Lest it be thought that I am a spoilsport or a killjoy, and I am neither, here is a Christmas photo of Tom at my brother Michael's apartment in Collaroy. Tom, of course, is immersed in video games, though he uncharacteristically ate a hearty lunch this year. We seem to have a shortage of recent family pics together and I guess that reflects my mum's tiredness, for she was always the organiser of the group shots.




I hope that everyone has a safe and happy New Year. I end with Tennyson's beautifully elegiac, Crossing the Bar, which, as glasses clink and short embraces end, is ample food for thought. Find the moment between the countdown and yet another letdown, and occupy that space with reflection.

But please, try not to cross the bar tonight.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

nye

surge of artificial flame -
all this for a moment's time passing
somewhere, dogs barking

I am wondering why so much is invested in the the New Years Eve thing. No really, I am. Ever since I was a kid, and the midnight pot-banging intruded on my juvenile dreams, I have marveled at the sheer meaninglessness of it. It is, potentially at least, a chance to invest much meaning in our otherwise impoverished lives. But it misses and by such a margin of bread and circus as to be astonishing. It is the icing on the cake for late consumer capitalism, a thoroughly thought-free extravaganza that is certain to buzz for a little while, only to fizz disappointingly a minute or two later.

All the hokum about resolutions for the new year, the turning over of new leaves and so forth, all of this, the drinking to excess, the phoney bonhomie, the failure to connect - to really connect - is apparent in the fresh light of the new morning of the new year when truckloads of garbage wait to be collected, when bodies lie in disarray in the city centre.

In Japan, people go to temples and shrines on New Years Day to pray for happiness and good luck. Hatsumode is one of the most important rituals of the year. Likewise in many Asian countries where the desire for renewal and recommitment is grounded in specific, meaning-centred rituals and practises. Even the poor foreigner such as myself could not help but understand that something deeper was happening and that this was important in people's lives.

What do we have here? Lots of lovely fireworks and then the fade into nothingness. My friend Shu Yamaguchi posted these photos from her New Years Day visit to the Iwashimizu Hachimangu Shrine in Yawata-Shi. Such a contrast!

Tom dropped a skateboard down a covered drain today. He had rolled it down a steep road on the instructions of a friend and by the time I caught them up, it was a metre below the roadway and hemmed in by a sealed metal grid. Stern reprimand and home I go thinking about how I might fish it out.

Thirty minutes later I held the unimprisoned skateboard aloft. I had fashioned a recovery device from a wire coat-hanger lashed to a length of cut and stripped bamboo. It had worked (to my considerable amazement) on the first try!

I write this only because in the past I might have sought the help of others, if only to borrow something. Problem solving is genuinely fun and helps with developing autonomy. So I recommend it. We can all do with a dose of self-reliance, now and then.

On a different (though related) topic, I am introducing myself to Ikigai.

Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is a Japanese concept meaning "a reason for being". Everyone, according to the Japanese, has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self.

We've has hot weather lately - bright days and long, sweaty nights - and today and tomorrow promise more of the same. Later this afternoon Moo Choir (in which group I am a tenor) will sing a round of carols on an oval at Warrimoo. It is our final show for the year.

I have long since finished the Christmas shopping though the thought of a cool shopping mall, even with thousands of shoppers, is quite appealing. Ann is in Parramatta today chancing the Westfield's crowds though she went with ample warning. Tom and I are soaking up the steamy heat in various parts of the house. Fibro is no friend to insulation from hot or cold and it's invention and application is something of a mystery, at least for building houses in the Australian climate.

Just now I heard the looping bleep of the RFS Santa truck which is wending its way through the streets of Hazelbrook. Tom has told me that he is too big now for the annual receipt of Christmas cheer and accompanying lolly pop from a sweltering Santa. Fair enough.

He is growing up.

I am constantly surprised at the number of bigger and bigger things. Yesterday Ann was offered an "up-sizing" up on her already huge plate of fish and chips. Most of the vendors in the food court had similar deals, making large amounts of food and soft drink, well, larger, for a small charge.

SUV's have become wider and taller in the current model iteration, as if their occupants had burst out of their seats and ruptured the car frame. The brick that was once the mobile phone and which at one stage was heading towards miniaturization, has now begun to grow chubby again, in a quaint genuflection to its massive ancestor. Smart phones, now the rival of small tablet computers in size, can happily broadcast video and chat and whatever the user likes with no loss of quality. Houses too have become garishly large and some have even taken the epithet, McMansion, which, if you think about it, dovetails beautifully into any discussion of this portly age.

The other aspect of this curious phenomenon is people, who, in the Western World, are growing increasingly more substantial. This might be the nub of the issue or it might not. Do stout people like to buy over-sized cars? Or is it the anxiety of the age that promotes the big-is-better mantra?

Ann, of course, turned down the up-sized meal. And I settled for the tiniest box of salad I could find. I don't feel any more virtuous for doing so, only worried about where it's all leading.

screed of winter-wet pitch
worm of roiling Roman Candle-
your solid shoes, dry

(Photo courtesy of Keiko Ohnishi)

Yesterday I meant to acknowledge the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. December 7th of that year was a seminal date in World War 2 and in the 20th Century. Europe had been at war for two years already and the Nazis were still in the ascendant. In the East, Japan had been at war with China since 1937, having seized Manchuria in 1931.

Churchill desperately wanted the Americans in and doubtless Roosevelt wanted that too. What the Japanese wanted is less certain, for surely attacking an industrial power the size of the US was a road to ruin. Maybe they hoped to hunker down in the expanded Imperial Empire and negotiate a peace later on. Instead they got the full measure of American military power and in the end, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, we can trace back to this event the rise of modern Japan, the Cold War, the end of American isolationism and strangely enough, the triumph of the CCP in China. It strikes me now that the US is caught in an ambiguous and difficult bind, being a massive power, thrust since WW2 into a pivotal global role, but finding itself exhausted and confused by the complexities of the modern world.

