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.