Last night it was terribly windy and I woke to the sound of a recycle bin crashing on the road, toppled by a gust. Looking out the window I saw that someone was already on the job, righting the bin, although half its contents were already blowing frantically in all directions. The sky was sharp with the slicing action of the gale and here and there the odd star wobbled in the mayhem. And then I remembered my post from last night and realized I had made a colossal mistake.

I had forgotten about the Milky Way. Yes folks, the galaxy that we call home, the one we are in the midst of. The one that will still enshroud us even in 5 billion years when other galaxies have spun out of view. So yes, our night sky will be darker, a little. And yes, information about those galaxies and much else will be lost to future observers, with obvious consequences for the science of those civilizations. But the evening sky will still be resplendent with twinkling lights, though their patterns may change.

I am leaving my previous post unedited to remind myself that simple, really dumb mistakes happen. I lost the forest for the trees, even though I had a pretty good map.

When I was a kid in the sixties I often read up on astronomy. I would borrow books from the local library to supplement my meager resources (there being no internet in those dark times!) and got my first little telescope at around the time of the first Apollo landings. My Uncle Sam helped me mount it on a crude wooden pole that was inbedded in the back-yard at Killarney Heights, one that shook the delicate instrument in the slightest breeze!

Theories about the origins and likely outcome of the Universe were less well-developed then, with the Big Bang vying for at least a short while with the Steady State. The former is still in favour whilst the latter, which postulated that the Universe had always existed and was in a kind of equilibrium, was eventually shown the door. The observational evidence was simply too strong.

Today a far more developed version of the Big Bang Theory competes with a number of exotic options, our knowledge of space having expanded somewhat over the past 40 years. Lawrence Krauss's comment above reflects what we actually know now, how things stand at the present moment. He goes on to make some startling, though perfectly reasonable, conjectures. The dark sky that will greet our ancestors 5 billion years hence, should there be any, will replace the Sea of Heaven. The sparkling trail of great beauty that stretches across the nightly dome will be no more, though the planets and other objects of our Solar System will still be there, reflecting the light of the only star we can see, or ever know again, the Sun. The Moon will have parted company with the Earth (for entirely different reasons). Without artificial light it will be dark indeed.

But even when you cannot see, you can imagine. Memory too will play a part, with new mythologies and creation stories. But it is tricky, this getting to though the next 5 billion years, to reach a moment that we can barely grasp, at a time so changed in every way.

ps. See following post for mea culpa.

love

by day you miss me
by night you cling so hard,
the high moon shakes

Autumn Hazard Reduction

smoke on the woodpile,
smoke in every ordinary place,
phantom of a bird

As the Trump bandwagon continues its rollick across the United States, and even as that wagon collects more and more cargo and support, it is prudent perhaps to pause to consider the implications for American Democracy. Much has already been written about the phenomena of Trumpism, particularly in terms of its populist and potentially neo-fascist characteristics, and some of this writing hits the mark.

I think, however, that out-and-out comparisons with Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy are unhelpful. It is unlikely that one could find many similarities between contemporary America and those pre-war societies, in fact I challenge anyone to do so. The years preceding the ascension of the odious Mr Hitler to the Chancellorship of the Reich, for example, were pretty much unique to Germany, years that followed a devastating defeat in war, a severe and debilitating peace treaty, the spectre of communism, a fragmented political system, topped off with the Great Depression. America is war-weary and less confident about its place in the world. Washington seems not be working after nearly a decade of stalemate in Congress. Globalisation has had unforeseen affects on traditional blue collar professions and undoubtedly there is resentment and anger. But Weimar it aint.

Enter Trump the showman and Trump the populist, a man who operates by his own rules and presumes to say what he thinks in an unvarnished manner. Unencumbered by facts or details, or any policy platform, apparently free to indulge in sexist invective or racist dog-whistling, Trump can shoot at opponents with impunity but seems to take no damage himself. A bully and braggard, a massive ego that will brook no criticism without a childlike tantrum to follow, this is the man presented by the party of Lincoln as its frontrunner.

And this is a beast that will not be easy to stop. I have seen Trump and he is fast and he is cunning. I don't know how one matches his ability to demoralize opponents, unless those opponents are sharp-witted and faster on the draw. And they need to draw again and again until the beast is flustered and the beast is silent with rage and fear. And even then, it will be hard.

This is a testing time for American Democracy and I wish it well. Surely the founding fathers of that Republic foresaw the potential for such a demogogue as Trump, the one who, in spite of the checks and balances set up to prevent it, emerges as a champion of the mob and takes the crown.

The one on the left has policies....

Mothers Day was delayed this year, in my family at least, because we couldn't assemble sufficient numbers for the actual day. Also, my Mother didn't seem too fussed about when just so long as it happened.

So, Ann and I made the long trip to Manly yesterday, the weather being magnificent for such an occasion. The ferry from Circular Quay ploughed through becalmed waters with only the Heads producing the most amiable rocking of the vessel. This was Ann's first trip on the harbour and the boat was packed with tourists of all stripes who clamoured for the best positions. You can't blame them, for, to steal Wordsworth from London for a few lines,

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning;

This, I suspect, was how everyone was feeling. It was certainly how I was feeling.