It was not so on the morning of December 8, 1941.

Japanese aircraft over Pearl Harbor



The USS Arizona listing heavily.

Lately I've been dipping into the old pool of movies that screen on TCM. I pick and choose what I might be interested in though I do like to surprise myself. Movies from the "Golden Years" may seem dated and certainly the plot lines are eerily similar within each genre. Dialogue often seems forced or overly theatrical, as if transferred straight from the music hall. But what is refreshing is the reliance on acting and the relative diminution of special effects. Someone like James Cagney is right there in your face and the energy in such performances is palpable.

The other day I watched Varsity Show - not a great movie but a 90 minute diversion into a time that has long passed. The ending has the wonderful choreography of Busby Berkeley. Of course, its no Fritz Lang but I am probably finished with the avant garde for now and prefer to watch what people were filling the cinemas with back in the day. Oh, and the slightly screwball performance by Mabel Todd - a funny blonde if there ever was one - was worth my time.

My canine reference in yesterday's post was not an idly sexist remark. Plenty of Chinese considered Jiang to be a bitch, though more politely she was thought of as the 'white-boned demon.' I was however referencing a famous remark made by Jiang during her trial, which essentially implicated Mao as the major player behind the Cultural Revolution. She said:

"I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite."

Despite her well-documented complicity in the crimes committed during that period, it seems to me that she also took the fall for her husband's leading role. Mao acted and he didn't act. Sometimes he just let things happen, which made him doubly culpable. The CCP did not want to strike the memory of Mao down and Jiang and the Gang of Four had the whole weight of historical judgement dumped on them.

Below, a lovely snap of Jiang and Mao in Yu'nan in 1938.

In a previous post I said I was reading The Life of Madam Mao, which surveys the career of Jiang Qing. It's hard to know where to start with this most complex of individuals, for, having been arrested, disgraced, vilified and jailed in the period following the death of her husband, it is hard to get a purchase on the real person. Jiang's actions during the Cultural Revolution (in which, we might say, she was a pivotal character) led to terrible suffering for many perfectly innocent individuals. Personal vendettas masquerading as political activism were her modus operandi, for anyone who has somehow slighted her, even unwittingly, was a potential target.

Mao must accept some blame for letting his dog off the leash, for though he reigned her in from time to time, the destruction wrought on people and culture by her vindictiveness was appalling. Yet we must balance this against the fact that she was a woman in a man's world. Jiang was very conscious of the imbalance and injustice between the sexes and fought against it with whatever cunning she could, though one could argue that her methods were counterproductive. China's history is unkind to woman who rose to positions of power and influence and the few who have have often been slanderered as being despotic, scheming or sexually immoral.

Jiang was undoubtedly smart and talented and had she remained an actress in Shanghai, we might be talking about her movies now. Party officials though were probably right when they said that she set out to marry Mao in order to access power. Her career on the stage was set to become much bigger, her audiences vaster, though she had to wait. The Cultural Revolution was both the script and scenario for this dynamic performance. It was both comedy and tragedy and in the end, a terrible waste.

The younger Mao and Jiang

being either

The proletarian warrior

About 5 years ago I received a Kindle as a gift and it's fair to say that I have rarely taken possession of a more useful and beloved present. There are dozens of free and paid-for books in my Kindle library now. Most weeks I will scoop up a sample of a text and more often than not, make the purchase for the complete version shortly thereafter. My Kindle travels with me and fits the bill in terms and lightness and thinness and general unobtrusiveness.

Today my old Kindle cover, which had grown tatty with use, was finally replaced by an Amazon original that I was lucky enough to pick on on eBay. Reading being close to my favourite activity in life, the accoutrements of the practice are also significant. I love the old paper books and newspapers too, don't get me wrong, but my curiosity about life (it's origins, meaning and so forth) is advanced by having greater capacity and range available. Here's to a new and fruitful alliance.

I came across a photo in Japan Today that threw me back aways to my old life in Japan. Once a week I would haul a large plastic rubbish bag up the street and deposit it in a little netted-off alcove by the side of the road to await the dump truck. There was always an allotted time for this ritual. It could not be done the night before, even if one was away or indisposed. Previous teachers told me that their one and only attempt at this had been met with a returned bag. Someone had gone to the trouble of rifling through the contents to find a clue to the owner and naturally the foreigners were to blame.

It was kind of a pleasant chore and a way of catching up with otherwise reclusive neighbours, if only to say good morning. The team below are from Toyohashi, though given the ubiquity and uniformity of things in Japan, they could just as easily have been from Sanda.



And lo, by the miracle of Google Earth, here indeed is that very Mukogaoka rubbish alcove.

Let's see. A complicated Middle East war in which competing sides have potentially multiple interests and backers. At least 3 major powers flying uncoordinated sorties against sometimes similar, sometimes opposing targets. A Russian fighter is shot down by Turkish aircraft after allegedly entering Turkish airspace. Turkey is a member of Nato, a military alliance which now extends to Russia's eastern borders.

What could possibly go wrong?

Over 20 years ago I responded to a bill-post at a public library advertising a singing class. Sing For Joy, as it was called, was run by one Janet Swain, a person I had never met. Nor had I ever done any formal singing work - plenty of voice and drama classes, sure - but nothing devoted solely to the sung word or sound.

The class was small and my guess is that Janet was largely winging the program, but coming as she did from a musical family (an Australian Von Trapp, if you will), that was fine. I remember that we did a lot of body percussion and irregular chanting and scale work and that was also fine, for I was indeed a novice. But truthfully, that series of workshops changed my life in many ways. For a start, I began to take singing more seriously. I have Janet to thank for my initiation into the world of singing in choirs and much else besides.

