Yesterday Tom asked if he could have a go of my electric guitar. It has sat largely unused in the garage for a couple of years, and keen on promoting any worthwhile hobby in my son, I set it up together with a speaker in the living room. It was woefully out of tune and in need of new strings, but off we went anyway.

Tom soon discovered that guitars do not play themselves and that tricky things like music, training, practice and chords all have a place in making one sing sweetly. But, it was a start which I hope begins a trend. However, while fooling around myself on said axe my capo snapped, just like that. Part of the metal spring section had sheered clean off, being now completely beyond repair.

I feel a little sad because this same trusty blue capo has been a companion for well over a decade, with me through at-home music gigs, through the years playing at the Anglicare coffee shop, not to mention three weddings, including my own to Ann. It was bought in Kyoto too, so that's another sentimental attachment.

So long old friend and thanks for all the key changes!

Old and new in mute discourse.

I could not let September pass without saluting the performance of the great Mongolian sumo wrestler, Hakuho. Hakuho won the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament at Tokyo's Ryogoku Kokugikan, his 41st championship, which included his 1000th win in the top division. He is streets ahead of all of his nearest rivals, past and present. Even with an injury, he finished 15-0 in this honbasho.

To put this in perspective, if sumo were a world sport like football or tennis, he would be as famous and as lauded as any Federer, Williams, Pele or Ronaldo. He is well known in Japan and Mongolia and amongst the growing number of foreign sumo fans but less so elsewhere.

This shot is from his final day victory against fellow yokozuna Kakuryu, himself a highly accomplished rikishi.

Old photos of Hazelbrook Station pop up from time to time, harking back to the era of steam, and I try to post them here when I can. We are currently in the throws of yet another upgrade, this time to add an elevator and perhaps an additional awning, both welcome improvements. I only hope that they don't detract too much from the classic design of the main station building, one of the few remaining "ancient" structures in our town. Take away the water tank and it's clear that things have changed very little. Except, perhaps, the clothes people wore before taking a train journey.

blink, strange sounds,
sleep, the walls are drinking,
oh, rain, rain!

In Ovid's version of the legend of King Midas, the monarch is rewarded for his kindness to the satyr Silenus by being granted a wish by Dionysus. He requests that everything that he touches might turn to gold. Dionysus grants the wish and Midas returns to his Kingdom to practice his new-found powers, his delight turning to horror when he realises that the everything includes food and drink, even his beloved daughter. He has unwittingly cursed himself.

The tale, often told in different forms and for different purposes (cautionary, didactic) is well known even today and just as well. It strikes me that modern capitalism is the King Midas of our time. Capitalism has, by all accounts, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and improved the lives of many others. It offers choice and (generally) a reward for hard work, initiative and risk-taking. Australia is but one example of the affluence that capitalism promises and often seems to deliver.

But the golden touch that capitalism appears to have has a dark downside. Part of its brilliance is to create a saleable, profitable product of practically anything, but within this very capability is its weakness. Virtually nothing is off-limits to the effects of this Midas touch - pornography, drugs, sex, human relations - all are there to be commodified, produced and reproduced as a part of any profitable enterprise, no matter what the consequences may be down the line.

Consumer capitalism builds wealth but undermines social and cultural relations. Unless properly regulated, it will likely destroy its own creations and likely the creators, if only to do so over and over again.

Finally, it is instructive to note that the meaning of The Midas Touch as commonly used today simply means someone who has a gift for making money. No mention of the dire consequences of unbridled greed. Sure, it's only a story, but how odd to leave out the part that matters most!

I have been a member of the Moo Choir in Warrimoo (where else??) since 2012, when my previous marriage ended. I could not reasonably stay in my existing choir (Crowd Around), for even though I was a founding member, my former wife and mother-in-law were also choristers. Luckily I was able to jump ship and landed in a group a short distance away with a similar sound and repertoire to the one I had left.