Meeting my brother Peter and Mother at the Corso we strolled the long promenade between harbour and ocean before finally settling upon lunch at the portentously named, Fiasco. I was told by the waitress that a fiasco is the shape of an Italian wine bottle and she seemed blithely unaware of its more common usage. But our meal was fine - fish and chips all round - and a lovely Mothers Day luncheon was had. Two mum's left the restaurant very happy.



In transit upon the seas.

I am not sure if the Romans had a penchant for the good old days, or whether Medievals hankered for a time before plague or civil war, or maybe facial warts, this recalled with a long, knowing glint in their watering-up eyes. But nostalgia, that sentimental yearning for an earlier, supposedly happier time, is very much a modern phenomena if not an ancient one.

Just look at any social media post by those getting on in years, or at least entering serious adulthood, and there will be references, perhaps even embedded videos, harking back to an earlier golden age. Republicans in the U.S talk wistfully of the Reagan era as if a magic palliative for all the ills of that nation once existed and is now lost. Every four years they seek to retrieve it, invoking the Gipper's name in reverent tones.

Music has a particularly powerful hold on the sentimentalized memory and these days you can relive your youth (and those moments that you now deem to have been watershed-like) with any number of age-specific radio stations. In fact you can cacoon yourself inside this world entirely - in the car, whilst jogging, at home and so forth.

I have tried to find a way out of this dilemma, not by rejecting the past, which is just piling folly on folly, but by being a detached critic of memory. Is it reasonable to assume that every time we recall events past, we do so through lens of the previous recollections? Is this not a mental game of Chinese Whispers for one?

Sometimes this isn't the case. There are moments when a sight or a smell or taste or hearing a song goes straight to that part of the mind, a place where the memory is invoked perhaps for the first time. I don't know what that is, whether it is true, or somewhat true, or just another mediated act of remembering with all the usual complications.

But I do know that those moments have a particular clarity and are remarkable, and time-bending.

(Below: All things considered though, it is useful to be clear-eyed about nostalgia, for those memories can be a little fuzzy.....)

my clothes are dancing,
mad this autumn-swung frolic,
this maypole shimmy!

Yom Hashoah

rattle and shunt, roll
of colour in splinter light,
just a little further now

Ann sometimes has a hankering for fish and chips. I had plenty of that kind of food as a kid so I usually give it a pass, but I am happy to hunt around for venues she can enjoy this classic English fare in. Most pubs have a bistro and do an upmarket version of this humble staple, albeit at an inflated price and with much beer-batter-style fanfare.

That being the case, yesterday we attended the Royal Hotel in Springwood where fish and chips can be had at a price and on the understanding that it is to be known as barramundi-and-something in a poached-something-or-other. Anything for my beloved, of course!

My mind is often making strange connections between sometimes unrelated things, a habit that, now and then, produces a WTF expression on the face of the nearest person within earshot. Ann became baffled, then bemused, when I asked her to pose with our randomly-assigned meal number, though when I revealed the connection, she thought it was funny. For the record, Ann is 45 years old.

I make fairly regular Sunday jaunts to the city, ostensibly to meet up with Ann after she finishes work, but also to take in the city. There is something quite liberating about not having any particular reason to move in a given direction, not being held to any schedule nor being answerable to any authority. To some extent this is mental trickery, for of course I may not really have the free will to do anything at all but make a choice from a predetermined list.

Strolling through the Haymarket end of George St on a Sunday is not a sleepy occupation, for Sydney nowadays pulses with people and activity. Shops are open and new construction is everywhere. Arcade entrances disgorge shoppers and tourists vie with the homeless for a slice of the pavement. In so many ways I am reminded of a bustling metropolis like Osaka, not only because of the prevalence of Asian faces, but also the pedestrian traffic, the variety of eateries, the burgeoning little spaces in laneways, the different voices.

Later that afternoon Ann and I went to my favourite Thai noddle bar, Do Dee Paidang, which lives across the road from Paddy's Markets. In the past I have made the mistake of ordering a level 1 or 2 noodle bowl, indicative of the spiciness of the dish. Not today. The photo below shows me with a nursery-level bowl. The King Of Thailand watches benignly from on high.

Readers will know that I am a keen singer and belong to a community choir, The Moo Choir. The Blue Mountains, where I live, is a fairly arty, well-educated, politically-progressive area and choirs have tended to propagate in this fertile environment. There are at least half a dozen active choirs that I know of and the number has been greater still in the past. On top of this there are many musicians, artists and allied artsy folk adding to the general milieu, one which makes this area a really pleasant place to live.

Later this year The Moo Choir will journey to Canberra for a mass choir event at the High Court on Lake Burley Griffin. We have been working hard this year on the repertoire of songs written or arranged by the talented Rachel Hore, a former Blue Mountains girl. Actually, I haven't heard the choir sounding so good as it does now so this might be a splendid event indeed.