This afternoon Moo Choir has its final performance for the year - a casual concert at our musical directors house. I can draw a near straight line between those early days with Janet, and my former marriage, my life and work in Japan, choir membership, cafe singing, and the present moment.
Today she is as active as ever and I include a recent photo of her with the Ukeladies. Janet is third from the left.

Thank you again Janet, for making such a difference in my life.

Yesterday Ann asked me to go with her to a factory warehouse sale in Mascot. And so we did, arriving at a little after 9am. I like shopping but not this kind of shopping and pleasant as Ann's company is, there is something about an industrial unit filled with tables of garments and luggage and handbags that is dread-inspiring. It was also hot and crowded and women kept eyeing the handbag that Ann had given me to hold, as if I might relinquish it under duress.

But the train journey there and back was lovely and I reconnected with Terrill's Madame Mao, after a few weeks off reading it. We also lunched well at Buddha Boy in Parramatta. I've been eating a lot of Thai in the city lately and this place was comparable in quality.

(Below) Detail from a study by Hieronymous Bosch on the hellish effects of shopping....

I had thought that The Abbott, which sustained self-inflicted torpedo strikes and rows of own-brand depth charges, had sunk without trace to the murky depths of the conservative fantasy ocean. Alas, I find a survivor who, having clearly swallowed gallons of sea-water before his rescue, is talking madly to the national press. This same survivor, amid wild claims that he does not want to be the captain again, continues to harangue any who are willing to pay heed to his unhinged prating. For, to borrow a well-used analogy, though he stoppeth one in three to tell his tale, surely two will flee in panic.

As I said in my last post, there are good reasons for outrage though often as not, its modern manifestation is generated by trivial events and personal slights. In between these two posts, good cause for outrage has emerged. Multiple terrorist attacks on a Russian airliner, Beirut and most recently, Paris, are good reasons for anger and outrage.

I don't want to write about terrorist groups for the simple reason that I don't want to give them an ounce more publicity than they already get. So no names. But I will say that they represent all that is illogical, foolish and base in human nature. The so-called martyrs will not be greeted by 72 virgins in heaven, for this ridiculous fantasy is just that. Nor would any loving God condone or contrive at the murder of innocent people, so they can shout God's name as much as they like.

Oblivion, dark and eternal and without pulse or breath, awaits them.

There is a lot of outrage about. A day rarely passes without a headline about someone who was outraged for some reason. So outraged are they that they feel compelled to tell the world via a media outlet. These outrages are many and varied - not getting a seat on a bus, being mistaken for being pregnant rather than just fat, having to queue for more than 5 minutes, an ATM malfunction, a mobile network being down for 30 seconds, not getting the right meal on a flight, and so forth.

Their gravity is so earnest that they must be spoken of often and publicly and like the Ancient Mariner, the outraged is compelled to stop passers-by to tell their sorry tale. Unlike the Ancient Mariner (who, it must be said, did have something to complain about*), they stoppeth more than one in three. Possibly all.

Synonyms for outrage include "indignation, fury, rage, shock, resentment, disgust" particularly as it pertains to moral or ethical issues. Perhaps the word people are really looking for, the better fit, is irritation. Saving outrage for genuinely outrageous situations, such as climate change, global inequality, nuclear proliferation and corrupt conduct by public officials, to name but a few, might throw some perspective on the small daily hassles we all encounter.

*Though he had every reason to complain, he didn't.

Who is this man? I feel I should know. Somewhere in the back of my mind the answer is longing for release, and yet??

Apparently he has popped up in London and given a most unpleasant speech to some very polite grandees of a particular political party.

Is he a politician? I wish someone would tell me. It is hard to have a notion on the the end of your tongue that never trips off it.

It's as if he was a frequent guest in my living room, one whose face and voice was a constant these past years. Or a painting that hung slightly lopsidedly, just enough to draw attention to itself again and again. But when I concentrate, even with great effort, all I get is meaningless slogans, echoing over and over.

In publishing this photo, which, I admit, is no jog to my memory, I hope that my conundrum can be solved!

My relatives in the UK, Dorothy and Roy, have been working on a family history for my mother's side of things and doing a very good job of it too. I have been running a kind of errand service between them and my mum, for her computer skills are somewhat lacking. Emails get lost or become unopenable, photos download but can't be retrieved, and so forth. For her it is very frustrating but in essence, my role is purely technical.

A recent photo sent from the UK sent my own memories into a tailspin to the 1960's. The shot shows my grandfather standing beside his taxi outside our new house at Chris Bang Crescent, Vaucluse. It is October 1961, a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis; Australia still in the grip of the Menzian torpor. I am three years old and peering from the passenger window. My grandmother has passed away only a year earlier. It is such a different time to the present and the Australia of this photo is barely recognisable. In the background, the long, cool lines of the Pacific Ocean.

Since the Reagan/Thatcher ascendancy, it has been harder to make the case for a progressive agenda. Not only were the dominant governing parties of the right, but the language of progressism was marginalised by that of the economic juggernaut of market economics, which assumed for itself the mantle of the natural and the good. Other models were derided as failed or sickly. An experiment began in market driven reforms which remains with us to this day.

Progressives should take heart though from the often patchy achievements that have followed, for while GDP has grown in most Western countries, inequality and job-related anxiety have followed hard upon it. Perhaps there is an emerging consensus again that there is a place for a mild redistribution of wealth through the tax system and a place for government in the economy.

Moreover a progressive agenda includes the social changes that have occurred (and that many continue to aspire to) since 1945 and which are undoubtedly unsettling to conservatives. Like Clinton and Obama, I came on board for same-sex marriage a little later than perhaps I should have, for there was a conservative and religious case that gave me pause. But evolve I did.

