Olaf Schneider Christmas 2005

Interactive animations inspired by Russell Hoban writings

NOTE: Be sure to have the sound turned on for these Flash animations, and to give them a few moments to load. All open in a new window as they are hosted externally. You need to have installed Flash version 5 or later to view them. If you don't, download it for free.

Enjoy! - Olaf

Voices of the Starfield

Max and Lola, Lola and Max... a beautiful new animation based on a key scene from Her Name Was Lola, created specially for Christmas 2005.

The Pigeons of Trafalgar Square

An epic journey through the London landmark, as celebrated in Amaryllis Night and Day. Another Christmas special.

Andrew Simmons 2005

A very happy birthday, Mr Hoban.

My SA4QE lies in Queen's Park, Toowoomba, Australia and is simply:

Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding?

from Turtle Diary

Turtle Diary found me at a time of great misery through a series of astounding coincidences (but then, there are no incidences) and retains a personal significance beyond words. I have bought and given away my copies many times.

Thank-you Mr Hoban, and have a wonderful day.

Ra McGuire 2005

I am proud to add Canada (and specifically White Rock, BC) to the list of locations that have been 4Qated.

I am also proud of myself for getting it together this year to celebrate Mr. H's Birthday with this wonderful activity.

My quote is:

Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillnesses blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the heart of the mystery in which we are never allowed to rest.

from Fremder

It was left on beautiful White Rock Beach (in a protective ziplock bag) this afternoon, just before the heavy rain broke through and soaked myself and my wife. I've changed my pants and dried out ... but the grin remains on my face.

There are pictures on my flickr pages, here and here. They are identified only as SA4QE2005-1 and SA4QE2005-2, which, hopefully, will deepen the mystery.

Would love to attend the convention ... if someone could send me a free plane ticket!

Happy Birthday, Russ and best wishes to all the members of The Kraken.

Ra McGuire

White Rock BC

Canada

Alida Allison 2005

HAPPY 80th birthday, RUSSELL HOBAN

Feb. 4, 2005


Quotes from two of his many books:

Sometimes I am astonished that there should be buildings built and institutions maintained to string out the brevity of human life over successive generations; trees don't do that, they just hold on to the darkness and accept the light night after night and day after day without pretensions to permanence.

from The Bat Tattoo, London: Bloomsbury, 2002, p. 60

~ ~ ~ ~

The almost-full moon rises and looks down on the banks and ditches of the hill-fort, the labial configurations at either end meant to baffle invaders or possibly honour the white goddess. Despite the paling of the sky the stars are clearly visible, brighter than in London. Burning and flickering, they send their light down from before the age of dinosaurs, the Babylonian exile, the fall of Rome, the sack of Jerusalem.

from Her Name Was Lola, London: Bloomsbury, 2003, p. 91

Here are the photos of strategic yellow paper placements. Only one needs a bit of explanation - Feb. 4 we had a big Children's Theater Festival on my campus at which children's books were being sold. You can see some Frances titles--I had great fun slipping yellow paper into the books as a surprise for those wise enough to buy Hoban books. The other sites are on campus, too.

Best, alida

Lisa Greenstein 2005

Hello all!

Well, it seems you can SA4Qate in pairs, as my friend Lara and I proved this evening. We both had busy weeks, so agreed to find our quotes of choice then join forces this evening for some yellow paper.

I decided to use quotations from Amaryllis Night and Day because it's the first Hoban book I read, and it was a birthday present, and this is my first SA4QE expedition and a birthday present too! Also, I have always been a weird and vivid dreamer, and I used to stand on the waking side of my dreams and peer in, pointing, like I was looking at animals in a zoo. Amaryllis showed me that the gate between the animals and me was never really closed, let alone locked, and the distinction between the animals and me was never fixed either. Suddenly we were all kicking around wandering into each other's territories with a lot less growling. The other wondrous thing about this book, for me, was the way that freedom to dream, freedom to love, and creative freedom all become part of the same dreamy this-is-it state.

Lara chose two quotes from Pilgermann; we printed these out (2 copies of each) and together we headed off to the large mainstream bookseller where we have both been repeatedly underwhelmed by the large stock of Tami Hoag and Nick Hornby muscling out the Hoban collection. We slipped our yellow paper into the title pages of appropriate - or suitably inappropriate - titles, which I've listed under each. Here they are:

I went to see if she was still asleep. She wasn't in my bed. She wasn't in the studio or on the balcony. She wasn't in the bathroom or the kitchen. She was nowhere in the house. The night was gone, the day was here; the tube trains were running and the trees on the common were swaying in the cool of a morning that was going to turn hot very soon. Some birds were twittering in a half-hearted way, as if they were working to rule. At that time of day I always have the feeling that if you gave reality a good kick, the scenery would shake.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

One of these went into a boxed set of books about Salvador Dali. The other went into a travel guide about London.

