Even as people seek to prolong their lives through healthy eating, exercise regimes and meditation, or strive to maintain the appearance of youth cosmetically, they are upholding an ancient set of desires. No-one believes in an elixir of life or fountain of youth nowadays (science and sophistication being what they are) but plenty of folk want to forestall the effects of ageing even if death, alas, cannot be avoided.

This is not far short of what has ever been dreamt before, when beliefs in potions for eternal life were sought by the powerful and influential. The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, feared death mightily and chased after an elixir of life, no doubt falling prey to many charlatans on the way. He sent subjects on journeys to fabled locations and had alchemists brew up potions. The latter often contained metals such as mercury and other minerals so it is speculated that he died from poisoning himself. He was not alone in this folly.

Tales of a Fountain of Youth, a spring that endows youthfulness on an ageing man or woman, are as old as the father of history, Herodotus, in whose writings such tales appeared. A painting by Cranach the Elder in the 16th Century chose the mythical fountain as its subject and Cranach had likely heard of the story of the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, who was supposedly told of a magical place of restorative waters in the Caribbean. Cranach painting (below) shows elderly women arriving (on the left) at a pool, being lead into the water and then progressing to right of the pool, all the while becoming miraculously younger. A group of amorous suitors await their nubile arrival. Apparently old men only required the presence of a rejuvenated woman for their own transformation to occur!

In Greek mythology, Tithonus is granted eternal life at the request of Eos, but neglects to ask Zeus that he remain eternally young. In Tennyson's wonderful poem of the same name, Tithonus reflects upon the apparent curse of living forever.

'The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes....'

It's a case of being careful what you wish for.

The Fountain of Youth, Cranach the Elder.

Today it's been very wet on the east coast of NSW. After a dry winter and with talk of the desal plant at Kurnell being activated to make up any shortfall, the heavens have opened and an enormous amount of water has fallen. This is the land "of droughts and flooding rains" after all. Today there are bush fires in Queensland and watery inundations in NSW. Last week there was snow in Victoria. Yes, its that kind of country.

Even so, the media manages to lose its mind when a major weather event happens nowadays. All else is forgotten as a parade of tedious journalists report from all the usual places, variously astonished to see that large quantities of water tend to pool, causing flash floods. Cars get stuck, trees topple, umbrella invert - you get the picture - which has all been happening since, well, it began raining on earth about a billion years ago. But still they are agog.

In My Country, the poet Dorothea Mackellar wrote, (in addition to that quotation above),

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.


I can tell you that she had the weather just right. And I'm guessing she would have taken the to-do of today in her stride.

To add to this day of drenching, this pic from the car park at Springwood Station. A "furious devout drench", indeed.

Barely a day passes without some news about the failings of players in the current economic system. While plenty has been written about the shortcomings of the political class in Australia, and not without good reason, there are many assumptions about the workings and outcomes of consumer capitalism that pass by without serious challenge.

I am not an economist and don't pretend to understand anything more than a surface gloss of how economies work. Yes, I have read bits of Marx and Adam Smith, newspaper columns by economists, The Economist magazine, as well as podcasts on the subject, but still, little remains in the mind after a day or two. Economics is a dry subject and it uses a specialist language which pays well if you are in the game, less so if you are merely an interested lay person.

What is becoming much clearer in Australia is that people are working longer hours, often without overtime pay. It is also clear that full-time jobs are decreasing in number just as part-time jobs are increasing. The latter often have poorer pay and working conditions attached to them. The decline of unionism, applauded on the Right as a victory for common sense and a sound economy, has led to all manner of abuses in the workplace. Having a wife who works in the hospitality industry has opened my eyes to the most flagrant exploitative practices. The worker has effectively no rights, especially if they do not have strong English and an understanding of mandated workplace conditions. There is no consideration of an employees well-being - they are effectively whiteboard economic units to be used to maximise a profit.

I will take the matter further when Ann leaves her job next year. But this should not be happening anyway. The neo-liberalism of the past 30 years may have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, but it has landed millions more in low-paid, uncertain jobs in which their voices are lost in the rush to a better bottom line.

A spectre is haunting the developed world. The spectre is not communism but it is one that promises some kind of reckoning.

Everyone dreams, even if they don't recall them. Many people have recurring dreams. Jung argued that the interpretation of dreams was a very personal affair - dreams were specific to the dreamer - and he was caustic in his criticism of books on the meaning of dreams. Sure, there are motifs that seem universal, such as falling or flying and according to Jung, there is a collective unconscious. So one might reasonably expect that some symbols have a more catholic application.

I have recurring dreams about teaching. I am back at high school as a member of staff. The surroundings, of course, are different and I am not teaching classes directly. It seems to be just before a class or on the way to class. My dream self knows that there is a problem though. I am not supposed to be there at all. I am aware also that I might be found out. In later dreams on a similar theme, I am supposed to be there and yet still, I am not teaching classes.

Reflecting upon the direction of my dreams, one thing at least seems to be apparent. My subconscious appears to have resolved some of the issues that probably arose around my real-life ejection from my high school twenty years ago. Or has it? Perhaps it will only be when I dream of teaching a class that some reconciliation will be achieved.

