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.