Since that time Moo has gone from strength to strength through no small effort of the current artistic director, Suzanne Langford. Sure, Suzanne inherited a choir that was already singing competently and which had a decent membership, but in truth she has taken us to a higher level. It is not easy to get a great sound from a non-audition SATB choir, but somehow she does.

In August we sang at the premier Blue Mountains choral event, the Blackheath Festival. You don't get on the main stage unless you can produce the goods, so we were chuffed to get a Sunday morning spot before a sell-out audience. We only had 15 minutes to get on and off and sing, quite a martial demand, but I think we did well. Most importantly the audience seemed to like us too.

I rarely print soloist shots and I don't like side-profiles but I will relent this once at Ann's insistence. For the record, my solo part was towards the end of a mishmash/mixup of Stand By Me and We Shall Overcome.

He is walking towards me and looking at me and he is talking. I think he is speaking to me but as he gets closer I see he has an earpiece and that he is talking on the phone. She is behind me though only just and she speaks to me in a tone of friendliness and I turn thinking that she really is speaking to me. But I notice a dangling wire and her eyes detached as if looking into the middle distance and I realise that she too is on the phone.

This happens all the time now and I am often fooled. It is like I am on a ghost ship full of babbling apparitions.

And still I wonder, who is the real ghost?

locomotive quatrain

it's like, he said, yeah
nah, like, you know, it's
like, he said, like, um-
outside, gums flicker by

On Clouds

Floating clouds unfold in five colours—
Carnelian shining against the frosty sky.
Jade leaves scattering autumn shadows;
Purple mist sent adrift by a metal wind.

Xiao Gang (503-551)

The clouds depicted in this quatrain are specifically autumn clouds. Real leaves wither and decay in autumn, but not these jade leaves. But, as the metal wind blows, even the jade leaves are scattered and turned into a mist. One of Xiao's abiding themes was transience- autumn being a most natural exemplar of this condition.

Ann and I went away for a few days last weekend. It was our second wedding anniversary and she wanted to see a bit more of Australia. Since we had been south a few times now, we decided to go a little way north, places I have seldom been for decades. My father was born in Newcastle and (quite unfairly) I had an aversion to the place.

Newcastle is not a beautiful town but it is much improved since the departure of the steel works, though at some cost to local employment. I remember going on a school trip to BHP in the late sixties, touring the plant, watching the glowing ingots of steel slide over huge rollers. It was and still is a coal town, so dirty was a byword for living there. I recall my grandmothers washing sooting up and the sense that every surface had a thin layer of black dust almost as a permanent feature. But that has changed.

On the way up we stopped in at Wat Pah in Mandalong, a Thai Temple set in glorious bushland. It is affiliated with its Sydney cousins but the setting makes for a deeper experience, if communion with nature is anything to go by. Five monks were completing a liturgy in a kind of basso profundo and we strolled the grounds and had a delicious lunch - a homemade Thai smorgasbord.

Later we set up our digs adjacent Lake Macquarie at Warners Bay, rented bicycles and generally lolled by the shoreline. The following day we drove to Nelson May on Port Stephens, a magnificent natural harbour to the north of Newcastle. It was a feast of touristy activities, including shore walks, headland climbing and dolphin watching. Ann likes to fit a lot of stuff into a day and leaves no stone unturned in this regard, whereas I like to sample this and that and do a lot of thinking and absorbing. But we do really hit it off together.

At Wat Pah and on Port Stephens-

No matter how much study I put into how to react to unforeseen circumstances, I still manage to let myself down. I have spent a lot of time working on CBT techniques and more recently explored Stoic philosophical positions, particularly those attributed to Epictetus. There are certain things that are within my control (thoughts, feelings, choices, aversions, desires etc) but there are many things that are almost entirely outside of my control, such a injury, death, loss of friends and family, poverty, natural disasters etc. I do have a little control in some of the latter category, but it is constrained by circumstances and the actions of others.