'Names are pretty useless, really. If you say the name of anything ten or twenty times it scatters and falls away and the thing that's named stands there all naked and unknowable. Sometimes it comes back to me that nothing can be known, nothing at all. Black is the colour, silence is the music, Spanish is the way to walk.' She liked to be baffling, or at least gnostic, wherever possible. Whether she actually walked Spanish I couldn't say, but her walk was well worth seeing from the rear.

from Amaryllis Night and Day

We looked long and hard for a book of baby names but they were out of stock and there was nothing on Tom Waits either, AND there was no stock of TeachYourself Spanish either. So we settled on something else, but in my head its in a book about Tom Waits and I can't move it now.

'I'll go to my bed now and you lie down here. Look at the Mobius strip while you go around it with the slider. You're going to be pulling me into your dream so you should have me in your mind's eye while you're sliding the Mobius. Easy does it, just float with it, OK?'

'OK.'

'You're going to do it, I can feel it in you.' She kissed me with what was unmistakably a destiny kiss. 'See you in your dream,' she whispered. 'What if one of us is still awake while the other one's asleep?'

'If we're tuned in right that won't happen. Trust me, I'm a weirdo.'

from Amaryllis Night and Day

One copy went into a book titled Snoring - Effective Relief. The other into the sole copy of Her Name Was Lola (actually there were two when we arrived, but we bought one so there was only one left after that).

And yet, so are we made and such is the action of the everything in this one moment that is every moment, that another thought flickers over and under my first thought: what style God has! What a truly godlike extravagance, to burst out all at once with a universe in which everything is going at once and humankind is let run with nothing to stop it from doing anything at all. And to make this running-loose creature with a mind that knows what it is doing and a soul in which Hell burns always and Heaven is grasped so rarely and so briefly that it lives in us as a continual yearning for what can never be held onto, for what must always always be lost: what invention!

from Pilgermann

One of these went into a book about god on the religion shelves; the other into Primo Levi's If this is a man.

'Forgive me,' he said. 'Please, please forgive me. I would do it again if I had the chance.'

from Pilgermann

One of these went into a book of erotica whose title I can't remember because there were so many pictures competing for attention. The other was supposed to go to our waiter, but after three pina coladas and dinner, I think we were all SA4Q-ated out by then.

Happy birthday Russell Hoban!

Love from

Lisa Greenstein & Lara Hoffenberg

Olaf Schneider 2005

Interactive animations inspired by Russell Hoban writings

The Russell Hoban Continuum



Created specially for the Russell Hoban Some-Poasyum (2005 convention) website

If you have problems viewing the above video clip try going direct to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNUxRDzGoyY



NOTE: Be sure to have the sound turned on for the Flash animations below, and to give them a few moments to load. All open in a new window as they are hosted externally. You need to have installed Flash version 5 or later to view them. If you don't, download it for free.

Enjoy! - Olaf

The Olive Tree

A special animation for 4/2/2005 featuring a classic Hoban quote from The Medusa Frequency.

London Transport Owls

Yellow paper on the escalator - another virtual location-specific 4Qation for 4/2/05.

Paul Gough 2005

I've been a fan of Russell since I discovered Riddley Walker by accident in a 2nd hand book store in 1988 and became obsessed after that. Especially after Kleinzeit.

I could go on at length....I remember reading about SA4QE and then promptly forgetting, only to be chuffed when at my local fruit shop in Sydney in 2002 or 2003, I found a page with a quote from Kleinzeit. Basically I was hurrying home after shopping at the Broadway Shopping Centre and it was stuck to a pylon. I can recall that when I saw it I was aware of SA4QE and I left it there for others to enjoy too. The exact quote shall remain unknown, a part of the waves and particles of words that float endlessly on.

Each year I've tried to remember to participate and FINALLY! this year I'm on the money.

So, this morning, I purchased 10 fresh yellow A4 pages. I work for the ABC (sister to the BBC) and I ended up putting 5 copies at work, 3 near lift entrances but the other 2 which may be unspotted for a while are a series of 'Emergency Buidling Exit' signs. Imagine 3 laminated A4 cards in a plastic wall bracket close to the entrance of an office space, one is coloured white, one red and one yellow. I slipped the yellow A4 in the place of the other one and given most people probably ignore it, eventually it will hit them. Perhaps some observant people will notice straight off the bat.

Of the other 5 I put one in a local bank who uses yellow as it's main colour, it lasted 1 minute before an eager employee picked it up at took it inside the security area! I placed one in a supermarket near my kids' school, and also put one in Summer Hill in memory of Judy Tihany, who I never knew, though I know the music of Mic Conway.

