of my tomatoes and there was enough focus and feeding left over for something beautiful.

Follow the fruitful callings of God in your life and something beautiful will spring up in the midst. PH

Check out my full message on this theme titled “12”.

Heaven is particular

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“There isn’t a soul in the world whom Heaven doesn’t regard in a particular fashion. There isn’t a sigh or a word that Heaven fails to hear.” The angel Malchiah speaking in Anne Rice’s novel, Angel Time.

We are personal beings despite relentless forces to de-personalise us. We are ‘particular’ and are known by God in a particular (unique, personal, individual) way.

This gives us hope that our particular life and this particular day are known to an infinite God, intimately. PH

Eyes of Fire focus on 2010

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New Year 2010

It’s 2010 and after seeing another year in from two different locations around Sydney Harbour, one of my new year’s resolutions is to post everyday to Utterance.

breath | speak | breath – a good rhythm for life and communication. Feel free to join me this year as I search for meaning, significance, laughter, the absurd, wonder, beauty, horror, warmth, hope, life and God in each and every day. I hope my search inspires yours. PH

Before a word…

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The world has never had so many words. When we consider how few words it took to create the universe, and how many words we produce to get much less done, the efficacy of our speaking becomes questionable. How rare is it in our emails, texts, letters, conversations, sermons, speeches, and dare I say, blogs, are we truly understood. What comfort then in these ancient words of Psalm 139: ‘Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, oh Lord’. There is Someone who always knows the full intent of our words, before we speak and better even than we know ourselves.

God himself did make us…

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“…and I have to speculate that God himself
did make us into corresponding shapes like
puzzle pieces from the clay”
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights

Faith, even tentative, is often hard to find in popular culture… celebrate when you do.

Newtown south eats bacon

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Past Camden St where my second cousin Roy, blind, died after a fall. Park somewhere down Holt St because it’s before 10am and a clearway on King. Judy rings, “I’ve been given four tickets to the Swans.” Cool. Walk with one eye on passersby, other eye on shops, cafes. Leaking water at a building site with workmen and mobiles. Coffee store ‘Once-was-Allegro-now-is-Sacks’ is open. Purchase many Marogagype beans. Sales women smells the beans before sealing the coffee. “It’s a beautiful tasting coffee”. Cappuccino to go, one sugar.

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The challenge for the democratic west…

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I’m re-reading the classic science fiction trilogy, Dune, by Frank Herbert, and came across an interesting quote in a typical Herbert entree to a chapter.

In Children of Dune the quote has this citation: ‘Words of an ancient philosopher (Attributed by Harq al-Ada to one Louis Veuillot).’

Harq al-Ada is a fictional charcter while Veuillot was a 19th century journalist, man of letters and radical Catholic ultramontane which means he supported the Pope to the exclusion of local church authorities. Ultramontane means ‘dweller beyond the mountains’ (ultra montes), that is beyond the alps – referring to the Pope in Rome…

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Sleepless in the sands of time

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I woke up one night with a line from the intro to Days of Our Lives going through my head. For the record, I do not watch Days of our Lives.

While trying to get back to sleep my mind kept twisting the words back on themselves in a ridiculous attempt to come up with ‘deeper’ meaning from the same words in different order…

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‘This is not the beginning’, said Peter Hallett

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I remember learning to write in Mrs Rickard’s first grade class at Taree West Primary School. I had a bad habit, or so she felt, of wanting to add just a little more length to my strokes such as on a ‘p’ or ‘y’. The problem was that when writing with crayons, it was almost impossible to get the two strokes to join. I can still see my gangly letters with little dislocations. I got into trouble for this but, when handwriting large letters, I still do it today.

Fortunately, I don’t hand-write much anymore because it has always been reasonably illegible. But clearly I am still writing in other ways, such as right here, right now.

A blog may well be the latest in a long line of attempts to add just a little bit more to my sometimes hesitant communication. I hope some of the things I write will at least join up, perhaps with you, or someone, or God himself.

In the meantime, Sydney weather has heeded the bitter remembrances of ANZAC Day (April 25) and rushed about angrily in cold gusts all day, tempered only by the sun’s impertinent warmth. The sun has called it quits now, however, and the door is open behind me and there is cold air on my neck.

See you later.
Peter Hallett