I use the word ‘monumental’ advisedly – he’s not creator of intimacy by any means. Like Rothko, there’s a dialog with the sublime going on. Unlike Rothko, the sublime is continually open to question at best and in a constant state of entropy and unstable decay at best. Another layer of irony and one I’m sure the artist appreciates is the equally monumental subject of the largest set of works – massive, uncanny representations of the enormous Templehof Airport, Albert Speer’s intended gateway to Germania, Hitler’s envisaged European super-capital, and scene of the Berlin Airlift.

Anyway, long terms fans will recognise a lot of familiar tropes – lead books, lead aeroplanes, objects embedded in thick layers of weathered paint and so on. Some of it brings fresh associations, some of it doesn’t. What follows are unedited lists of images and references taken from the notes I was making as I slowly made my way around the airport terminal-like space of White Cube.

From http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02096/Kiefer_2096747a.jpg

Fulcinelli: Finis Gloria Mundi

A long, squashed cone of oxidised lead, like the envelope of a squid. Huge sunflowers, transmuted or coated in lead cascade from one end.They could be giant, spindly psilocibin mushrooms. A kraken? Or the body and folded tail of a peacock? All the eyes are blind and turned to lead.

(Fulcanelli’s alchemical texts are a key referent throughout).

Dat Rosa Miel Apibus

More lead books, a model ME262 (but no Blue Öyster Cult soundtrack) in the signature lead. Roofing thieves could make a fortune in here. Not rotting but decaying, achieving a unity in decay over Lovecraftian lengths of time. Is Kiefer a Lovecraft fan? Probably not. Though his work is suffused with the aura of At The Mountains Of Madness et al. “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.” (Lovecraft)

Each piece here is a clock ticking in aeons.

Merkaba

The salvaged, decaying bicycle made for three turns out to be a thin facsimile. Hung with scale-pans of salt, sulphur, still mercury, each labelled with the appropriate symbol. Going nowhere.

Notoriously within my family, I can’t ride a bike.

Sprache Der Vogel: Fulcanelli

The mysterious Fulcaneli’s assertion that the language of the Freemason’s was derived from the speech of birds. The wings seem to rise imperceptibly on unseen currents of air. One turned down corner of a massive book forms a beak. A squat golden eagle of lead books, collapsed folder chairs and a massive block of stone. Red ochre. Alchemy in progress. Time speeded up and slowed down by intense scrutiny.

The wings continue to rise.

A serial number and an unknown rune-like formula adorn the cover of one book.

(The curtains are drawn. It is night at the airport in here.)

The Templehof

An immensity overlaid by memory and history. Shut finally in 2008. Attritioning greys and muddy greens. Weather.

Alchemical scales suspended and unbalanced in front of primordial chaos. Thor’s hammer lurks nearby on a stone anvil. Ginnunginap?

Come closer. The paintings are a mosaic of cracks. They have been dug up and preserved. Preservation itself is a form of alchemy – look at any book binder at work in Trinity College with their little tray of unguents and chemicals.

The masonic compasses have marked out, drawn and engraved the relentless geometry of the airport.

(Does the Templehof only exist because of this painting?)

A satellite dish receiving unheard, unseen, unread signals for thousands of years as the city accretes at the feet of its shambolic brick tower.

There is a world in monochrome where Germania is the whole of the continent of what once was Europe.

The satellite dish awaits signals from this hypothetical Germania. The city below has stopped listening.

This is the Zone of Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Thin, giant sunflowers/psilocybin swarm from the ceilings of the abandoned departure halls and hangers. Swimmers drown in the oceanic cement runways.

Sulphur

Chemical reactions

Entropy

Mjönar left to rust, long after Ragnarok. Somehow, the rebirth of Líf and Lífþrasir never happened.

Wrong. Everywhere in the room, the mushrooming fleurs du mal of the lead sunflowers. Roots and hidden eggs are everywhere

The rue morgue. An impossible machine frozen in mid-stitch. The child’s coat abandoned on the anvil. A doll wrapped in lead.

(Books read by the gallery attendants. Dressed in black, tight. Young, under-nourished looking.

- 1Q84, Haru Murakami

- Something by Gide

- Music For Chameleons, Truman Capote)

Sigurd achieved the speech of birds.

Rol sent me a copy by return. I read it. I liked it and I thought, I must blog about this.