I'll try and send you a photo of them. I've chosen a selection of quotes - as I'm in the middle of moving house, the books aren't easy to find. I chose some quotes that have been already used, but I loved. The only Hoban book not packed was The Medusa Frequency, I used one quote "Being is not a steady state..." [probably my favourite] but wanted to choose something else as well. I settled for this:

There's no end to me, no limit, no way to define or measure me, no way of knowing what I am or how much of me there is.

There is an endless surging and undulating of me, an endless cycle of ebb and flow; that is called the sea. Little moments of me have lines drawn before and after and these moments are given names like Orpheus and Eurydice and they become stories. But I am wordless, heaving in the ocean night of me, stirring in the dark trees, breathing in and breathing out my soul.

from The Medusa Frequency

Sorry to ramble. Just wanted to finally say hi and thanks for the site and I hope you enjoy the Some-Poasyum next weekend.

regards

Paul

P.S. I create abstract electronic music under the name pimmon, my first CD was called 'Waves and Particles'. One track was called 'the black that we crave', but out of context I think some people were a little unsure of what I meant. I wrote to Russell via email around 1999 and got a very nice reply and I sent a CD of some early work. I'm sure it wasn't to his liking, but I just wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful creative output that has given me a jolt quite often.

Antti Savela 2005

Feb 4 2005. Cold day. Windy.

It was a very special day. My first SA4QE. I was eager as a child.

The first yellow paper was placed on the rail of the bridge, crossing the river of Umea.

"I can see the bubbles but I can't hear any music," said Big John.
"Neither can I," said Jim, "but I know what I'm playing".
"Is it happy or sad?" said Big John.
"Sad," said Jim.
"That's funny," said Big John, "the bubbles look happy."

from Jim Frog

The second yellow paper was placed on the wall of a barn.

Small, Smaller

I thought that I knew all there was to know
of being small, until I saw once, black against the snow,
a shrew, trapped in my footprint, jump and fall
and jump again and fall, the hole too deep, the walls too tall.

from The Pedalling Man

Happy Birthday Russ!

Roland Clare 2005

SA4QE, Bristol 2005: the first text I used was ...

Everything is twice itself, this I often think. Things are what they are every day, but then sometimes they are not. Sometimes I see people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. Suddenly it is like TV with the sound turned off and I see that this is really Death dressing himself up as these people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. So that is what is really happening, no?

But who am I that I should say this? My mind is like a top that spins crazily just before it falls over.

- from Come Dance with Me

This quotation made cameo appearances at the following locations:

A lamp-post was pre-equipped with cable-ties, just asking for an SA4QE addition. This page bears a different text, the opening of Dream Woman from The Moment Under The Moment:

Every teaching lesson today was devoted to Russ and his writings. I carried around a box filled with his works and operated a kind of Hoban jukebox (the smaller box in the picture below contains a Riddley Walker mug). My Year 10 class in particular spent a happy session hearing about SA4QE and the Some Poasyum and reading this:

Dream Woman


The dim light, the faceful shadows murmured, tinkled, gleamed. The steady flame of the candle on the table made a globe of stillness around the two of us, a warm bright globe of stillness in which she raised her glass and the luminous rosy wine made a smaller bright globe, a little world of the poised wine of this moment. She tilted the glass, the wine poured out, its brightness in the candlelight falling, falling. With an indescribable smile she looked at me and poured out the wine and never said a word, saying with her smile that she knew herself to be a dream and lost to me. That was how the first time ended.

The next time I saw her she said straightaway, 'Why do you bother when you know I'm not real?'

'I don't know that. I refuse to know that.'

'How am I real then? You know I'm only a dream.'

'What is that? What does it mean when you say "only a dream"?

'I'm only in your mind,' she said.

'What does that mean? The whole universe is only in the mind of God and nobody says the universe isn't real. '

'Maybe your mind isn't as real as God’s mind. In any case you'll have to go back, you can't stay here. Why should I begin something with a man who can’t stay?'

'You're in the world that's in me,' I said. 'I'll find a way to stay.'

'For me there's no future in this. I've seen it happen before with dream women and realies and it never works. '

'Is that what they call us? "Realies"?'

'Yes, and it never lasts. They see the man a few times, and that's the end of it. Sometimes they're left with a child. It's hardest on the children I think - it's like growing up in whorehouse. '

'But you're not a whore. You're not here for anyone else, are you?'

"'Not here for anyone else"! You amaze me. I've seen you once before and for all I know I'll never see you again and you want me to keep myself pure for you. You're not even young: in a few years you'll be dead and this world in your head will still be here in other heads and I'll still be in it. What am I to do then, wear black and live on memories?'

