under another sun

All starts and no finishes I'd earmarked today as a day for my own projects. I have lost momentum lately and lack clarity and focus. Nevertheless I progressed my Atlantis poems a little, and looked at the long short story called Echoes set in Guernsey. The Atlantis poems are intended to follow on from The Boy Who Fell Upwards . However simply could not build momentum, a hundred ideas started, none followed through. Argh. Lorraine called with a bit of urgent work on her form from hell, which is thankfully now dispatched. Spoke to Mum whose cat Salty has worryingly gone AWOL. Went to the gym, at noon. In the evening read more of The Maimed and then watched most of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead , widely acclaimed as the best Zombie movie of all time. Annoyingly I was too tired to watch all of it, but it may have to be a DVD purchase. One of the characters says: "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth". I am increasingly attracted to Zombies....

The Maimed Up early to get on with some French work, working out how to Anglicise a campaign which was full of French puns, jeu de mot and references into English. Something of an impossible task, but sent my best effort for this off at midday. Knee a bit on the puffy side and am hobbly, but enjoyed myself in the gym for half an hour or so. Afternoon and evening spent looking blankly at poems, flying over the Channel in a ME 109, and reading The Maimed by Hermann Ungar. Published in 1923. It is as others have pointed out a perfect companion to Die neue Sachlichkeit painters such as Otto Dix and George Grosz. An exhibition of Neue Sachlichkeit I saw in my teens made a lasting impression on me then. The Maimed is repulsively gripping. A post first world war society and its hero Pultz subject to an obsessive compulsive behaviour, an abused childhood, poverty, a fear of women and children, a sexual revulsion, and a cast of other characters who as physically and emotionally crippled. B...