So yesterday Ann and I went to her TAFE College to finally get her a student ID card. This was her first available day and she has already attended half a dozen Saturday morning classes. I had been with her when she had originally enrolled and received her course information and I had double-checked all documents for accuracy. So I was very surprised to learn that somehow Ann was not enrolled nor on any of their computer systems. She didn't exist. Thirty minutes of cross-checking revealed nothing more - zilch! I grew increasingly irritated at what I thought gross incompetence though fortunately I kept my remarks to a bare minimum and then largely neutral. And these feelings stayed with me for hours afterwards.

So there you have it. A situation over which I had no control but behaving in manner as if I did. With that behaviour came all sorts of negative feelings and thoughts, all needlessly evoked and sustained. I have so far to go still and even then, can easily slip back into old ways of acting. I need more post-it notes, some stuck to my forehead, others to places where I can recall, at a moment's notice, how little is my power in the scheme of things.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

Eckhart Tolle

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond our power or our will. ”

Epictetus

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Jesus

hot-cold, by turns,
currawongs seem bemused
and possums dream noisily

On this day 17 years ago, I sat was sitting in the living room of our house in Sanda. I had just finished teaching the evening's English classes, the students had left, I had cracked open a can of Asahi and flopped on the sofa. I switched on CNN only to see a tall building on fire and watched as, a few minutes later, an airliner crashed directly into its twin. And so began a decade and a half of war, which continues in Afghanistan and Syria today.

Everyone will know the event I am talking about and it requires no more commentary, since it has been gone over and over and over. I would never seek to minimise the significance of those events, which reverberate into the present and have cost dearly.

It is September 11, 2007, that exercises my keyboard today. On that day a long time friend, Robert Mumford, left his Defence Department job in Sydney, caught a train to Newcastle and, with the exception of a brief hotel lobby video and some alleged sightings, was never seen again. I didn't know at the time, in fact, not until I saw a program on missing persons. He had disappeared without cause and the matter remained a mystery to us all until his remains were discovered back in the Blue Mountains, in bushland, a few years later.

I have written about Robert before. He was one of those "one-offs", an eccentric man who was very smart but whose gifts were never fully realised. His serious lack of confidence in himself and low self-esteem did not help, in fact, they made him an easy target for the less gifted and more mendacious. He was the doyen of many pub trivia nights, took part in comedy performances (though his material lacked popular appeal), drove hundreds of kilometres for no reason and could perform the most bizarre calculations. I can't remember how many F4 Phantom jets it would take, nose to tail, to reach from the Earth to the Moon, but Robert had done the maths and knew the answer. He had an almost eidetic capacity for detail, especially concerning his abiding passion, The Beach Boys.

I lived for a short time in a share house with Robert and there was rarely a day when a Beach Boys related tune was not wafting from his bed room. Not just songs from actual albums, but bootleg tracks, backing tracks and session outtakes. For the time (1983) it was a seriously deep collection that went well beyond the record shop and into some kind of Brian Wilson Master Vault. Robert had an ongoing obsession with Wilson and he would often tell me about his troubled life - his creativity, fall from sanity, life in a sandpit and so forth. I heard so much about the man and then so repeatedly that I feared he would enter my dreams and cause a breakdown by association.

Above all, Robert was a kind and gentle man who spoke well of everyone. He could have you in stitches or he could overstep his welcome, for he did not always read people well. But this morning, when I remembered the date as I made my way down a bush track descending to Lake Woodford, I wished that he was walking alongside me.

And finally for today, Yokozuna Kisenosato made his comeback appearance at the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo. He had missed eight consecutive basho after sustaining a nasty shoulder injury in March 2017. So fingers were crossed as the Japanese champion made his way in for the bout with Ikioi on Day 1. Ikioi is one of my favourite rikishi but I was secretly cheering for Kisenosato, since his successful return is important for the sport. He is the only Japanese Yokozuna, the others all being Mongolian.

As it turned out, he prevailed relatively easily, but whether this can be sustained over 15 days is another question.