'You're saying you've been with other men,' I said. 'Other realies.'

'You don't seem to have a very quick mind. How do you suppose I occupied myself until you turned up? With needlepoint? How would you like to live in this awful tatty place where nothing ever works properly? You go to the bathroom to wash your hair and maybe there's a sink and maybe it's the front half of a crocodile. Whole neighbourhoods disappear overnight without a trace, you're lucky if you can find the supermarket two days running. And in between times you sit around waiting... '

From The Moment Under The Moment

(pp 61-62)

A new Child Protection directive means that we mayn't show their faces in photographs without written parental permission ... I can assure you they are all smiling nonetheless. These documents will be dropped in twenty choice locations by the end of the day.

Bill Rodgers 2005

Hi,

Thanks for the fab SA4QE site. I don't know whether it's too late to submit an entry... hope not. Joined the Yahoo-Kraken group yesterday and look forward to participating in the discussion.

I live in Stanthorpe (a small rural town in South east Queensland, Australia), where I teach kiddies how to use computers in the local primary school.

I went to Brisbane (Queensland's capital) on the weekend of Mr Hoban's Illustrious Birthday (Hip Hoorah!), and placed the yellow page in the centre of the West End Community gardens. It nestled underneath some large dandelions - looking at home and beaming in a friendly way behind the flowerheads.

There were no lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind--tawny, great, and quickly gone. Sometimes the honey-coloured moon shivered to the silence of a ghost roar on the rising air.

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

Didn't manage a photo this year - will definitely do it next year...

Jane Clare 2005

As The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz was the first Hoban book I read, I decided that lions should be central in my SA4QE drop. Having only just moved to Liverpool, however, I set off with the yellow pages in my bag not knowing where to find any. Bizarrely, a friend whom I met for lunch insisted that we battle through the wind so he could show me something he thought I would like. I was led to this enormous bronze lion head, one of an identical pair, mounted on two doors in the commercial centre of Liverpool. I thought the reference to those who ‘run the world’ was therefore fairly apt.

The second lion was found in a changing cubicle in a clothing shop. Understandably, I didn’t remain concealed to watch the reactions of other customers!

The people who run the world now were children once. What went wrong? What is it that with such dismal regularity goes wrong? Why do perfectly good children become rotten grown-ups?

from Pan Lives, The Moment Under The Moment

Kerry Power 2005

Hi,

I have included two quotes this year. The first from Fremder. I love the idea of the mystery in the spaces of black between the pictures.

Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillness blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the heart of mystery in which we are never allowed to rest.

from Fremder

The second quote is the opening line of Riddley Walker. I have included it because so many people have discovered Russ through Riddley Walker. This opening line is such a challenge. You can choose then and there to stop (eg., its too hard at first glance) or to read on...and so begin a journey of wondrous discovery.

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.

from Riddley Walker

Once again (four years in a row now) I descended to the Melbourne Underground, and left the yellow A4 on a seat, platform 4, Parliament Station, Melbourne.

Val Bucknall 2005

It was my first adventure in SA4QE. I took four sheets to Bromley High Street, leaving one on a chair in the Chinese restaurant where we had lunch, one in Bromley library next to a computer, another on a wooden seat in the shopping mall, and one in Smiths, propped up among modern novels. The quote for each was the following:

‘Speak to me,’ I said to Christ. ‘Speak to me as the son of God. Tell me something.’

‘I have nothing to say,’ said Christ. ‘This is all there is.’

‘But meaning,’ I said, ‘there must be meaning.’

‘Reality has no meaning,’ said Christ, ‘it is only itself. I am only myself; I am an image carved in stone. Gilbertus hoc fecit.’

‘That is not a good enough answer,’ I said. ‘You’re being evasive. Ideas are part of reality. There came to me the idea to travel here to see you and it meant something to me.’

‘What?’ said Christ.

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.’

‘I don’t know what this idea meant; sometimes people say they’ve come to see me when they really want to see someone or something else. Maybe God knows.’

‘Are you saying there is a God?’

No answer.

… As I turned to start down the hill the bells shouted, ‘There is a God! Believe us!’

I waved goodbye without turning round…

from The Bat Tattoo

Happy Birthday to Russell Hoban, 80 years old on 4.2.05

www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe

I was not able to wait and see if there were any responses, but I enjoyed doing it.

I am looking forward to next weekend's adventures now! Thanks to Russell Hoban for the reason to celebrate.

Hugh Bowden 2005

There was a policeman standing at the top of Surrey Street, where Harold Klein was almost sexually assaulted in Angelica's Grotto. I could see him from my office window, turning cars away. I couldn't see anything happening on Surrey Street, but it seemed an ominous sign.