You always have to give yourself permission to change your mind if you are so convinced of another point of view.

A fortnight ago Ann and I attended the wedding of two of my choir buddies, Ben and Linda. It was a very informal but really enjoyable time. The weather was unseasonably hot and the little park in which the formal ceremony took place, hemmed in on one side by the highway and on the other by the train line, was crowded with expectant well-wishers.

The wedding duo had asked me to play a set before the ceremony and so I did, trying hard to find love songs that did not have a bitter, angry or sad twist. Of the 80 odd songs in my repertoire, only 10 qualified as being possibilities and even those had borderline issues in some cases. So I cheated and threw in the a couple of happy but non-love specific songs, such as Wonderful World. Try looking for love songs that are happy through and through. It aint easy!

The reception was in the adjacent Warrimoo Progress Hall (a stout reminder of more certain times) and it was, to the acclaim of all present, a hoot. And Ann looked lovely!



And here are the very happy couple with family. My car inadvertently photo-bombed the pic!

At a Thai forum that I visited yesterday in the hope of gleaning some visa-related information (no luck), I chanced upon a few sub-threads that seemed full of commentary by disgruntled ex-pats and their ilk. I recognised the sentiment immediately, for having lived in Japan for three years, there are certain common elements to what one might call the disillusionment of the Westerner who chances to leave the homeland. Some are understandable, for the cultural and historical differences are deep and the sense of being the outsider never really fades completely. It is not unusual for the euphoria of being immersed in a new society to dim with the passing of time, only to be replaced, if one is not careful, with a nitpicking dissatisfaction. And so it was with the chorus of whingeing correspondents at this site.

One comment I found particularly astonishing came from an Australian pen (should I say keyboard?) that grandly announced that there was nothing special about Thailand and that Australian culture was as deep as Thai culture. By what metric this was measured I do not know, but I can say, it is profound bollocks. If I accept that the writer was including Aboriginal culture and the Western cultural tradition going back to the Ancient Greeks, then there is a case to be made. But this is not what he meant, for these traditions barely inform the lives of average Australians, whose cultural outlook hardly strays from tabloid TV and media, property prices, sport and, er, sadly that's about it. There is nothing wrong with having these interests per se, but there is surely something the matter if they constitute most of what there is.

Even a cursory look at Thai culture (or pretty much any Asian culture) shows a level of depth and sophistication, not to mention an intersection with long history, that makes the shallow Western roots of the Australian implantation look, well, even shallower.

Things with Ann are going well. We have been seeing each other for 7 months now and being a couple with cultural difference (did I really say that?), trust has taken time to develop. I can understand her point of view very clearly, for how potentially fraught is it to enter a relationship in a foreign land, with an inhabitant of said place, without prior recommendation or any real knowledge of that person's character. Australia is a Western liberal democracy which has taken all its cues, until recently, from the the UK and the USA. Only latterly has there been a pivot, so to speak, to Asia.

Thailand is another world by comparison - a society strongly informed by Buddhism, a powerful group ethic and extended family ties and obligations. Relaxed and liberated it might seem to tourists, but scratch the surface and you will find an abiding conservatism.

So Ann and I are negotiating this divide as best we can. I am very open-minded as a rule, though critical of the contemporary interpretation of liberty and freedom in the West. So it is much easier for our minds to meet on many issues.

Ann will move in with me in November, even though this will necessitate a long journey to the city most days. But it will test our relationship and that is a good thing.

Lately I have been watching a lot of programming from NHK, the Japanese broadcaster. Amongst my favourite shows are Document 72 Hours, in which a film crew spend three days in the same location, just watching and talking to people as they come and go. On one level it seems terribly mundane - for what could possibly be interesting about hanging out at a noodle vending machine, or a car yard or even a tobacco shop, to name just three of the locations?

But interesting it is, and on many levels. There is no way of knowing what lives people bring to these ordinary places, but somehow the film crew coax stories of joy, hope, sadness and longing from the most prosaic of daily transactions. One woman newly-divorced, a son re-living a childhood memory, a man getting a truck license just for the heck of it, the tales are unpredictable and insightful. Perhaps this speaks to the way we attach special significance to place - or the sense of place that somehow reorganises our thoughts and brings forth memory and meaning.

Here is a link to the NHK site: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/72hours/

and two photos, one of the soba noodle machine (one of my especial favourites) and the most recent one, about Hachi the cat and the tobacco shop.

Back in our Japan days Nadia and I used to cycle quite often down to the river. We would bike alongside the Muko River on pathways that were generally flat and arboured by cherry trees. In spring-time this was a popular spot with locals and blue plastic picnic sheets were common as people snacked on festival food and drank sake under the flower-pregnant boughs.

On one occasion in May we were passing by a farmhouse that sat on this narrow river plain and noticed that it was flying flags or kites. These were Boys Day kites in the shape of koi (carp) and many houses sported them from early May onwards.

I found a smaller version of the originals when I was shopping in Daiso recently. Using a long bamboo pole, I hoisted it into a pile of dirt and there it flutters in the Australian spring.

another wide-moon night
mops of jasmine-scented sky-
uncoiling in your arms

The internet is a wonder to behold! While it is not necessarily indispensable (for really, I could get by without it ) it is a marvelously useful tool for news, information and much else besides. This blog, now in its 10th year, is written and stored online and would almost certainly be different if it were written down in a book in diary form. Structure often informs content.