Then I took a week’s hiatus from blogging to finish the draft of my current novel project and Dad Who Writes – The Blog (if not Dad Who Writes – the Whinging Twitter Stream) dropped down a mineshaft for two months.

But, lo, I am returned, Rol’s comic in hand. And it’s still good.

Now, this isn’t your Avengers-type comic. This is more Garth-Ennis -writes-Adrian-Tomine-in-Grimsby with a touch of early Ramsay Campbell. It’s funny, twisted, sharp, not a little bitter and full of tight characterisation.

Grimsby Fathomsby is a tiny fishing village where “they don’t judge you like they do everywhere else.” The loosely connected stories flip from horror to domestic violence to petty organised crime and back again, sometimes all within the space of the same tale. The abrupt switches in tone could be a little jarring but Rol’s mordant ear for Northern dialog pulls it together. Each episode is drawn by a different artist. Rather than work against the cohesion of the whole project, this actually adds to it – some of the more dramatic contrasts and transitions in tone are eased considerably by the switch in art style. Some elements work better than others (not sure about the vampire DJ, though I like the idea). Others completely and delightfully blindsided me (like Dot and her marvellously termed Globes of Opiate). Rol owns up to a Psychoville influence but he sets up an ambitiously broader canvas. And he’s funnier.

You know, I think I’ll pay for the next one. Which, as it happens, is due imminently and available here at Rol’s main site.

So here’s an offering for the rainiest week this winter.

The mission statement of this writers blogging support group (mediated by Alex J. Cavanaugh) runs

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time.

So do I have any struggles or triumphs? Well, the re-draft is at 95% and I can almost envisage (on the other side of revision) a readable draft for beta readers. The other minor triumph, even though I got told off for forgetting to post there too, was taking part in the November First Five Pages at Adventures in YA and Children’s Publishing. Most of the incredibly generous feedback I got tactfully pointed out flaw after dreadful flaw – invaluable given the intense redrafting I was working through – and the praise was equally generous. Even the odd comment I disagreed with pushed me to think twice about why I was doing something and change or review it accordingly. Great blog, great workshop.  You should check it out.

OK, off to do the catching up with other insecure writers. Mainstream blogging (I’ve missed you!) recommences when I’m back from a business trip to Dublin on Saturday.

Update: Wi-fi in this hotel crawls. So, sorry, but the commenting-on-other-writers-blogs will have to wait till Friday night, plane permitting.

Anyway, this is something I might ask a friend to read on Saturday. It’s slightly adapted from Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I do hope the Registrar won’t have any issues with it.

In my medical experience as well as in my own life, I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love and have never been able to explain what it is…Here is the greatest and the smallest, the remotest and the nearest, the highest and the lowest and we cannot discuss one side of it without discussing the other. No language is adequate to this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little for only the whole is meaningful. Love “bears all things” and “endures all things”. These words say all there is to be said. Nothing can be added to them.

 And that’s it, right there.

But this book really demanded a response!

Meanwhile, if any regular readers want a taste of what I’ve been making all this fuss about,  now’s your chance to tackle the first five 1250 words. Which may well be all you need.

The problem with NaNoWriMo is that of imposing or maintaining some kind of structure on the tens of thousands of words of creative chocolaty goodness gushing forth from your keyboard (sorry, channelling a bit of Xander, there). Leaving aside the perennial issue of planners vs pantsers, you’ll need to keep a grip on what you’ve done so far and maybe even plan a tiny bit what you’re about to do next. At the very least, you’ll want to be able to zoom up, once you get 10,000 words or more into the process, and take a view as to what direction this is going in and whether you need to steer this thing a little.

Well, the two key tools in Word you need to engage with are the Outline view and Styles.

1. Set up two basic styles  for chapter headings and synopsis

Open up Word (I’m using 2007 but the principles are the same and the dialogue boxes – once you’ve navigated to them -are almost identical right the way back to 90s versions). Look for the Styles controls. You’ll see a button marked ‘Change Styles’. Don’t click on it – click on the tiny arrow icon immediately beneath it.

Finding the Styles controls

A long list of style names for different combinations of text and paragraph layout will appear. Right-click (scroll up and down until you find it) on ‘Heading 1′.

Select ‘Modify’. The window shown below should open.