I spent Wednesday afternoon reviewing the English Department here. No-one called Melissa Bottomley appeared in any of the documentation, but since the last review of the Department seven years ago more than half the staff have changed. I discovered that the only person present at both the review seven years ago and the one this week was me.

Fridays this term are particularly busy. Broken up by moving from room to room, discussing the same poems with different groups of students. It can make SA4quating a problem. In the end I put up my sheet of A4 yellow paper somewhere in College. The quotation was rather short:

KINESIS/ANAPAUSIS

as written on the Paxos Stone in Angelica's Grotto (Bloomsbury 1999, p. 15)

Motion/Rest, or perhaps Go/Stop. A bit like my day.

I could probably tell this story in a different way.

HUGH'S STORY TOLD IN A DIFFERENT WAY

I have not yet read all of Russell Hoban's books. This does, I suspect, put me in a happier position than those who have read them all, because I still have the thrill of discovery of those that I haven't started yet.

Most recently I read Angelica's Grotto, which seems to me the twisted offspring of two earlier novels. The Odilon Redon Pegase Noir, central to the story, was born from the dark blood of Medusa; and of course Harold, once upon a time, was Kleinzeit. It seems to me a book full of things hinted at, but not said (what are Redon, Gustave Moreau and Antonio Carlos Jobim doing together there?); everything left unresolved - it is a novel of unresolution. And those who know it, and note the address at the bottom of this message, can imagine that it had resonances for me.

SA4QE does not have to be site specific, but sometimes perhaps it can be. Having read the book, I was drawn irresistably to one place. After I finished teaching I went through to the English Department. I 'found buff-coloured bricks, pigeonholes, a noticeboard, NO SMOKING, and a perspective of square illuminations in the ceiling' (interrupted by newly installed, and unpopular, fire doors. 'The door of Room 231 had two narrow vertical windows one above the other.' It was empty, with a sole student waiting nearby to talk to a lecturer who was on the phone, with her door open. I stuck my yellow A4 notice to the door, took a picture of it, and made my escape.

The choice of quotation was, I suppose, self-indulgent: a Classicist finding something classical. It was printed 'in black ink, in Greek letters':

KINESIS/ANAPAUSIS

[Angelica's Grotto p. 15]

But to give the sheet a chance of a slight after life, I added below, in Caslon (a College official font):

The Politics of Language, Room 231

[Angelica's Grotto p. 156]

I will see if it is still there on Monday.

Today would have been Harold Klein's birthday. It is more important that it is Russ's. Happy 80th!

Maybe this all sounds a bit too contrived. In which case there is always another way of telling it.

Lindsay Edmunds 2005

Friends,

Today is a bright Friday, and I didn't have to work, so I was able to go SA4quating.

First quote:

Her brown loaves were like bread from a fairy tale; her potato pancakes sizzled with lust and tasted of fidelity.

from Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

First place: the Galleria, Pittsburgh, Pa. The Galleria is an small upscale mall, with a parking garage and skylights. Sound system was playing "Daydream" by the Lovin' Spoonful. Williams Sonoma sells kitchen equipment; thus, it got the honor of the quote. I found a yellow pottery mixing bowl in a design called "circus." There was a lion. I turned the bowl so that the lion faced outward, and placed the yellow paper in front of the bowl.

Second quote:

When I was between twelve and thirteen I was lying in bed one night not asleep, not awake, and all at once I was looking down at myself from the ceiling. It wasn't a dream, I don't know what it was. I don't know anything about ecstasy. It happened another time that year too.

from Turtle Diary

Second place: South Hills Village, Pittsburgh, Pa. Sound system was playing "Am I Standing Still?" by Jewel. Walked here and there. Then, because I needed to replace a watch battery, I went to the watch-accessory kiosk on the lower level, where I ran into my aunt, who was replacing her watchband. I cannot tell you how weird and unlikely that was. We chatted, had coffee. Sometime during coffee, I decided to leave the quotation at Lazarus. (Lazarus is a local department store chain, now owned by Macys.) I thought to leave the yellow paper tucked under a pillow on a very expensive bed. The name of the bed was "Silverdream."

Below both quotations I wrote:

"Today (2/4/05) is Mr Hoban's 80th birthday, and this quotation has been left in tribute to him. To find out more about this remarkable writer, go to: http://www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe."

Graeme Wend-Walker 2005

My quotes; a few from Come Dance With Me to help it on its way into the world:

What is the world but little pieces of pictures and who can see a whole one?

(p35)

~ ~ ~ ~

Django was craning his neck to see out of the window. 'Are there sharks down there?' he asked.