The web has also democratised the citizenry in all manner of good and bad ways. The pre-online informational world, by which I mean TV, radio, newspapers and books, was largely dominated by informed or expert opinion. There have always been shock-jocks and wayward columnists and letter-writers, but popular opinion was largely confined to informal channels such as friends, family, social events and the pub. Now anyone with a computer and an internet connection can chime in to any forum, start up their own webpage or make commentary in pretty much any way they like. And much of it - at least amongst the stuff I have read - is dross. It is poorly written and ill-thought through, sometimes full of vicious invective against any differing point of view and frequently anonymous in one form or another.

Bill Bryson recently bemoaned this kind of writing. Folks who have not taken the time to inform themselves or can't be bothered learning to write or spell properly seem to feel entitled to express opinions that better belong at a family bbq or local hotel. Bryson has advocated the following rule, which I heartily support:

"Well, here is a new rule: if you are too stupid to spell 'disappointed' even approximately correctly, you are not allowed to take part in public discourse at any level."

The full article is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11895215/Britains-heritage-at-risk-due-to--ill-educated-internet-critics-says-travel-writer-Bill-Bryson.html

Yesterday I took Tom to visit my mum in Dee Why. She has been unwell lately and also very keen to sort out some family business. I spent the afternoon with her listening to her recollections of her father and mother, which was prompted by some issues around family history. I won't dwell on the details at this time.

While we were there, a storm came in from the sea and in the midst of it (which strangely yet beautifully involved a conflation of blue sky and sunshine) a double rainbow appeared, forming an almost perfect arch across the near-sea expanse of Dee Why. And here is part of it.

flowers turn to leaf
grounds shrouded in the fallen,
your slippers, just so

The end of the Abbott era could not come soon enough. Whatever one might say about Tony Abbott's political talents, and he certainly had instincts and convictions that made him formidable, he was not suited to being Prime Minister of Australia.

After years of rehearsing for the role, Malcolm Turnbull has assumed the top job and now has 12 months to convince the electorate that the Coalition is relevant. I am not a conservative voter but I like Turnbull and wish him well. The Labor Opposition have their work cut out for them if they want to stay competitive.

Tom plays football (soccer) for the Hazelbrook Hawks FC. Today was the club's gala presentation day at Gloria Park and the weather decided to become spectacularly Spring-like. This is Tom's third season and he is beginning to get a handle on the game, though still inclined to daydream!

There was a good turnout and the trophies have certainly improved over the years. All players get an individual trophy, a substantial improvement over the pennants we used to get. Trophies only went to Best and Fairest and Most Improved back in the day.

Below, Tom waits with his team while trophies are being awarded to junior divisions.

NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster, is hosting a haiku-writing site, so I decided to hop in and write one based on one of the photos they supplied. I am in two minds about the last line. Maybe you can help me decide. The second haiku will please purists, since its third line numbers 5 syllables. However, writing haiku is not about purity, but sensibility.



errands detaining
you wait in the long cool light
warming my seat

or

errands detaining
you wait in the long cool light
willing my seat warm


And here is a link to their page.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/haiku_masters/

As an addendum to my last post and by way of giving some balance to the debate, I applaud the Federal Government's decision to take a significant number of refugees from camps inside Syria and adjoining nations. Dragged and screaming it might have been, but in the final analysis it was honourable and decent. My faith in Australia is partially restored for the meantime.

On a different topic entirely, my girlfriend Ann and I went up to Wentworth Falls this afternoon to check out the scenery. Today we just took in a lookout or two, but I have plans for us to descend to the valley floor for serious bushwalking. Here is Ann at the Princes Lookout, which sits high above the waterfall and looks out into the Jamison Valley.. She is so cute.

For the little boy who was found drowned on a Turkish beach - Aylan Kurdi was his name - and to the many others who in trying to find a better life perished through no fault of their own.

I am sorry.

For the policies of Western Governments, this nations no less, who turn their backs on people displaced by the very conflicts they give lip-service to or engage in.

I am sorry.

The shameful and illegal actions of Australia ramify most for me as this country, in its modern iteration, was built on the labours of immigrants, one wave after another. It augurs poorly for a nation to act in a manner that is moral bankrupt, but such is the abysmal level of political leadership now, this is the case.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/someone-has-placed-an-anonymous-heartfelt-notice-for-little-aylan-20150904-gjezcw.html

blossoms on my bonnet
spring shrapnel to wayward breeze,
lambent hitch-hikers

The house that Tom and I live in is very small. Two little bedrooms and some living space with no storage. So imagine my delight now that my new garage is finished. Yesterday Kieron and I added the finishing touches to this many-month project - meaning a couple of downpipes, gutters and trim - and now the garden is free of trailers and colourbond panels and off-cuts of metal. The ladders are stowed and tools returned to their rightful places. No more barked shins and stabbed toes. Edges of metal sheeting are invariably sharp!

It will be a great relief to have a dry, coherent and stable location to store my documents, my library, bicycles and what not. It has dried up my savings but that is to good effect ultimately. So, below is a photo taken yesterday of Kieron at work. We had a few hours ahead of us but the end was in plain sight.

plumb blossom moon
chasing a thin slice of sky,
luminous as ice

When I first went to Europe in 1979 I met up in Dijon with a Canadian man called Ted. It was one of those chance encounters at a Youth Hostel, which started with a shared meal and ended with a couple of weeks of traveling together. Amongst the many things we talked about was American politics, for in such arcane matters were we both schooled. At that time the Carter Presidency was ending and Mr Reagan was in the ascendancy, whilst across the Atlantic(or The Channel, from our perspective), Mrs Thatcher was delivering a Franciscan homily before her onslaught against the welfare state. Heady days!

My point, which has been entirely lost in this verbiage, was that Ted was impressed that I knew anything about US politics at all. I am not sure how many Australians he had met, but he was adamant that I knew a great deal more than all the Americans he had encountered. Not exactly a high bar, but I took the compliment anyway.

