It's now over two years since I started playing at the Warehouse Cafe at Anglicare in Mt Druitt. Once a week on a Friday morning. I took it up initially as a challenge, for while I could easily put together a few songs for an intimate music group every so often, having a full repertoire and performing before an audience of strangers was another thing altogether.

Getting over my fear of making, and then showing, my mistakes was a critical part of the journey. In the past I have always winced at missed chords or vocals, feeling that somehow I should be somewhere closer to perfect every time. This is not a standard I recommend to anyone. Better to learn, as I think I have, to relax a little and have a small, inner, undetectable laugh at myself for these musical blemishes.

So now I seem to have become part of the furniture at the cafe. It is taken for granted that I'll be there, in my spot, an ambient part of the background. I am happy with that. For how much longer, I can't say. The gigs have lost the sense of challenge, though I still enjoy myself, for the most part.

As for the repertoire - it has developed over time. I play more songs that I like, though I still have to be mindful that most of the material needs to be familiar. So, cue Elvis and Crowded House.

I am lucky to have this chance. It's unlikely to come again and what is very real at one moment in time, is gone the next. Most often, forever.

The internet is a place of wonder and a place of danger. There is also a lot of stuff in between those two positions, much of it frivolous, ephemeral or insignificant. Like this blog. It need not exist but it does by virtue of google and my will. The internet is encyclopaedic in its breadth but somewhat tabloid in its delivery.

So what do I do as a father of an 8 year old who is curious and demanding of finding out? Like his cohort, Tom loves games of all sorts and cartoons and videos and all of this leaves a wide margin for entering both grey zones and dangerous precincts.

Tom has a little android ipad knockoff that does a reasonable job though it really is just a game mule. I have the unit's google search filters set to a maximum safety level but this does not apparently block everything that it inappropriate for a young mind. A doctor I see sometimes argues a strong libertarian case for everything being okay. So long as it's contextualised and a discussion is had between parents and children, there is no problem. It is educative and builds character, he says.

I'm not so sure. Clinical work on the effects of pornography point to potentially permanent psychological harm (addiction, dysfunction etc) with repercussions for romantic and committed relationships and much else besides. But the genie is out of the bottle.

So I worry about Tom and the things he might see online. It is not mollycoddling or cotton-wooling, but rather, giving him the chance to be a kid and to live, for the time-being, in a world that doesn't seem too risky or dark.

Never mind the headlines.

I have been doing a Tesol online course for about six weeks now and it surprises me just how little English grammar I remember. Some of the names and constructions I recall, though more likely I came across these studying French in junior high school. The fact is is that a lot of technical grammar simply isn't taught any more to native speakers, nor should it be, frankly. But for new learners of English, being able to identify and name language components is useful. It helps to be able to to refer to a participle or a gerund and know that everybody in the room has a handle on the conversation.

Why am I doing such a course? I have in my mind the idea that I might become a kind of travelling English doctor, seeking out new clients and experiences in Sydney. It's hard to know how this might work - I have a few notions in my head - but I would like to give it a try. Teaching is close to my favourite thing and being the social animal that I am, this seems like a good fit.

Since I started using my combustion heater again, Tom has been busy with a little hatchet I bought him. Even on very cold mornings, he is keen to get outside and chop at dead wood. At the moment I can see him playing out the back with a length of bamboo, in imitation, perhaps, of a martial arts exponent. I have a lovely garden and should we sell, I would certainly miss it.

on hearing that a friend had changed her ticket from a doomed flight

who took my place?
summery jet-stream, wintry descent,
dark fields, disallocating

7-1

cold-shouldered waking,
I undream, shedding my disbelief,
dissociations of samba

what to say - sorry?
to wood shed like sharp tears,
entombed in mulch

late beams splay
the cold stump of an old tree
I just felled

Ah, the sound of chain-saws in the morning light! As mentioned in an earlier post, I am having two old trees taken down. One is dead and other is certainly on its way out. It's expensive to do but it is the right time to do it, loath as I am to cut down any trees.

Xiaoyu will be coming here at the end of the year. It was my idea, because really, I could only have gone to China for a couple of weeks. She will be able to stay for a couple of months. This gives us the chance to get to know each other and discover whether we have a future together. The signs are good so far, but I think a living together immersion will be just the right test. Xiaoyu is studying English so I hope that we can communicate a little more freely than we were able to in February. Most interesting for me will be how she deals with the cultural difference. Despite its rush into capitalist modernity, Chinese culture is fundamentally different to Western culture and it will be a challenge for her.

Tom comes back from his mum today, which makes me very happy. It gets kind of lonely around here when he's gone.

I have a friend who is the sweetest, loveliest person I know. She moved house about six months ago and I miss her terribly. Yet despite all the great qualities I see in her - honesty, kindness, intelligence and funniness - to name but a few, her life is almost continually in chaos. Relationships go to pot, her work choices turn sour and she is left wondering what calamity will strike next. It is both sad and perplexing for me. But the truth is that in her, I often see myself. By which I mean, we are very similar in nature.

I have had my fair share of chaos too. When I think about it, many of the calamities visited upon my friend have also been a part of my life too. I see common threads of shared experience. For me though, some of these have been self-inflicted. Others have come out of what appears to be thin air. Everybody has the need to be loved. Everybody craves a security of sorts. Uncertainty is difficult to live with. How we deal with uncertainty and our overarching need for acceptance is a dominating theme in most human scenarios.

It's funny how we can look at the person in the car next to us, or in the shopping centre, or even in our mind's eye, and think with such conviction that they have better, less complicated lives. The truth is, with few exceptions, that hurt and pain and insecurity and the sense that "I am not good enough" is everywhere. The outward appearance of things is one of the great deceits of our time. Of this and any time.