Okay. Click on the ‘Format’ button and select ‘Numbering’. Here’s what you get.

Click on ‘Define New Number’. Click so that your cursor is right in front of the highlighted ’1′ and type in ‘Chapter ‘ (don’t forget the space) with another space and an ‘em’ dash after the paragraph number. Click ‘Okay’ right back to the ‘Modify Styles’ box where you might want to modify the font and select ‘Centre’ from the justification buttons on offer. Then click okay.

Repeat the process with ‘heading 2′ as far as opening up ‘Modify style’. Change the font to a regular ‘body text’ size (12, for example) and click select the I button.

Close the style palette.  Now let’s see how we actually apply styles.

Using the styles to format a simple first draft document

This is the fun bit. If you already have chapter headings, delete any manually entered chapter numbers and just select the line of text containing a chapter title. Click on the ‘Heading 1′ button in the main ‘Home’ tab of Word controls.

Then hit enter and type in a summary of that chapter. Keep your cursor in that paragraph and click on ‘Heading 2′. With luck, the results should look something like the below.

And off you go! Use ‘Normal’ to format regular text and work through the rest of your draft. The top of each chapter should look something like the below.

Next, we’ll look at how to use the ‘Outline’ view in Word to manage your draft and take a ’20,000 foot view’ of where you’ve got to.

Using the Outline editor

Look at the bottom of the Word window. You’ll see a row of tiny buttons on the right. Mouse-over them until you find the one called ‘Outline’ (see below).

It’s the fourth one along, and looks like a tiny bulleted list. Click on it and your text should appear looking like the below.

This is where you can get an overview. Note the ‘show level’ control. You can use this to specify the levels of text show – in this case, the first two levels only. Hey presto, synopsis! You can also click and drag chapters and experiment with different orders. The chapter numbers will reorder automatically.

Hope this is of some help! 

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time.

I’m not sure if I have any fears that I’ve conquered – I spend too much worrying whether anything I do is good enough, let alone my writing – but I can certainly shout encouragement!

Encouragement I’d shout this week refers to the notorious NaNoWriMo. Now I’m not taking part officially but I am using it as a great jumping-off point to break the back of the current draft of my work in progress. 1,667 words a day for 30 days should take me through to the end of it with a few thousand left over for scrapping a few chapters and starting over. So I’d shout encouragement at anyone using NaNoWriMo to tackle writing a book for the first time, caution that the hard work will start in December and ask if anyone else is twisting it to their own devious purposes…

There’s an entire official site about Jonathan’s Stroud’s Bartimaeus. He makes it all sound very easy. Bastard. If they weren’t such great books, it would be altogether unbearable. And here’s an accompanying Feist video. Luckily, I found one featuring the muppets instead of a bunch of iPhones.

Oh, come on. It’s got to be a more intriguing post than my usual Friday fodder of a few links or an obscure black metal band I’m way too old to be listening to.

Anyway, if you’re a dad of a certain age and with a certain number of kids, this is bound to be something you’ve thought about or even had done.

Supermum and I began discussing more permanent ways of contraception a year or two ago. She’s been on a particular  kind of pill (Yasmin) for about three years and there are a number of good reasons why she shouldn’t carry on putting additional hormones into her body (e.g. the additional small risks of cancer). On top of that, we’d agreed after Little Elf that we wouldn’t have any other children. I’m in my late 40s and supermum is only five years younger so the idea of going though another couple of years of sleepless nights and mayhem, let alone dealing with the physical impact of another pregnancy on her part, didn’t appeal. Also, there’s the matter of age. I don’t want to be retiring just as the third one starts agitating for college fees. And I don’t want to be playing catch in a Zimmer frame.

Anyway…

Condoms split, coils are icky, sterilisation for supermum wasn’t something I ever considered at any point other than typing it out right now and as for the rhythm method, I’d rather trust “Am I fertile?” answers delivered by cutting a deck of cards and assuming the answer is “No” if its spades or diamonds*. So that left vasectomy if I wanted us to carry on having sex. Which I did.

After a chaotic attempt to have a vasectomy through the NHS ended up in their moving the appointment forward two months to an impossible date with no notice and substitute offered, I checked out how much it would cost to go to a Well Known Provider of birth control. It wasn’t insignificant but it wasn’t bank-breaking. I booked and today I showed up and had the deed done.