Or this could all be nonsense.

Every so often I encounter a poem by a familiar poet, one that I have never read before. It is a puzzling thing when it happens and I wonder, "how did that one slip by unnoticed?" Poets habitually write lots of poems so it is little wonder that I miss a few here or there. But the gems, well, how does that happen?

When I was a high school English teacher, poetry was one of those forms that was required study. It is a dangerous practice this study of literature, not only because there is the risk of encountering life-changing material, but also because, it is possible to destroy the love of literature by teaching it in a dry, disconnected manner. This is especially so for poetry, a condensed form of writing whose meanings can be multiple and elusive. But poetry always pays upon deeper inspection.

One of those poets who often appeared in the Senior English Syllabus was the American, Robert Frost. I loved teaching Frost because he was accessible from different levels of student interest or ability. You can read him straight up - this one is about a fork in the road and the choices we make in life (The Road Less Taken) or you can go deeper, finding the philosophical pearls in Frost's alleged plain speaking.

So I come to the gem that was found, today. It was someone else's favourite poem on Quora and I can well understand why.

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

The redoubtable Tim Cahill made his final international appearance for Australia last night after 14 years in the Green and Gold. He made his first appearance at age 24 and has now just turned 39, an age at which most footballers have long retired and some are even thinking about a managerial career. Remarkably, Cahill will continue playing at a club level in the Indian Super League.

Who can forget his brace against Japan in the opening game of the World Cup campaign in 2006? I was in Japan at the time, sitting in the lounge-room, uncertain how the Socceroos would fair against the talented Samurai Blue. Like John Aloisi's penalty-take the year before against Uruguay, it was a moment of surreal wonder. Then that goal against the Dutch in Brazil in 2014! (See gif below)

Cahill was the 100% football man, boundlessly competitive, athletic and often as not, lethal in front of goal. He was the last-man standing from the Golden Generation of footballers, all now retired.

Vale Tim Cahill.

My son Tom goes into Year 8 tomorrow. It's an unusual occurrence as I expect most schools in NSW do not turn over the academic year until the end of the summer holidays. For those of you living in the Northern Hemisphere, that's at the end of January. I am guessing that this is an attempt by the school executive to try to head off the malaise that can can afflict an Australian classroom as the year winds down to Christmas. Typically both staff and students begin a countdown to the last day of term, which can end up being a bit of a waste of time.

When Tom was still in Year 7 last week, a teacher took a photo of his class, which I print below. It has already been officially published by the school so no person is compromised, I hope. Its nice to see kids having fun together.

I rarely make nostalgic journeys. Traipsing down that golden road to an earlier time is something I have avoided thus far, but I do accept that I am being a tad dogmatic when I say this.

After all, this was a time when the impressionable bloom of youth was strong and personal responsibility was still a blip on the horizon. Little wonder then that folks get caught up in wistful recollection. Perhaps it says something about me that I am keen on moving on a little too soon and with a certain relentless intent. But there can be exceptions to the rule.

When I was in Year 8 our music teacher, who normally played us the classics or contemporary jazz pieces, slipped a record from a garish cover and put it on the turntable. It was a live album and she asked us just to listen. An so we did for a double period and I was won over by the gravelly, somewhat histrionic voice, strong melodies and great pop hooks. This was Neil Diamond's Hot August Night, an album that I might have played a hundred times over the next two years.

When I left high school I pretty much left Diamond behind, not because he wasn't a consummate performer and capable song-writer, but because he seemed daggy and out-of-touch. His more recent material had become increasingly MOR and so it was easy to mothball the albums and move on. But you know how 'way leads on to way' and the route I took, circuitous and mysterious, eventually brought me back to Mr Diamond. I had heard Cherry Cherry playing in the background in a shop in town and so, tempted, found a lot of back-catalogue Diamond on Spotify. And so, a happy day was spent listening, again.

Today, I found a guitar arrangement for Stones, as pretty a pop/folk song as you are likely to hear. I began to learn it.

Ain't life strange? Or grand? Or something? Good Lord!

On the way to the National Maritime Museum today I took a short sidetrack to the (now) completed War Memorial in Hyde Park. Fountains and pools of remembrance have been added and the whole site is now quite splendid. Soldiers old and young melded with civilians, a navy band played Holst, the day was bright and warm.

for remembering,
a small red paper poppy
a summer vault of sky


Another way of remembering-

11.11.2018

Tomorrow is the centenary of the end of World War One. The Armistice came into force at 11 o'clock on the 11th November, 1918, ending four years of the worst wartime slaughter in human history. It's hard to find a good reason why war broke out and then continued unabated for four years. I am not talking about the well-documented causes of the conflict, but what its purpose was. It seemed to be in the interests of no one power to fight such a devastating war for so long, though few could have predicted the bizarre static nature of battle. Jaunty predictions of it 'being over by Christmas' (meaning Xmas 1914) proved to be so far wide of the mark as to be laughable, if not the for the unfolding tragedy.

