I regularly check NHK's Haiku Masters for new works. There are so many good haiku coming into being all the time, in addition to the millions that have already been written. It is easy to get lost in the works of the old Japanese masters and forget how this tradition of verse writing has only grown stronger and perhaps richer. Not being Japanese is no longer such a disadvantage, though understanding much of the native oevre requires some investigation into pre-modern Japanese thinking - lifestyles, social relations, religion and so forth. There are more a-ha moments when one has an inkling of the deeper structures at work.

Today I publish one of the runners-up in the photo haiku section. The photo is only a starting point for the thought that becomes the haiku, rather than merely a description, as will be apparent from this little gem.



I case you can't read the script, the poem goes:

the old train station-
only from the swallow nest
departures and arrivals


Capota Daniela Lacramioara

leafless dawn
sky spread like a dirty sheet
and no damn moon

The scheduled lunar eclipse took place earlier today (since we have no way of preventing it!) but the vision from Hazelbrook was very poor. In fact, a cloud cover completely obscured our nearest neighbour, so I went back to bed. A lot of hot air is expended by the media whenever a lunar eclipse comes around with precious little said about the cosmos at any other time. Except, perhaps, for the race to Mars. And even that is just rummaging in the back yard.

Speaking of which, Mars made a surprise appearance in the meme community recently, with one such offering claiming that the (full) Moon and Mars would appear as the same size in the night sky, since Mars was at its closest approach to the Earth. It is hard to know whether this is a serious assertion or just an attempt at humour, though the image was earnestly distributed by folks on Facebook, as if genuine. So even if it's creation was deliberately mischievous, some people believed it.

When I was about 15 I was given a cheap little refracting telescope which I used to lash to a wooden beam that was sunk into the ground in our backyard. From atop this point I gazed at the shaking heavens (the stability of the system was seriously tested by even a slight breeze) but even so I could make my way about the heavens, picking out this planet or that star or even small fuzzy patches that I knew to be nebula. Sometimes I would gaze at the Red Planet, which presented, even at 40 times magnification, as a small red blurry dot in my lens. Even at that age, I knew that there was no chance that this planet would ever appear in the sky, the same size as the Moon, as if only a couple of million kilometres away. I suppose that it might be possible in extreme circumstances, such as where a Black Hole had entered the Solar System and was throwing the furniture around. In that case, the Martian proximity would be the least of our worries.

Never mind, the same minds who gave us the massive Mars probably had a hand in the Nibiru mystery, in which a large planet was supposed to have entered the Solar System unnoticed and had secreted itself behind the Sun.

I am now settled, more or less, into the two volunteer jobs that I began about three months ago. I do still have the training wheels on to some extent because at both organisations, most of the volunteers have been there for a long time. It is a little intimidating to go on air (as I do at 2RPH) with two other workers who have been doing program readings for about 15 years each. They bring a great wealth of experience and a calmness that is both instructive and frightening. Will I measure up, my mind asks, over and over.

Likewise at the Maritime Museum, where I regularly meet folks who have been giving up their time since the inception of the museum, I feel like the greenest of recruits. On the replica of HMB Endeavour, I can identify with the long-departed boys who came on board the long voyages with Cook, ostensibly to learn the ropes and get a career from the bottom up. My co-workers on this ship not only know the patter, but they know the patter about the patter.

Meanwhile, I mix up details about the various ships complements and struggle to recall the kinds of stories that bring the experience of being on a ship (or a boat, the case of the Onslow) to life. I guess that I will get better as time passes.

Then there are the times when I am chatting to a visitor, trying to sound mildly authoritative, only to find out in the course of things that they have actually served on the ship during its active life in the RAN!! Shrinking to a small size, I slink back off to the Endeavour, knowing that there is no chance of such an occurence on that ship.

Looking aft on HMB Endeavour.



Sydney CBD from adjacent X Turret on HMAS Vampire.

In late Georgian and early Victorian England, there were over 200 capital offences. Glancing through a list of these there are some obvious inclusions, such as murder, treason amd armed robbery. Others are less obvious and some are downright odd. Under the "Bloody Code" which operated from the late 17th to the early 19th Century, a huge number of offences were added to the penal code, many of which carried the death sentence. Forgery or passing off forgeries ("Uttering") meant death. Burglary, sheep or cattle theft, highway robbery - death. Returning from (convict) transportation, sodomy, rape - death.