Below: Kisenosato (left) grapples with Ikioi while Hakuho awaits his bout.

Today is my wedding anniversary. It is two years now since I married my lovely wife Ann and we are happier than ever. Now and then we have language and cultural disruptions, so to speak, but this is to be expected. No relationship will prosper without effort on both sides and an abiding commitment to a shared life together. If that sounds like so many cliches then so be it; some truths are immutable.

Ann started her new English program with Tafe AMEP Blacktown a few weeks ago. She attends a Saturday morning class and next year she will go full-time. I am very proud of her. She sent me this shot during class last weekend. Very cheeky, I think!

Funny, strange, whimsical things can bring us to tears. Things that touch the heart, unexpectedly. Watching NHK's Seasoning the Seasons, a story about the Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto, did just that this morning. Presenting little vignettes that visitors to this wonderful temple would ordinarily not notice, the program ventured into territory that was both universally human in its scope but also especially Japanese.

I first went to Kiyomizudera on that watershed trip to Japan with my old choir in 1998. I returned perhaps half a dozen times after that with guests or visitors who had come to stay with us in Sanda. This time I was the guide. It's a lovely temple with expansive grounds and a marvellous view from the "stage" area adjacent the main hall.

But I digress. The story in the TV program I alluded to touched on a stand of cherry trees that had been planted 15 years earlier. Each tree was a donation by an individual or family and every tree had its own little sign. All the trees were coming into bloom for the first time. One family who made the donation of a tree (which included the planting of the young sappling) were the focus of these few minutes. Their daughter, Masako, had died very young - she was a university student in the very bloom of life. One can only imagine (and all parents know this) what pain this couple must have gone through.

And so they went to Kiyomizudera to see their daughter's tree. A monk guided them into the forest and up a narrow pathway to Masako's slender tribute. The whole grove was in bloom, pink cherry blossoms in a riotous collection. They stood beside the tree they had planted, Masako's name prominent in calligraphy. The mother brought her lips to the slim trunk and kissed it. You must know, it impossible not to cry at such a moment.

I'm glad of such experiences, which render what is important clear as day. They declutter the soul, leaving us momentarily in a more natural state of being, in sync with what is happening now.

The tree-change movement still seems to have strong headwinds in Australia. People, tired of the traffic, clutter and noise of urban life, are seeking some sort of release in the countryside, of which there is much. The bucolic has often held this abiding fascination for Australians, going back as it does to the bush-centred myth-making of the 19th century. Even the Blue Mountains has city-escaping refugees, though in our case, the cheaper housing may be the biggest carrot. Sydney prices are just crazy.

Often, when I am in the city, I yearn for a small town-house to operate from. The idea of emerging first thing in the morning onto a busy city street has some appeal - the bustle, the smell of food and coffee, the cars and cyclists and the thousand little transactional scenes - all paint a momentary romantic image more Wordsworthian than Blakean. But I realise that this magic would soon wear off and I would hanker again for my shack in the mountains.

Tao Qian (or Tao Yuanming) was a 5th century Chinese poet who would later influence the great Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei. He decided to retire early from public life as an civil servant to live in the countryside, a very early kind of tree-changer, if you like. He was known as a bit of a recluse during his lifetime but it was three centuries later that he became genuinely famous. His writing was seen as more authentic in its direct, sincere and unmannered style, as opposed to the more contrived verse of the time. I reprint one example below in which he relates his decision to go bush.

Returning to Live in the South (1)

When young, I'd not enjoyed the common pleasures,
My nature's basic love was for the hills.
Mistakenly I fell into the worldly net,
And thus remained for thirteen years.
A bird once caged must yearn for its old forest,
A fish in a pond will long to return to the lake.
So now I want to head to southern lands,
Returning to my fields and orchards there.
About ten acres of land is all I have,
Just eight or nine rooms there in my thatched hut.
There's shade from elms and willows behind the eaves,
Before the hall are gathered peaches and plums.
Beyond the dark and distance lies a village,
The smoke above reluctant to depart.
A dog is barking somewhere down the lane,
And chickens sit atop the mulberry tree.
The mundane world has no place in my home,
My modest rooms are for the most part vacant.
At last I feel released from my confinement,
I set myself to rights again.