'All kinds of things,' I said. Such a deep dark blue, the water below us, then a fringe of white surf as Kahului Airport came into view back in 1993. The palm trees were moving a little as if they didn't care one way or the other. It was a dull day and those trees put a jungly smell in my mind.

(p144)

~ ~ ~ ~

I can never get used to the passage of the self through time and space and the passage of time and space through the self. The years in me surged up like acid reflux to mingle with the travel hours I was trying to digest while the miles lay like a lump in my stomach and half-forgotten songs spun in my head...

(p178)

Masterful, all of it.

Graeme

peter morrison 2005

i left the following quote at the UGC, Renfrew St, Glasgow, left in a cup holder during a showing of the film Closer:

More and more i find that life is a series of

disappearances

followed usually but not always by reappearances;

you disappear from your morning self

and reappear as your afternoon self;

you disappear from feeling good

and reappear feeling bad.

And people, even face to face

and clasped in each other's arms,

disappear from each other.

from Fremder

-that is actually a somewhat apt quote for Closer, though on reflection, i can see it being the perfect choice of film for Russell, being so london based, but while watching it i became struck of the parallels with her name was lola. the opening sequence of the film shows a writer dan (=max; also in search of "page one") spotting his destiny girl alice (=lola), but then he is distracted by anna a photographer (=lula mae in a gallery), and then there is nice reliable dr. larry in the background (=basil lawyer). really it is a vague comparison, but for me the core idea really is the discovery of dan's destiny girl and his subsequent inability to hold on to her and remain true to her.

which is perhaps ironic given that my second quote is from her name was lola, though this is a virtual quote rather than physical quote, so that might be cheating?

He's looking for page one.

This is a bit like trying to retrieve a coin that's

fallen down a grating.

Is that it, that faint gleam in the darkness?

Not sure.

He lowers weighted strings and chewing gum and brings up bottle caps.

'Blighter's rock?' says Max's mind.

'I am not rocked,' says Max.

He avoids the proper name of that condition in which writers are unable to write.

from Her Name Was Lola

which should have been posted on my blog as a nice yellow back grounded image that I made specially. However, thanks to my poor internet/modem connection, I've had to opt for just a text post for now - but I am determined to post this image at some point! Anyway - its posted here for the moment (and my review of lola for anyone interested is posted here) and was posted while my image loading doo-daa was working...)

happy birthday russell

peter


ps: i also found this comic strip on the 4th appropriately enough - and thought they might be a suitable gift for celebrants of tentacles:

http://www.chrisbishop.com/her/archives/her2.html

http://www.chrisbishop.com/her/archives/her61.html

-enjoy :)

Richard Cooper 2005

Yellow Paper Diary - 4th February 2005

07.01 Rise and shine, sort of. Negotiate bed space with wife's bump, due to reveal itself as a baby in a month's time. Get up, shower, shave. Look through t-shirt drawer for slogan-free t-shirt to wear beneath Serious Office Shirt. Don't find one. Only option is t-shirt with slogan rpc@blockedauthor.co.uk turned inside-out. Wonder if, maybe, the act of reversing the shirt will reverse the slogan and unblock me?

07.42 Eat breakfast guiltily in realisation that it's SA4QE day and I still haven't decided on a quote to drop, or where to drop it, as I've been spending all my spare time lately helping to arrange the Russell Hoban Some-Poasyum. Maybe that in itself can be my SA4QE this year? No, no, that's the coward's way out. Take down entire collection of Hoban books from shelves and flick through anxiously. How to choose one quote when every page of each book has something profound on it? I know: on that basis any quote will do, so choose a random book, a random page, a random line and that'll be the one! OK, here goes: Fathers are prone to name first daughters elaborately. I don't mind being named after a nymph but I really don't care to be associated with the pastoral tradition. Hmm: interesting, and appropriate if the baby is a girl, but doesn't really do it for me 4Qationwise. Try again: Lenore liked Messiaen, Ligeti, Boulez, Birtwhistle ('I have no time,' she asserted, 'for composers who try to please, except when I'm in the mood for Antonio Carlos Jobim'). Better, but... damn, have to go. Pile books in rucksack, kiss bumpy wife and go.

8.20 The shop below our flat has been closed for some time. Rather than whitewash the windows, the ex-owners have hung some nifty yellow curtains there instead. Consider as I pass graffiti'ing a Hoban quote across it. If only I could think of one...

The shop below chez Cooper, with its handily yellow windows just crying out for a Hoban quote.

08:51 Squeeze onto train for Victoria at Clapham. 'Sorry, names move around behind the boiler.' 'What boiler is that?' 'The big black lying-down one.' Well, certainly interesting, but a touch on the wilfully obscure side perhaps? Ah, here's Victoria. "Hello," says Victoria. She looked at me as if my head were transparent and every one of my thoughts was visible to her, especially the last one.