Some of the more exotic (and inexplicable) offences for which one might be hung included being in the company of gypsies for more than a month, stealing from a shipwreck, writing a threatening letter, pick-pocketting, damaging Westminster Bridge or being out at night with a blackened face. So one could really be done over for anything and those copping most of it were of course, poor. The rich and the well-to-do in Parliament wrote the laws and since they owned all the property, most of these laws were directed at property crimes.

To make matters worse, hangings were generally public and ordinary folks could gather for ringside seats outside gaols like Newgate to watch the spectacle. The latter held these events at 8am on a Monday morning and people would often arrive the night before to get the best spots. Nearby houses could make a killing renting out rooms to gentlemen. A kind of carnival atmosphere prevailed with entertainments, food stalls and souvenir sellers. It might seem a complete reversal of our conception of Victorian society as straight-laced, law-abiding and reform minded, but the whole underclass of poor, so vividly written about by Dickens and others, conjured a kind of hysteria which swept through the middle and upper classes, making anything fair game.

This period is really only a little while ago in the human scheme of things. In the West, we don't generally execute anymore and much is understood about the nature of criminality and the circumstances that drive people into it. But I don't know if we are that far away from the the kinds of moral panic that lead down the path to severe and unreasonable judgements and all that that entails.

Who would be caught at night with a blackened face on Westminster Bridge with a hammer in their hand?

Resurrection Man was the name given to a grave robber in the 19th Century. The demand for corpses for dissection at medical schools was such that the supply from executions alone was insufficient and needed to be supplemented by the gruesome removal of bodies recently laid to rest. Of course, this practice was illegal and conducted by men in the dead of night, the bodies being then sold on to the medical schools. The Government (in Britain) tended to turn a blind eye to the practice since the corpses were needed for medical training and research. Horrified relatives often sat a vigil at the graveside or enclosed their loved ones in a steel cage built into the plot. But the Resurrection Men were resourceful and could often empty a tomb without leaving a trace of their handiwork.

I am not fascinated by the macabre but only raise the subject because I have been reading Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. Jerry Cruncher, a messenger and general dogsbody for Tellsons Bank, acts as a Resurrection Man on the side. In one gripping scene, his son secretly follows him part of the way on one of his midnight adventures.

But Cruncher is only a small player in a wonderful book. Dickens can be a little long-winded and somewhat too ornate at times, but otherwise is a fantastic writer, with the imagination and scope of a Shakespeare. Little wonder that he was so popular during his lifetime. The plot is tortuous, the reveals sometimes shocking, the coincidences many, and the ending, extraordinary.

Who would want to meet Madame Defarge on a dark night?



John McLenan's illustration for Harper's Weekly, July 1859, entitled, Mr Cruncher's Friends.

I have no notion of where the Trump Presidency will ultimately lead the United States and the wider world, but its chaotic nature is very troublesome. Like many others, I have said before that Trump seemed unfit for the office before he won in 2016 and would maintain now that this has been blindingly obvious since. He is a very odd person and unlike anyone who has occupied the White House previously.

I bear the man no ill-will and I truly hope he can make a difference for the good. His temperamental unsuitability will make that difficult. His tangential relationship to the truth (something likely learnt in his years as a property developer) means it is hard to take anything he says at face value or to know whether a statement in the morning will be contradicted in the afternoon. A case in point is his follow-up remarks which came in the wake of his meeting with President Putin in Helsinki. People in power seem often to misspeak and so too did Trump. A would becomes a wouldn't. Memories are short and the media will doubtless move on to the next controversy.



Incidentally, Nietzsche meant the phrase God is Dead in a figurative sense to express the idea that the Enlightenment had killed off the possibility of a belief in any god having ever existed. He wasn't proclaiming it as a fact, rather, pointing to the difficulty of being a believer in the modern era.

The purposes of science are not theological. They do not seek to extract meaning from natural phenomena, rather, to explain them. Religion seeks to answer all the "why" questions. Religions create meaning by attempting to answer all these profound, largely metaphysical questions and in doing so, offer believers meaningful pathways to follow. Scientists are not really interested in what kind of life you are leading (moral questions), nor whether there is a meaning to life. Religion and science are different systems with different purposes. Their methods of working are entirely different. They are, in a sense, mutually exclusive.