A friend and former teaching colleague told me the other day that he thought that we were living in a post-literature age. This was in response to my remarks about how little my son Tom read (as in book reading). I had also mentioned my disappointment at how few novels were being read in his Year 7 English class, namely one to date. This seems to be a trend nowadays and one that I think might be regretted in years to come.

Novels are usually written by people with a decent grasp of how to write. Even potboilers have structure - a certain complexity of vocabulary and sentence variability. There is an unfolding plotline. When we read novels (or any text for that matter), we learn something about language. We learn initially to imitate through immersion in the reading process and later we develop our own style, often a composite of many others. I find my own writing style takes on something of the last substantial thing that I read, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. Following the completion of Dickens A Tale of Two Cities I found myself writing in a more ornate, wordy manner. I recognised that fact and made the adjustment, but something in my writing was changed by the experience. And this is a positive thing.

You can examine as many fragments of text types that you like and become passably good at understanding or interpreting them. You might become an effective communicator in these modes. But immersion in story-telling is fundamental if we want students to be competent writers of their native language; also if we want them to understand their own culture and (dare I say it), the human condition.

I think the notion of a post-literature age is overblown. Perhaps more realistically, we are seeing the last outworking of post-modernity as an abiding influence, together with the necessary accommodation that the technological revolution has forced upon educational systems. Like many things that are in fashion, the things that are important will re-emerge, minus the frippery.

morning shower
droplets cling gingerly to petals,
worlds within worlds

In Australia, our Federal politics has for some time been unstable, both in terms of the majority in the House of Representatives, and also the office of the Prime Minister of the country. It was once the case that PM's were difficult to dislodge, would always serve out at least one term and would go at at time of their own choosing, more or less.

Not any more. The House is a quandary of cross-bench electees (likewise the Senate) and the leader of the country is often up for grabs and is apparently beholden to opinion polls. Of course, the electorate does not vote in or out party leaders - that is the preserve of the party itself - but it is likely that they would appreciate seeing the same face in the same job at the following election.

What does all this matter anyway, you might ask. Apart from the actual politicians concerned, for whom a fall from the highest office in the land must be an almighty slap indeed, the dust eventually settles and the show goes on.

And so I segue into the main purpose of this post. What is reasonably within our control as individuals, and what is largely outside of our control? In this matter I will defer to the late Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, who thought deeply about this very issue. Epictetus argued that for a person to achieve a certain amount of tranquillity in one's life (and who does not want such a life?) then we should focus on only those things over which we have a lot of control. This list comprises opinions and judgements, choices and actions, desires and aversions. Things over which we have little or no control include death, disease, poverty, the body, property, position, rank, reputation and so forth.

Peace of mind and relative contentedness will only come from working within the realm of what we have control over. Everything else is temporary, on loan, and may disappear at any time and without any justification. If we see all external things as being transient (a very Buddhist idea) then we will appreciate them more in the present and be less inclined to be upset when they are gone.

For anyone striving to be a Prime Minister, this is a lesson well learnt in advance.

We have limped into Spring, the Season stubbornly refusing to align itself with the ticking-over of August into September. The early days have proved to be cold and damp, though as for the latter, the more dampness the better. We still need good rains across wide areas of NSW to break the drought.

In the city yesterday, even my winter bubble jacket could not stay the iciness of the winds which swept across the streets and was particularly fierce in between blocks. Modern city-scapes tend to push and direct winds down the narrow corridors that separate towers and buildings. The effect will only be heightened by the more extreme patterns of weather we are likely to meet in the future. I am not sure that cities will remain viable in their current configurations.

Just when we thought it right
to feel the sun on our skin,
drowned blossoms.....