"The word "chance"comes from the Old French cheance, meaning
"the way in which things fall",
and seems, right from the start, to have referred to the lie of gaming dice -
the oldest, and still one of the most effective, randomising devices.
The French word cheance, in it's turn, derives from the Latin cadentia, which also means "falling", but carries in addition, a sense of rhythm.
Hence the English word "cadence" that describes a measured movement, something pleasantly musical.
This etymology implies that chance was never seen as haphazard or altogether neutral.
It hints at an early awareness of the existence of some kind of pattern, at the presence or absence of what we have come to call luck.
It is something that echoes through history like a pulse beat."
Also, Lyall's niece, Katherine Lyall-Watson has her play Motherland coming out again.
I saw this play a year ago when my mate Warwick Frasier was doing the lighting for this production.
"Sweeping through the Russian Revolution, World War II, and Brisbane history, Motherland is an epic new work of historical fiction, informed by actual events.
Three women, exiled from their homelands, find their lives are woven
together across continents and decades.
Nell Tritton, the Brisbane wife
of a deposed Russian prime minister forms a close friendship with Nina
Berberova, who is exiled in Paris.
The woman who would tell their story
is Alyona, a Russian curator whose dreams of a new Australian paradise
are crushed by bankruptcy and the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Shortlisted
for the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, Motherland is a tapestry of
friendship, displacement, home, and identity –
a finely-crafted story of
the casualties of love, ambition, and politics."
Also, I couldn't help noticing that the leaf on my Beyond Supernature book looks just like the leaf I thought was a maple leaf on the footpath in Bangalow.
I notice also that the play opens on the 30th of October, which is the date my father-in-law John passed away 3 years ago.