So it is always unsettling for me when the two systems clash. Most violently in the last two centuries, the clash over the evolution of species, including humans, has continued down to this day. When I was a young Christian I had no problems with Evolution. How God created the Earth seemed largely irrelevant to my faith. Science was clearly a manifestation of God's creative purposes in Mankind, so science was perfectly welcome to figure it all out. The Christian Church had been terribly wrong in the past when it had taken on science, particularly the pioneers such as Copernicus and Gallileo. Such a project today seems equally misguided. There is no battle to be fought. God as Creator is perfectly compatible with evolution.

I do not advocate for the kind of bullish arrogance of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, no matter how brilliant they are. People of faith who are skeptical, despite whatever overwhelming evidence to the contrary that may be presented to them, should be treated respectfully. Only a reasonable discussion, in which their faith is acknowledged, can lead towards a mutual understanding. If only to agree to disagree.

I listen to a lot of podcasts while I walk the streets of Hazelbrook. The content is fairly consistent though I eventually tire of too much of any one genre. Before the last US Presidential Election, I devoured copious quantities of political commentary. Following that extraordinary event, I needed a long break from that subject and dove back into The Great Courses Series. I have bought a dozen or so over the last couple of years and dip in when I can. Today I returned to a course on Victorian Britain.

Which brings me now to Charles Dickens and John Millais. Millais was a Pre-Raphaelite artist in the the mid-19th Century and on one occasion early in his career displayed a work entitled, Christ in the House of His Parents, at the Royal Academy in London. One might have thought that this is not a painterly subject likely to create a furor. It is worth noting that the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to return to a style of the Italian 14th Century, with historical subjects and an abiding faithfulness to nature being foremost. Paintings often contained abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions. So what, you might ask? The Holy Family is the Holy Family!

This is not what Charles Dickens apparently saw when he attended the Royal Academy. Here is a portion of what he wrote about, Christ in the House of His Parents.

"You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest ginshop in England."

Here is a reproduction of the painting.



A little harsh, you might say? Is Dickens looking at the same painting as we are? Or is he reacting to the ordinariness of this portrayal of Jesus and his parents, Joseph and Mary? Anyone who has seen works on the same subject from earlier periods will no doubt recognise the prosaic quality of the figures in this painting. No halos! No fabulous robes nor especially handsome faces! They could be anybody, really.

But not to worry. The famous art critic, John Ruskin, rode to the rescue and the Pre-Raphaelites, for all their pretentiousness, came into vogue in a big way.

slowly and slowly
from the belly of the cave-
a dozen bicycles await

It is no secret that 12 boys and their coach were trapped in a cave in Chiang Rai in Thailand's north. In fact, you would have to have been trapped in a cave yourself to have missed the blanket media coverage. Through the combined efforts of many nations but the co-ordination of Thailand's civic and military authorities, the Wild Boars are free, though now convalescing in Prachanukroh Hospital. Their rescue, under dangerous circumstances, is being celebrated as I write.

Good news stories are rare amongst all the hell-in-a-handbasket stuff we are usually subjected to. But they are welcome and demonstrate, once again, the capacity of humans to rise above partisanship, cultural difference or nationality to do something outstanding, worthwhile, yes, even noble. This is the spirit and attitude we need to survive and thrive as a species, and I pray that it will be a spark to all people.

The cartoonist Sisidea created a fine cartoon which sums up the essence of the great collaborative enterprise that has freed the Wild Boars, which I reproduce below.



I want to mention also the heroic effort of the only person to lose their life, Sgt. Major Sanam Gunam. A former Thai Navy Seal, he volunteered to dive through the dangerous cave waters, "to bring the boys back home." In sacrificing his life for others, he has become the hero of Tham Luang Cave. Rest in Peace, good man.

The old V-Set inter-urban trains that have been plying the Blue Mountains line have been in operation for over 30 years. They are great trains - comfortable, quiet and generally reliable. Ann thinks they are long overdue for replacement (Thai's love new things) but I suspect that any replacement will be a step backwards, if you deduct the gimmicky things like phone charging stations. Still, we have a couple of years before the new Korean-built replacements arrive.

