terça-feira, fevereiro 21, 2006

Haunts: Signal Hill / Cape Spear

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006



Friday, March 3, 2006

Finally cleared today. I was going to take a picture up there but it was snowing again - just imagine a picture of 'white'.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Four days later and they still have not cleared the road to Signal Hill! I can see it, the municipal maggots want to save a bit of work for themselves when the rest is all trucked away - nothing but a scam!

Sunday, February 26, 2006

No Globe and Mail in St. John's this day! Tempestade de neve, vento forte e frio, que maravilha! A cidade quase desapareceu - que bom! Nada de sujo, quase ninguem saindo. O Globe de Sabado ainda não chegou. Só o Tims esta aberto - cheio dos trabalhadores de neve mesmo. Não tem ninguem nessa cidade falar Português, ai ai.

Going out later and I will get some fotos.



Tuesday, February 21, 2006



I spend some time on Signal Hill most days. It is the only quasi-public space left to simultaneously smoke, drink coffee, and read the newspaper. Well, that is not quite true - one of the coffee shops downtown, Hava Java I think it is, has put a few tables and chairs on the sidewalk in front of it and you can smoke there - but it is cold and windy this time of year and there are enough smokers left in St. John's that you can never be guaranteed of getting a spot. Nevermind it is neither a gracious nor a salubrious spot; nor very comfortable either, and you have to endure the stares of bourgeois twits and twitettes, or I imagine you do, which is the same.

Signal hill is high up over the city. You can stop for an hour or so and not be asked what you are doing by the constabulary. In the 60s I used to borrow my brother-in-law's car and go 'parking' up there sometimes. A close friend of mine was killed during the 7 day war in Israel - a traffic accident not war-related - and I went up there when I got the news.

You can face the town or face the sea. I normally face the sea and watch the light hit Cape Spear. Sometimes the wind blows so strongly that I cannot read for the shaking of the car - I love it when that happens!



from the OED: haunt, noun - Habit, wont, custom, usage. Habitual practice or use of anything. The act or practice of frequenting or habitually resorting to a place. A place of frequent resort or usual abode; a resort, a habitation; the usual feeding-place of deer, game, fowls, etc.; often, a den or place frequented by the lower animals or by criminals. A topic, a subject of discussion. A spirit supposed to haunt a place; a ghost. And haunt, verb - To practise habitually, familiarly, or frequently. To use or employ habitually or frequently. To resort to frequently or habitually; to frequent or be much about a place. To frequent the company of a person, to associate with habitually; to ‘run after’. Of imaginary, unseen or immaterial visitants or of diseases, memories, cares, feelings, thoughts: To visit frequently or habitually; to come up or present themselves as recurrent influences or impressions, especially as causes of distraction or trouble; to pursue, molest. To be subject to the visits and molestation of disembodied spirits. To be wont or accustomed. To resort habitually; to stay or remain usually in a place; to associate with a person (usually said of the lower animals). To have resort, betake oneself, go to.

Chaucer, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales says: "A good wif was ther of biside Bathe, But she was somdel deef, and that was scathe. Of clooth-makyng she hadde swich an haunt She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt."

Shakespeare, in As You Like It has the Duke say: "And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing. I would not change it."

And has Richard the Second say: " ... let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd ..."

I sometimes mis-remember 'stalking' as 'haunting' in Wyatt's poem: "They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber."

Attributed to Euripides: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."; and: "He is not a lover who does not love forever."

Down.