Which brings me to Donald Trump. The Republican challenger has surprised many by his stubborn continuance at the top of all the polls. By any calculus he should have peaked and been on his way out by now. He is rude, ignorant, narcissistic and lacking the temperament required of a President. His bombast and offensiveness would, under normal circumstances, have been punished by voters. But on the other hand, his finger to the establishment (of which he is a member) is hitting a sweet spot with people disaffected by politics and the complexity of the world. Straight-talking and simple solutions have an appeal to people tired of hearing how difficult the world is. Trump, or the iteration of him that we are seeing in this campaign, is a cynical opportunist who uses bigotry as a tool to gain and hold attention.

I will be surprised, though not shocked, if Trump gets to the first primary in early 2016. Defying the political gravity is something that he does rather well. For now.

a chin of moon
drifts in a cold acrylic sky
old winter's reprise

This month is the 10th anniversary of this blog, Tatami Twist. If I think back to the first few entries and that time a decade ago, it is hard to not to wonder at how life can so change and in such unexpected ways.

Ten years ago Nadia was just falling pregnant with our son Tom, and we were planning our wedding in November. In addition, we were in between teaching years in Japan - we had no idea at the time that the next tour of duty would be our last - so we found ourselves helping to run Yes School from Australia. I was still singing with Crowd Around Choir and my circle of friends was very much local, in the Mid-Mountains.

Jump forward 578 blog entries and there are differences. I am divorced now though dating a lovely Thai woman name Arunee. I am back at my old house, have just finished 4 years of volunteer work with Anglicare. I am a member of a new choir, Moo Choir, and have quite a few new friends from further afield. Tom spends half his time with me and the other half with his mum.

Funnily enough, life is change from the moment we draw our first breath. We seek to paper over the obvious cracks in our seamless narratives if only to protect ourselves from madness.

I would like to keep writing up this blog for another ten years if I can, though for reasons I am not really able to explain.

I suppose we all need to validate our existence in some way.

I deplore the level of discourse in Australian politics so much that I tend to turn to other countries for my political fix. I am living out my antipodean needs by proxy, and that proxy is the United States.

The US is a deeply flawed democracy. At the national level, the Congress and the President tend not to work well together, making sound public policy a fraught area. The Supreme Court has been sometimes left in the position of having to rule on matters that probably should be legislated in Congress, if only the latter could get its act together. Joined-up-government it is not, though perhaps the framers of the Constitution wanted it that way. Nobody gets the Crown all to themselves and if they ever do, there are others to snatch it from their head.

I was going to say that the Westminster System tends to work better but then I look at Australia and the level of mediocrity at the top and wonder-maybe not. Yes, there is a lot of policy framing and legislative action most of the time, but the level of debate is so infantile and predictable as to denigrate the process. Reasonably, people switch off.

At the moment, The Republican Party is entering the period of debating that pressages the primaries. It is an interesting time for the politically minded even if the rhetoric is tired and deeply conservative. I watched the opening debates and was impressed by the quality of the candidates, even though I agreed with little that they said.

Last week I tendered my resignation to Anglicare after four years of work as a Emergency Relief volunteer worker. There are few times in my life when I felt that a job - even one that does not pay - has fitted my temperament and experience so well. It is rare to be lost so deeply in work that the sense of self disappears and what is real is the moment of engagement itself. This wasn't always the case of course - that perfect world just doesn't exist - but it often came close and when it did is was profoundly satisfying.

Cafe de Warehouse - Anglicare's Friday morning cafe in support of sustainable living - was also a great pleasure. I enjoyed being a musician - developing and practising a repertoire - and the challenge of doing so was just what I needed at a time when my marriage was breaking apart. I have always wanted to be a cafe singer and thanks to the encouragement of my cafe buddies Penny and Hazel, I could. It was a blessing.

Departing is sad but I cannot change the tide of forces that entrench injustices. I prefer to focus on how good the ride was and how surprising the view is from the top of the hill.

My April 25th post showed Memory Park in Hazelbrook as it was around the time of the Great War or a little after. The park used to accommodate a commemorative war memorial - hence the name of the park - but the latter was moved to Gloria Park in the 1990's because of the proposed widening of the Great Western Highway. The park fell into a very poor state until its recent dramatic redesign in 2014.

Just how different Memory Park is can be seen in the following photo which I took a few days ago. I am guessing that I have taken it from a similar vantage point to those posted earlier, but such are the changes wrought over the past 90 years (the park is much smaller and narrower due to ever-encroaching roadworks) that it was a tough judgement call. Also noteworthy is the relatively new pedestrian bridge to Hazelbrook Station which took the place of a zebra crossing and the more recent traffic lights.

Memory Park has taken a battering over the course of the 20th century and it's current iteration may well do it for another century. Maybe we will reach another high water-mark of civic pride such as was evident a hundred years ago, though I am doubtful. That generation and the one following had a different way of expressing the notion of the common good and the concomitant duties that flowed from that understanding. I fancy that we shall not see the like again. I'm happy to proven wrong though.

We live in an era of noise. Beginning with the first industrial revolution, and moving with a ceaseless trajectory since, noise has become an omnipresent bedfellow for all who live in or near cities. Cities are great gathering-sites of sound. They do not discriminate but proclaim the clamour within. In every house, devices hum and buzz. Fridges whir and mine occasionally shudders as if shaking off the cold. When reversing my car I get an emphatic beep.

This morning I went shopping at a large supermarket in Katoomba. Whilst waiting in the queue, I tried tuning in and out to the different layers of noise that surrounded all of us there. Stratas of white sound - refrigerators and air-conditioning were a soup of loud hushing - formed an almost benign background to the chirrup of cash registers, exclamations of customers and clatter of trolleys. It was impossible to imagine a place beneath all this racket where there might be a kind of silence.