Today I found an old photo of Hazelbrook Station posted on a social media site. Putting things in perspective, it harks back to a different era, when steam was king and folks dressed up if they went outdoors. The photo is grainy but gives an idea of the times. The water tank is now gone and the lay of the Great Western Highway, much changed.

stuttering wind-
outside, shadow-shapes convulse
as if darkly aflame

Most days I go for a walk somewhere. I have a few well-trodden ways that I complete almost automatically, without giving a huge amount of thought to where my steps may lead. The culprit may be my podcast-listening habit, where I become lost in the narrative.

Today I took another familiar walk down past the local Steiner School and into the Blue Mountains National Park. There are a number of firetrails and locked gates and ordinarily I will stop at one or another and turn back. Today I digressed, taking a less-trodden path past the remains of the Transit of Venus walk and on towards Edith Falls. I stopped by a rusty old gate that sat on the cusp of a long descent.

Most times my mind is chattering or thinking or processing some detail or other but today it stopped, even if for just a moment. I took out my ear buds and was astonished by the sound of the wind rushing through the trees, the bright framing of a cloud as the sun ducked behind it, the sense of movement and stillness and movement pulsing around me. And this feeling swept through me, holding me as if a captive for minutes, keeping me by that gate. I realise that my observing self had briefly taken charge. I was completely attentive to the moment.

It is really something close to a religious experience. Coming from the natural world, we are connected in deep ways that modern living tends to disconnect. That disconnection, amongst other things, is surely a cause for the deep seated anxieties, depression and mental instabilities that plague our age. The same disconnection compells people to seek escape or authenticity in drugs, consumption and destructive lifestyles.

I was much attached to the Romantic poets as a youth and today Wordworth came to mind. Specifically, The Preludes. It is easy to live life vicariously, as I tend to do, but more deep and compelling, when seeking the experience, first hand.

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!
That giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

and

Ye Presences of Nature, in the sky
And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when Ye employ'd
Such ministry, when Ye through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impress'd upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire, and thus did make
The surface of the universal earth
With triumph, and delight, and hope, and fear,
Work like a sea?

Internet forums and comment pages are sometimes dangerous places to go. They are certainly frustrating locations if an intelligent conversation is sought after. Everyone knows about the problem of trolls, those malign folk who set out to deliberately provoke outrage. You don't need to be smart to be a troll, though a little cunning might help you to find the best spot to get the biggest bang, as it were. There is nothing honourable in trolling, even if there is something to be gained from setting a cat amongst pigeons. Moreover, most trollish comments tend towards a kind of cruelty or meanness of spirit that conjurs the idea of a self-loathing poster, occupying an ever-diminishing psychological space. It is hard to fathom that kind of nastiness.

Then there are the tranches of posts in which posters have failed to read properly an article or a previous post, constructing so many straw men as they go. Corrections go unheeded or are followed by abuse, nonsequiters or plain nuttiness. Maybe none of this matters in the long run, though these posts could theoretically last for centuries. Imagine a distant civilisation which had recovered primary source fragments from our time and those in our own past. They have a copy of The Analects of Confucious, Plato's Republic, Augustine's The City Of God, Dante's The Divine Comedy and Darwin's The Evolution of The Species. They also possess a huge pile of random pages of contemporary internet forum sites/social media and such-like commentary. They might quite reasonably conclude that a terrible regression had occurred, perhaps a natural disaster, plague or war that had sapped humans of their vitality and a significant chunk of their IQ.

The democratization that the internet had promised has probably come to pass. Any person with a smart phone or computer can create content for themselves and express their opinion however they like, whether or not they have anything worthwhile to say. There are no real standards and very little moderation. It is a wild west zone where everyone is a publisher and truth setter. That could be a good thing in the history of ideas and human development, a thriving digital democracy. It could also be an endless race to the bottom.

Somewhat off topic, but I like its cleverness:

Haiku Masters is an NHK Japan program that allows viewers to write in with original haiku that satisfy certain criteria. For example, one can compose a haiku which takes a particular photo as a starting point. There are a lot of talented haiku poets about and I am often impressed by their imagination and dexterity, much as I am underwhelmed by my own lack thereof.

The following is a recent winner in the photo haiku category by Corinne Timmer of The Netherlands. How impressive to write in a second language with such assurance and broad knowledge of the idiom!