09.14 Arrive at work. Check convention emails. Ohmygod, 22 of the little buggers. "My sample booklets arrived this morning and, in my opinion, they look stunning," says Chris. "Just about to do some SA4QE with my Year 10 group," says Roland. Luise had translated that poem for me, I'd recorded her reading it in German and in English and I still remembered lines here and there. Tempting, but must do some work. Resolve to tackle emails and quotes throughout day.

10.52 "Proof-reading standards have indisputably dropped since the introduction of desktop publishing packages such as InDesign and Quark XPress," meditates Chris. "The Troubanotdour sounds like a fine fling of a finale to the convention, Richard!" says Emmae. 'You've got a million pounds in cash back at your flat?' says Jonathan Fitch. 'I always like to have a little cash on hand,' replies Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Good, but is it 4Qational?

12.10 'You think too much, Harold.' 'Like a Jewish horse.' "If a cakewright could be found in Fulham, to make and deliver a cake for Russ, it would be nice, doncha think?" says Roland. "If it were made in the form of a ziggurat it would be possible to arrange 80 candles on it in such a way that all could be lit (not very easy on a flat cake)." Hmm, I'll think on that. I can't be bothered with details, said God. I've told you that before. Kleinzeit didn't hear him.

13.26 "Shirts... a bit urgent," says Roland. 'The fault is mine,' said the father in the same language. 'I do not look. I do not see. I regret.' "The best plan for booklet distribution," I type with one hand while eating sandwich with other, "is for me to leave them all in the office and for Roland to come here with me next Friday, ferry Bloomers' 300 to them in his car and grab a box (or half a box) for the convention." "Happy to do that," replies Roland rapidly, "but will it slow down the glueing?" 'Fister you know they wont do nothing moren dock his fraction for the nex 14nt or so. You jus cant go sticking Mincery peopl in bogs when ever you feal like it.' Head out for a much-needed breath of fresh air. Passing the Nomad Travel Store next to the office, wonder again whether their sign REGISTERED YELLOW FEVER CENTRE could be cunningly adapted for Yellow Paper purposes? Argh, if only I'd decided on a damn quote...

The Nomad Travel Store near Richard's office in Victoria - a Registered Yellow Paper Centre? If Richard had got his act together, maybe.

14.49 "Hello again," says a potential Some-Poasyac, "I'm trying to sign up but I can't work out how to make Paypal charge me less than £55, have you got any idea?" 'This Hidden Lion belongs to no one person more than to any other,' I said. 'It is simply the lion that remains hidden until it reveals itself.'

15.59 Helen went on about Elijah and how Yahweh showed him the stillness and Yahweh spoke the stillness that comes after the earthquake and the wind and the fire, the stillness that follows the release of energy from the potential to the actual. Er, come again? "Does anybody remember certain pictures and artists that show up in Russ's novels?" Olaf asks as he researches his slide-show. Think: what was the one with the bottoms in it? Ah yes, Angelica's Grotto. 'We were talking about Death,' Klein whispered into his hand. Death as a friend, said Oannes. 'Or as an editor,' whispered Klein, 'writing Delete? in the margin.' Good, but possibly negative, and no bottoms. Bum.

16.59 "i'd like to reserve all three t-shirt designs in medium, cheers," says Some-Poasyac Malcolm. We'd neither of us bothered to find out about the tide in advance. Whether it was in or out we'd launch the turtles. My wife rings, "Can you buy some soy milk and a bag of clementines for me on the way home?" she says. He made a fourth drawing: both arrows and one of the spears under the lion's feet. "Bookmarks arrived yesterday, ahead of schedule, and look great!" says Diana, "see you next week!" Mrs Crow, who had been stranded more than once herself, was cordial in her welcome. Argh! It's all going horribly wrong. This random idea isn't working. Reminds me of the so-called "random" orchestral crescendos in the Beatles' A Day in the Life: they listened to truly random versions and they sounded rubbish, so George Martin ended up having to orchestrate the randomness. True randomosity just doesn't have it, in the same way perhaps that creative writing courses say "Write about reality by all means, but don't expect to be able to take a chunk of reality and glue it to a blank sheet of paper and hope it'll become art." It needs a bit of intervention, needs a touch of personal meaning. Double bum! I have to get out of here in precisely 16 minutes and I still haven't worked out which quote to 4Qate, where to put it, how to bake a cake in the shape of a ziggurat, or what a ziggurat is even. What a baby. You and your Ibsen and your Chekhov. Maybe the revolver in the drawer's for another play, you ever think of that? You think your three acts are the only three bloody acts there are? Maybe you're the revolver in somebody else's play, eh? Never thought of that, did you? "Can you order the cake?" says Roland. 'NNNGGHH,' I said. 'ZURFF, KRULJJJ.'

