Apart from perusing self-help books on psychology, most of my reading over the last few months has focussed on China. Not only reading but also listening, to cultural and historical podcasts and the like.

Aside from the many straight history texts I have ploughed through, I have found Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones and River Town helpful in getting an outsider's inside perspective. Hessler is fluent in Mandarin and has been able to get pretty close to ordinary Chinese people, firstly through teaching English as a member of the Peace Corps, and secondly, through his work as a Beijing-based journalist with The New Yorker. Hessler is a talented writer and sensitive observer, rather fortuitously placed at a unique moment in China's development. I don't always agree with his opinions, whether explicit or implied, but he has done a remarkable job in giving a clear sense of the change that makes China a phenominen today.

The China History Podcast is an entirely different animal, but equally as interesting. Developed, researched and hosted by Lazlo Montgomery (a China hand and enthusiastic amateur historian), the series runs past one hundred episodes. Included in this vast trove is an overview of all of Chinese dynastic history (yes, all five thousand years of it!) and specific episodes on socio/political movements, historical characters and much else besides. What can I say, but bravo.

Even so, my knowledge of China seems to shrink with very foray I make. It is the old story; the more you know, the less you seem to know. It is not an absolute thing. Just one of perspective.

There was a time in the 1960's when it was feared that Anzac Day was in decline. It wasn't something I experienced at the time but read about later, when doing an assignment on The One Day of The Year. Far from fading though, Anzac Day has become increasingly popular. It seems to me that the memorial is not only better attended but has assumed a more prominent role in our national discourse; the meanings we ascribe to identity and the manner in which we do so.

It is more than just making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, for Gallipoli was undoubtedly a terrible military defeat. There is little good can be said about the First World War, period - its absurd beginnings and appalling conduct. The Dardenelles is a great exemplar of botched planning and execution. But perhaps most military campaigns carry aspects of this. After all, even modern campaigns with all the latest tech can still find themselves situated in 'the fog of war'.

For Australia, the meanings of Gallipoli - the first mass commitment of soldiers in a military conflict - emerge from a desire for a greater independence from our colonial origins. Remembering that Australia as a nation was only a decade and a half old, it is easy to understand how blood lost in war would assume such primal significance. And there follows the story-telling, memorialising and mythologising.

It is a good day and worth having and keeping. And it is well for those who do keep it, for those who travel to historic sites and are wrapped in the balm of its solemnity, to understand it. The contents of the stories are as important as the candles we light, the feelings we have. The truth is always more complex and significantly more disturbing than the cenotaphs and the speeches. These things are bound together and we separate them at our peril.

Lest We Forget.

As a trained counsellor, I have the capacity to self-assess myself. But much as most doctors would seek a diagnosis from another doctor, rather than themselves, so it is with me.

I can have a good guess at my own psychological disposition and in fact I have. But I can't properly work with myself - that requires another professional. Nevertheless, I have dragged out my books again and worked through more CBT exercises. To be honest, this is something I will have to do all my life, since anxiety is my lot and only constant revision enables me to manage it.

Last week my GP recommended that I take a small low-dose anxiety pill (Allegron) something which, until now, I have steadfastly resisted. In the same period I have been revising the theory and practice surrounding Core Beliefs, the bedrock beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world. It is the negative ones that I have been most concerned about. They inform our daily lives in a thousand different, insidious ways.

Changing them, finding more positive and realistic ways of being in the world, is my hope.

Two major transport-related disasters in a month have created a media frenzy. Every detail is endlessly mulled over, experts of all stripes are wheeled before cameras to offer 'sound' opinion and swirling currents of 'what ifs' thrash about in the sorry waters of 24/7 reporting.

Beyond what might have otherwise been a clearly constructed narrative of events and information (which this kind of reportage is not), it is hard to see who benefits from the news scramble that characterises disasters like these. By which I mean of course, the mysterious disappearance of Flight MH 370 and the dreadful recent capsizing of the the Korean ferry.

What is gained? I don't know. Time is lost in front of the TV or the computer screen. A kind of generalised nervousness sets in as perceived certainties are upended. These days, planes don't just disappear, do they? And large ferries on well-charted and popular routes don't routinely sink in thirty metres of water.

It is hard to watch. Even harder, the terrible despair of relatives and friends who don't know what has happened to their loved-ones, or at least, don't know for sure. For it is the uncertainty that is most crippling. We can live, however painfully, with the knowledge of things finally being worked out. I don't know what kind of life is possible when we just don't know.

I guess that I am lucky, Very, very lucky. I have a roof over my head, an income, good health, a son and at least one lady who wants to marry me. There is a lot to celebrate.

But lately I have felt both restless and sad. The former I attribute to not having enough work to do. I thrive on being productively busy doing work that is meaningful. So there is simply not enough of that at the moment.

The sadness is more complicated. I have wondered about it. And I realise, having looked within myself repeatedly, that I am not really past the end of my marriage yet. I still have deep regrets about my family being split up. I think that is the root of the sadness I feel. Still grieving, might be another way of putting it.

It's healthy to acknowledge this, I tell myself. And of course it is. I don't want to dwell. I'd rather not stop here for too long. But I know that running away from feelings only enlarges the potential damage that can be done.

It is like travelling from a well-known, much-loved town, one to which you can never return. Somewhere on the outskirts, possibly just past a sleepy satellite village, with the road about to curve into unexplored countryside, you turn back for one last look. You don't have to turn and you don't have to look. But you do. That's where I am. Just taking a glance back on the way I have come.

That's where I think I am, anyway.

moonless darkening
sleep-dissolving possum spat,
heat of my thoughts