Having just finished a BBC podcast on the subject of failure, I got to thinking about a monumental failure in the history of this nation. This being the one day of the year when we commemorate the Gallipoli landings, battles and retreat, the question is begged, "Why is defeat so commemorated?"

The answer is far more human than merely Australian, for defeats are often seen in a romanticised or heroic context. We remember the ancient defeat at Thermopylae more than we do the subsequent victory at Plataea, perhaps because the former had all the elements of tragic failure in the face of overwhelming odds.

Gallipoli was a balls-up from the start. The invading force landed at the wrong beach, making advancement beyond a narrow fringe almost impossible. Eight thousand died for not a morsel of gain, except, perhaps, national pride, which has swelled vastly in recent decades. Anzac Day today is more like a sacred event from a religious calendar. Solemn processions watched by a sea of congregants; politicians intoning homilies that are the same every year, liturgies of remembrance. For an irreverent country, this is a day uniquely layered in pious reflection and overly-studied speechmaking.

Australia is known best for its sporting prowess and a thirst for victory. A day commemorating defeat can do us no harm; it strikes a balance that keeps us, for the most part, grounded.

Lest We Forget.

The news seems increasingly, almost unrelentingly, bad. The voices are shrill and the tone is dark. I have said before that there was bad news to be had on any given day in human history, and in roughly equal quantities of it too. Bad news catches our attention and makes us come back for more, because if the news is too rosy too often, people become suspicious that they are not being told everything. Advertisers pay for the clicks or the ratings, so it seems likely that this trend will never go away and may well be getting worse. I mean that the reporting of the news is getting worse, not the actual quantity of bad news.

Sure, things have become a little unhinged since the end of the Cold War. The massive alignments of those days have fragmented and the planet is more multi-polar. Islam is going through an interesting period on its fringes. Russia is restive and suspicious, China is inexorably rising and the US is less certain of its influence and power. The EU is wobbling. But it has been ever so, with different nations in the mix. Just change the names and the dates.

pruning season

autumn blade breaks
this old bone of tree,
now sky and more sky

Easter this year, which runs concurrently with the Term 1 school holidays, is a feast of sunny autumnal weather. Easter, of course, is far more important than just a sunny day or a falling leaf. It's significance though, has been relentlessly reduced by consumerism, a doctrine that eats at the heart of anything deep or mysterious. The chocolate substitute is but a symptom of the malaise.

The Thai Festival, Songkran, has also just finished. Ann and I went to Wat Buddharangsee on Saturday, ostensibly to celebrate the event. In Thailand, Songkran is a time when the Thai people deluge themselves and others in water, for April is a hot month and throwing water is fun. There is a serious meaning behind it, of course, and you can google it if you like. The service over, we all retired to the forecourt of the Wat for a milder water ceremony, in which cups of water were gently poured over a golden buddha, then through the hands of the monks and a group of senior citizens.

Still on matters Thai, my English classes at the Thai Welfare Association resumed three weeks ago. It is heavy going for me with different levels of "beginner" and uneven attendances, but I know I'll get it right with time and practice. I am not a born teacher - I have to work at it.



Last week I took Tom and a friend, Eddie, to the Royal Easter Show at Homebush. It's a great event and I'd like to go by myself sometime so I can wander through the exhibition pavilions and generally meander. Going with kids means sideshow alley, more sideshow alley and then the show bags.

There was a time, perhaps in the mid-sixties, when Anzac Day looked as if it were going the way of other days that had long since lost their popularity. The marches were thinning out as veterans from The Great War passed away and soldiers from the second great conflict entered middle age. But predictions of decline were exaggerated. Somewhere in the 1980's or a little after, the whole thing caught alight again.

Today it has become the pre-eminent ceremonial day in the Australian calendar, one ostensibly of remembrance and commemoration. There is a thin line between these admirable intentions and the descent into glorification and mythology. The waters have been muddied more lately with political leaders appropriating the day in a manner that is both unctuous and brazen. It is but a short step to sentimentality once discourse becomes locked into meaningless repetitions, with little or no effort to explore the content. It is very easy to exploit emotions.

Fortunately, Hazelbrook Public School did not fall into this trap today, for their commemoration of Anzac Day (necessarily early due to the school holidays) was dignified and informative. Tom, together with another of his cohort, presented a wreath and a fellow from the RAAF gave a short speech pitched to his young audience.

Still, I'd love to see a real discussion about the Gallipoli campaign, warts and all. The truth can do no harm.

Not for the lily-livered.

I think that I am forgetting things. Not the long-term memories burnt by many seasons of recollection into my mind, but just simple tasks. Yes, I'll look that up/find that now, I think, right after I have put this t-shirt away. With the t-shirt neatly laid in a drawer, my mind instantly serves up a blank. I have forgotten the thing I planned to do just two minutes earlier! It happened again only ten minutes ago, and prompted the writing of this post.

I read, about a year ago, in a short psychology paper, of a theory about this kind of forgetting. It argued, fairly persuasively in my opinion, that we lose knowledge across thresholds, such as entrances between rooms. We get up for the purpose of doing something in another part of the house and once we cross the threshold of the space we are leaving into a new one, we are prone to forget what we intended to do.

The article surmised that this was the result of the way our ancient brains behaved. In aeons past, our ancestors would often be in mortal danger just around the corner, just out of sight. The brain learnt the survival technique of shelving whatever was our immediate purpose in favour of clearing our senses for action in the new environment. I can see how you might set up some clinical experiments to test this theory. Meanwhile, I will lean on this sturdy hypothesis to justify my, er, my, um...

Uncharacteristically, Ann had two days free in a row last week so we cancelled whatever plans we had made, packed hastily and headed south. I have been wanting to get away with her since our short honeymoon last September and I knew that she wanted to visit the Nan Tien Temple in Wollongong and the blowhole in Kiama.

Another strange event occurred at the same juncture - the sun came out and stayed out. We had 48 hours of average autumn weather, which is to say, we had sunny skies, mid-twenties temperatures and cool nights. I had almost forgotten how wonderful March and April are supposed to be, given the drenching of recent weeks.

Nan Tien is an interesting Chinese-style Buddhist Temple, beautifully set out amongst lawns and gardens. It is really quite enormous as temples go, with a pilgrim's lodge, meditation rooms, restaurants and a cavernous main hall accommodating a clutch of buddha statues. The Kiama blowhole, a tourist feature that I have somehow managed to not see for 58 years, was fun and very active. The swell was big thanks to cyclone activity in Queensland and the ocean had that somewhat menacing greenish tinge, each wave frothed with a whitecap, as if to emphasise the injunction to keep out. There is a little blowhole a few kilometres south of the main one and it too was spouting regular gusts of spray, each accompanied by a cute popping sound.

Later we drove further south through (an old stomping ground) Berry and on the Nowra for the night's rest. The following day we traced our way through the beautiful hinterland betwixt sea and mountain, crossing the Kangaroo Valley, past Fitzroy Falls and on to lunch in well-to-do Bowral. It was a lovely trip with my sweet darling wife.