The particular branch was apparently where M**** S***** moved her first clinic in 1921, a narrow Georgian townhouse near Fitzroy Square. I hoped, as I read the blue plaque, that they’d updated the equipment since. Across the road, a lone anti-abortion protestor knelt, clutching a set of rosary beads. I passed him on the other side of the street and we eyed each other up warily. He was surrounded by scattered plastic baby limbs which (a nurse told me) he’d try to press into the hands of already stressed women on their way into the clinic. A kind of emotional terrorism of a deeply unpleasant kind. I went and got a sandwich and by the time I came back, he’d evidently gone for lunch.

Inside I checked in, paid the balance of the fee and was soon taken into the basement to the pre-op/recovery room. Two other men were already resting on the blue recliners there. We all avoided each other’s eyes. A nurse took my blood pressure, explained the procedures to be followed after the operation and went through the consent form. Then I waited, Classic FM softly torturing my ears. I twittered a little and reviewed the kindly thoughts of my Twitter followers:

tikkabootwo @dadwhowrites It won’t hurt as much as your wife being sterilised. Good for you manning up …… or not

Snowgirl1972 @dadwhowrites that can mean only one thing. Condolences’

scrummycupcake @dadwhowrites on my hub they didn’t wait for local anaesthetic to take effect before making the 1st cut, heard him scream from waiting room

scrummycupcake @ dadwhowrites hubs was in agony for days…in contrast, my dad went back to work an hour after op.

And my favourite:

pureartifice @dadwhowrites aubergines. Expect them. That is all I have to say. Good luck x

Soon after, the surgeon came out to collect me. I think he was Nigerian and, whilst I’ve no doubt he was fully qualified**, his English wasn’t entirely up to speed. His first question was

“Tell me about your history of heart problems.”

That nearly started a history of heart trouble there and then – I’ve so far never had cardiac problems of any kind. I think he heard something in my tone as he quickly rearranged the question as “Have you ever had any heart trouble?” which made much more sense. After that, he left the questioning to the lively Chinese nurse. I mention their nationalities specifically as I found it interesting that the medical and surgical procedures were carried out by foreign nationals whilst British staff dealt with all the admin.

The other thing I noticed as soon as I entered the small surgery was a strong smell of burning.

Anyway, the nurse had me take off my trousers and lie down on the padded surgical table with my underpants about my ankles. It was all too business like and matter-of-fact for me to realise that a strange woman was looking at my penis and a strange man was apparently carrying out some form of genital origami before it was too late to argue. The surgeon (who was highly professional and inspired a lot of confidence, despite his English) warned me that there’d be a scratch. There was. “OW!” I said. He ignored me  and carried on manipulating my scrotum. I suspect he was shaving it. I haven’t dared look properly yet. The nurse engaged me in cheery, hairdresser like conversation (“Do you have children? Do you work near here? How old are they?…”) as various weird prods and sprays and twists carried on in the by-now numb area of my groin.

“This will scratch a bit more…”

“OW!” That was the main local anaesthetic.

“Do you have a boy or a girl?”

“Ah…one of each…What exactly is he doing down there?”

“He wants to know what you’re doing down there.”

“I’m looking for your tubes.”

I didn’t ask any more questions.

“You’re done.”

That’s it? My underpants apparently weren’t supportive enough so they provided me with a fetching pair of briefs in white netting.

“All the way from Harrods! High Fashion!” the cheery nurse chuckled. The only evidence of the surgery I’d just had was a white pad of bandages. I felt nothing in my groin whatsoever.

“Thank you,” I said. “But that burning smell is a bit off-putting.” The nurse nodded sympathetically.

“I know,” she said. “We’ve tried to get rid of it but nothing works. And we have to work with it all day!”

She had a point.

Afterwards, I hung out in the recovery until the light-headed feeling generated by the local anaesthetic went away and then I went home to lie on a bed and feel a bit sore.

I wouldn’t take it up as a hobby but it was ok.

*Look, if you’re interested in trying out this method, I accept no responsibility. But let me know how it goes.

**I’ve had occasion to work with non-UK medical staff in an NHS context. Current GMC requirements are very rigorous and anyone who doubts a Nigerian or Indian doctor’s professionalism is reading from a Daily Mail script of misinformation.