Back home, cockatoos swooped loudly on some bread I put outside. I suspect their shrieks could shatter glass under the right conditions. I don't know of a noisier bird, and en masse they might even wake the dead.

One day the universe will end in silent darkness, but for now, we have an interminable light and sound show.

We have had a genuine cold snap in recent days, reminding me of the time I first moved to Hazelbrook. On Thursday night, the Upper Mountains had its biggest fall of snow since the 1980's, an event that caused some havoc on the roads and railways. We are not set up for moderate falls of snow, though in a few months time, we will be better prepared for bushfires. We do droughts and floods quite well too. Snow, well...

Consequently there has been a torrent of media and social media reportage and I won't bore you with the details of snowmen, whooping kids or blithe yuletide scenery, except to say, that there were massive drifts of it. Having lived though four Japanese winters (and while I love the sensation of waking to a white frosting of silence) I am less-than-sanguine about it all. But pleased nevertheless.

Yesterday Tom's nana, Elaine, took him to the icy reaches of Katoomba where he played happily for an hour or two. Elaine took a few photos and I hope to have better resolved ones, soon.




waking to bleached silence
snow-fall an unvoiced conspiracy-
blankets tighten

a jets backside
plumbs low the dusk sky-
my train judders

The crisis in Europe over Greece - an ongoing saga dating back some five years now - has tended to polarize views. On the one hand, there is much commentary on how the Greeks got into this mess through poor governance and over-borrowing. Let them shape up or ship out, the same view contends. Opposing this is the idea that Europe is being run by the Germans for the Germans and that Germany should do its best to forgive Greek debt. After all, the Wehrmacht was camped in Athens and surrounds 70 years ago and reparations are surely due.

Most likely, a middle way will prevail. Greece will eventually get the loan extensions and additions, be required to reform itself further, with the understanding and guarantee that permanent debt relief will be delivered shortly thereafter. There seems little point in administering medicine that will kill the patient, but this seems to have been the unwitting result of the past five years.

In my view, the European Project needs that country, the one that was the very well-spring and cradle of Western thought, to stay inside. It is never a cost-free exercise, but what, realistically, is the alternative?

Tom sometimes falls asleep on my grandmother's sofa. It's getting harder to carry him as he grows longer and heavier, but carry him I must so he can sleep in his own bed. Waking up amongst his toys, lego creations and all that happy familiarity is always better than the other options and sofas are bad for the back anyway. One day I won't be able to carry him, so for me, this is still a special time. Though, sshhhh! I would never tell him that.

It's cold today.....

bird-bending winter wind,
charge of grit and eye-blind breath,
coughing from within

Last night I journeyed to Leichardt to see the new movie, Love and Mercy at the Palace Cinema in Norton St. Ostensibly a biopic about the life of The Beach Boys Brian Wilson, the film cleverly navigates two crucial periods in Wilson's life - the time during the gestation and creation of Pet Sounds, and a later time when the middle-aged Wilson was under the care of a radical (and possibly, criminal) therapist.

Insights are offered into the Wilsonian creative process and we see an innovator and enabler of extraordinary talent. In trying to break with the more formulaic earlier (yet highly successful) BB material, Wilson inevitably creates friction within the band and within himself.The ubiquitous cocktail of drugs and excess are simply too much for the sensitive and seemingly misunderstood soul of the younger Brian, who lapses into increasing mental ill-health.

During the course of Love and Mercy, my thoughts often flew to my departed friend, Robert Mumford. Robert was a huge fan of The Beach Boys and as the film progressed, I was reminded of conversations we had had two decades earlier. Somehow the minutiae of those rambling Mumford monologues have stayed with me to this day. It occurs to me now that Robert probably saw a lot of Brian Wilson in himself and his own circumstances in life.

So as the opening credits of the movie rolled, I resolved to watch this fine movie for both of us.

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was putting up a new shed, replacing the old and dilapidated garage that has been on the site since the early 1960's. The latter was rarely useful, having a rusty leaking roof and dangerously crumbling fibro walls. Renovating it would have been a waste of money and perhaps even hazardous.

Today the new shed arrived in prefabricated pieces (see below) although we can't do anything about erecting it until the slab is laid, hopefully next week. This is the first new structure I have ever built on this property, and even though it's a just a metal box (20 square metres), it will be mighty handy. The main house is small and I need a space for my library and maybe even a location for Tom to use for crafts and table tennis.

The nastiness of the debate over asylum seekers is a national disgrace and an international embarrassment. It is hard to find a time in the modern era when the level of discourse has been so wretched, irrational and selfish. That both major parties contrive in some way to pay lip service to policies that are both draconian and an affront to Australia's international obligations is appalling. Voices of dissent are generally mute, because the backlash against a politician not seeming to be tough on "people smugglers" (which is essentially a way of re-positioning the actual debate about displaced people) is real and intimidatory.

And at the head of it all is a hired thug in the Prime Minister, a man so unfit to lead a nation that others must wonder at the seeming lack of talent available to fill the job. If I could apply somewhere else for citizenship I would give it a serious thought.

The Pope's most recent encyclical (Laudato Si) excoriating Man's treatment of the planet, together with his withering attack on consumer capitalism, is a long overdue riposte from the oldest Christian Church. But it is, nevertheless, most welcome. At a time when such concerns are deliberately marginalized by the very interests they critique, a still powerful and widely influential voice like the Pope's is much needed to add balance.

Since the public space is so often hijacked nowadays by the trivial and the acutely temporary (iPhones, Kardashians blah blah blah), or is subject to the extremes of the oft-mentioned omnipresent newscycle, we truly need a place where serious things can be said by people who will be taken seriously. And we need to talk about them over an extended period of time.