Actually, that's a point...

The Medusa Frequency is a tried and trusted favourite, a Hoban classic, my first experience of Russ, and although I've quoted from it before surely has something for all 4Qeventualities. A favourite passage comes back to me as I flick through. Feel a bit cynical using Russ's texts for political ends, especially when the passage was originally intended to be funny, but it does sum up to me the motivations of the various terrorists of the world, in all their forms. So here it is, at last, the passage I choose for SA4QE 2005:

NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH IS THINKING VIOLENTLY.

Of what?

OF GOING AFTER WHOEVER PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH.

What was the Great Snyukh?

IT WAS THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

The Blug of Nexo Vollma. I like that. I should think it was about forty feet high with a thousand tentacles and it left a slimy track.

NEXO VOLLMA IS THE BLUGHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

You mean plughole. Nexo Vollma is the plughole of the universe and the Great Snyukh was the plug. In that case the great Snyukh must have been a good deal bigger than I thought.

IT WAS A WHOLE LOT BIGGER THAN ANY PLUG YOU CAN THINK OF, AND IT GOT PULLED. BUT IN THAT UNIMAGINABLE MOMENT BEFORE THE BIG WHOOSH, SNYUKH! INTO THE BLUGHOLE WENT NNVSNU THE TSRUNGH.

He saved us all.

HE DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE BUT NOW HE THINKS VIOLENT THOUGHTS. FROM THE BLUGHOLE IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE HURGO MURMUS, FROM THE UTTERMOST DEPTHS OF THE ULTIMATE DEEP HE SENDS HIS MIND AFTER THOSE WHO PULLED THE GREAT SNYUKH, THE BLUG OF NEXO VOLLMA.

Who did it? Who pulled the Great Snyukh?

THE DEEPLY BAD ONES DID IT.

Why did they do it?

THEY WANTED TO HEAR THE BIG WHOOSH.

The bastards.

from The Medusa Frequency

I photocopy the passage onto two sheets of yellow paper, slip one onto an absent office colleague's chair because, being of a similar political and literary persuasion to me I know he'll enjoy it, and, gathering my entire Hoban collection together into one sagging rucksack, leave the office with the other. Outside the building between the pedestrian crossing and the Nomad Travel Store are three or four of those bins dispensing free newspapers for the benefit of the thousands of backpackers who trek around Victoria every day. Secrete the second copy of the quote between the pages of one of the papers, and, with some relief, head for home.

Chris Bell 2005

It’s taken me a while to document my contribution to this year’s SA4QE. This year, because of all the extra work involved in organising and attending the Some Poasyum (I travelled out of a New Zealand summer into a UK winter to be there) – and the fact that I was away from my laptop computer – I decided on a single, short quote that could be handwritten, three times, on sheets of yellow paper I had bought at my Mum’s local craft shop. I’d taken my Bloomsbury paperback of Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer to the UK as my ‘carrying book’, and had re-read most of it on the Singapore-Heathrow leg of the flight. It seemed to me that the following epigraph was particularly well suited to this year’s SA4QE and all the excitement and anticipation surrounding the 2005 Some Poasyum:

“Things don’t end; they just accumulate.”

- Jonathan Fitch

from Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

By 4 February, I had decided on three suitable locations for distribution of my quote. I recorded these in the blue exercise book I was using for the notes I was accumulating for a short story I’d been working on:

1) The Tesco supermarket in Hanley, Staffordshire, between the Glenfiddich bottles on the liquor aisle.

2) At the White Lion, a wonderful English pub in the village of Ash, Shropshire (it serves excellent food, if you’re ever in the area).

3) At Lockbrook Place, in Bath, under a cup in the living room of a friend’s house (she found the quote almost immediately, so the element of surprise was minimal).

The rewards of 4Qating grow year by year, and although I never know whether any of the quotations I have distributed have led anyone to read a Russell Hoban book, let alone convert them to life as a Krakenista, I must admit to experiencing a growing sense of superstition about the act; it makes me feel lucky. Not to spread the quotes would make me feel star-crossed.

- Chris

Yvonne Studer 2005

I've only been able to do a little home 4Qating today and have taped this quote on the wall next to my reproduction of the Vermeer girl behind my desk:

I know now how fragile are the walls that keep out chaos – there are many weak spots and there will always be something or someone waiting to break in. Maybe I can reinforce those weak spots with the rock I'm leaving behind as I carve myself out and shape my destiny.

from Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer (1998)

Best wishes from Zürich - happy 80th birthday, Russ!

Yvonne x