I sway between an optimistic and a pessimistic position for the most part. I am happy to be an activist even if the odds are heavily stacked against me, but I despair of the ignorance and willful stupidity that seems so much a part of the human condition.

But Pope Francis offers hope, and that is good.

It's coming up to four years since I started working as a volunteer at Anglicare in Emergency Relief, and about three and a half years since I first played a song in the cafe. There is rarely a day when I don't look forward to going to work and even though it doesn't pay an income, it pays out grandly in other ways. It can be very humbling to work with people whose struggles are so great that their very presence in my office is a miracle in itself. It is uplifting to be a small part of a solution to whatever problem is being presented. And often as not, clients have many problems on many levels.

I have been trialing a few new songs at cafe though my capacity to add to the repertoire is slowing. There are probably about 30 or 40 songs that get regular play, with a few dropping in and out of favour depending on my mood and how the gig feels. The latter is a fuzzy concept, but I seem to know at least when not to do one. Now and then I get a request and sometimes I can find the song and learn it by the following week. I am constrained by my limited guitar-playing ability, so many songs I would love to sing and are quite within my range are out of the question.

I don't know how long I will remain where I am. Some decisions are in my hands and some are not. The next few weeks will determine how great my agency to act is. Unrelated events can conspire to create watersheds in our lives and how we respond holds the key to much more besides.

Last Sunday Tom and I and a group of friends went cycling down at the Penrith Regatta Centre. Built for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Rowing and allied events, the centre now operates as a public park and recreation space, when it is not being used for sports events.

A single lap of the rowing course is 5kms and we rode twice around the man-made lake, taking a leisurely hour or so. It was perhaps the greatest distance Tom has ever cycled. 10kms is not bad for a 9 year old. The winter weather was mild, the sky full of a blueness that only chilled air and warm afternoon sun can produce. Water birds danced and chattered noisily in the shallows. We will do this again, soon.

"We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity."

So wrote Junichiro Tanizaki in his poetic essay, In Praise of Shadows, eight decades ago. Tanizaki was bemoaning aspects of the Westernisation of Japan and the excesses that this sometimes entailed. The Japanese tradition (perhaps state of mind) of Wabi Sabi, which privileged the natural and the simple (including ideas such as impermanence, humility, imperfection and asymmetry) stands fairly obviously in opposition to a sizeable chunk of modernity. The author explores the idea of shadow (on a simple level, the absence of bright artificial light) and the manner in which Japanese traditionally learnt to live with darkness or dimness before the advent of electricity.

My experience of Japan in the modern era has borne out the author's thesis. In spades. Japanese love lighting and especially fluorescent lighting. Sometimes shopping precincts will have discreet lighting and often classic-design plastic or paper lanterns, especially where there are bars, restaurants or noodle stalls. There is a subdued effect which is very pretty and speaks to a sense of place and mind. But most Japanese homes have a large central fluorescent light in each room and many shops are so bright that you almost blink upon entry. Cue Yodobashi Camera.

That doesn't mean you can't have both worlds living side by side and I suspect many Japanese do just that.

moon through thin blinds
slat-light screed of cool candescence,
my son's breathing

oh! cold-morning shoulders,
sun's rays dumb to deep shadow,
ice-grass crunching

My iPhone 4s returned from the repairers yesterday, though curiously its hard drive capacity had doubled to 32GB. I guess that means, in the absence of anything genuinely mysterious, that my phone has been replaced. Will it last more than 30 days? Watch this space!

My new garage project moves forward slowly and more expensively (see photo). Tree roots (and what to do about the tree), the need for an excavator and a concrete pump and sundry other items have meant that something that seemed relatively straightforward has become more complicated.

Complication and uncertainty. Not my favourite bedfellows on the whole, but ones that I need to live better with. Why not ease and certainty, my mind inquires, and why not now? Truthfully, things, stuff, going smoothly, is probably rare.

My backyard, which only minutes ago was bathed in the golden light of an obliging afternoon sun, has fallen into shadow. It is now growing cooler. Soon I will take Tom to soccer training. As the kids train in the artificial light, I will walk the perimeter of the field listening to podcasts. Again and again.

Sunday morning. The grass was still wet late yesterday afternoon after a day of late-autumn sunshine. This morning there are new threads of fresh dew, pulsing with reflected light as the breeze discomposes each blade. Now and then a miniature rainbow breaks forth from a solitary tremulous bead, reminding me, if not the birds, that our experience of light is highly subjective.

I was reading last night that the incidence of depression has increased ten-fold from that experienced by people in the first half of the 20th Century. The author posits that 'learned helplessness' is probably responsible for this astonishing change and a results, partly, from our losing a sense of control in our lives. Put another way, the way we think about ourselves and our environment, the way we perceive and internalize what happens daily - how we process change, setbacks and the occasional loss of agency - forms a vital part of the feedback loop that regulates self-esteem and the drive to act meaningfully in the world.

Our grandparents and great grandparents endured two major wars, an economic depression and far tougher living conditions than we do. Yet they suffered depression much less.

Food for thought.

The aforementioned elderly Samsung has sprung back into life following the failure of my refurbished iPhone 4s. The latter is on its way to a repairer, I hope. I might have expected two years from the new phone, but all I got was 30 days.

This is what happens when you get too pleased about tech. It lets you down, not unlike people, though generally in a more spectacular way. The pulsing white Apple logo was symptomatic of a deeper problem - the anaemic heart of a digitalized love-toy. This phone was never really attached to my hand in the manner that is often pilloried in cartoons and commentary, but it beat, nevertheless, beneath the plastic flip-cover that protected it. And it offered up its pallid heart in response to critical failure.

Don't get into bed with tech.