In my teens I often read stories from both of the major 20th Century conflicts. One that I vividly remember was about the last shot fired in WW1, allegedly just after 11am on the 11th November. Of course, documenting such a shot would be difficult on a front of hundreds of kilometres and, in fact, over a number of battle fronts in different countries. There must have been lots of last shots, some perhaps friendly in nature, others not. In the case of the story I read, set on the Western Front in France, the shot was fatal, killing a British soldier, seconds after the laying down of arms.

This poem emerged from my recollection of that story and is devoted to all who fell in that awful conflict.

The Final Shot

The last shot made
that broke the air
that sounded out
a lone fanfare
for fallen Man.
That pierced the wire
flew clear the mud
that found its way
into the blood.
A splinter past
the inked-in time
a second after,
guns were laid
in metal line on line
and shattered faces cheered.

Final iron flew
unbidden into flesh.
Who shall be last
be first,
instead, an unripe
armistice.


Finally, a photo from the Australian War Memorial showing Australian soldiers on the duckboards at Passchendaele. 38,000 of their countrymen died in this bloody, pointless battle between August and November 1917. For them, no armistice, nor even a burial in their homeland. Lest We Forget.

In October 2017 an unexpected visitor entered the inner sanctum of our Solar System. To the untrained eye it was merely a long, thin space rock, not unlike many others found between Mars and Jupiter. It's odd shape certainly was distinguishing, as was its strange tumbling rotation, but other than that, why get excited?

Further observations, however, showed at U1 or Oumuamua, was travelling at a great speed and had an hyperbolic trajectory and high orbital eccentricity, suggesting that it had come from somewhere in deep space - from another star system! So this was the first observed visitor from another solar system or debris cloud!

Yeah, its just a rock, I hear you say. Sure it is, but doesn't the lonely voyage of this over-sized space cigar(some might say pancake) make you wonder about the vastness of the cosmos. Just the return trip out of our solar system will take 20,000 years!

Very recently, a couple of scientists speculated that U1 might be part of an alien spacecraft. It's a long, long shot devoid of hard evidence, but it put Oumuamua in the media spotlight again and no doubt activated minds in the crackpot web.

The classic artist's impression. (U1 is small object (about 200m x 40 metres) so is only a little dot when observed.)



Nasa's gif of Oumuamua's (U1) wild orbit.

Alas, my Gaggia Classic has gone off to the repair shop in Seven Hills. I was in the middle of running a descaling solution through the machine yesterday when the group head stopped running water from the boiler, a likely sign that the latter was dead. This identical failure happened five years ago with the same result. The repair bill will not be cheap but a new machine is expensive and I would really like to keep old faithful going into the future. It makes great coffee.

Now about half-way through Jung's Man and his Symbols. It is not a difficult book to read per se but conceptually it is challenging. For example, Jung argues that archetypes are primitive remnants or structures in the collective unconscious (our common inheritance from evolution). To quote from a neat little summary in Wikipedia,

"They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behaviour on interaction with the outside world."

The individual, therefore, is the agent by which these ancient patterns become manifest. They don't come as formed images in the subconscious.

It is not easy to grasp because there is a mystical element that defies clear explanation. The closest thing in popular culture that offers an exemplar is the archetype of the hero. This is manifested in such fictional characters as Superman or Luke Skywalker or any of the pantheon of
modern superheroes. Their ancient counterparts included King Arthur, Achilles or Perseus. It is best to resist such simple classifications though because archetypes do not exist as characters in the subconscious but are potentialities only.

A very smart fellow at the blogsite, On trying to see reality, created this diagram setting out Jungian terminology regarding the psyche. I made one small, but crucial addition to the original, in order to take account of the most recent thinking.

The weekend before last Ann and I went to Wat Buddharangsee in Annandale for the end of Buddhist Lent ceremony(phansa). I had not heard of Lent outside of the Christian context so was surprised when Ann described it to me. In essence, it means that monks remain in their temples for the entirety of the wet season, this being very wet indeed in Thailand. There are practical as well as religious purposes for phansa, such as impassable roads. Some lay people choose this period to "give up" something for the duration, such as not eating meat, smoking or drinking alcohol, not unlike practises found in the Christian tradition.

At the conclusion there is a celebration at the temple in which lay people bring gifts and new robes for the long-cloistered monks, and this is what I suspect was happening when we attended the Wat that day. In a processional, monks file past the laiety and are given food and drink, amongst other things. Ann and I were preparing for this very moment in the photos below.




Incidentally, this is the 1,000th post for Tatami Twist. That is not a lot over 13 years, but still worth marking, I think.

I have said before that the internet and mass connectivity is a mixed blessing. This blog is a product of that new capacity, prior to which a typewriter or notebook and pen were needed. I did start a diary in the 1980's which I wrote in sometimes intensely, and then not at all. I am aware that I have a vast ability to cross-reference, double-check information and add charts, photos and similar data now. I don't take that for granted though, if I had to, I could return to the old way.

Today I read about yet another group of humans who have not benefited from the increased agency that modern communication can offer. They call themselves incels, short for involuntary celibates. Some of these folks have been involved in mass shootings lately, something which has brought their plight, or perverse victimhood, to the attention of the better adjusted. Involuntary celibacy sounds terribly frustrating don't you think(?) and not something a healthy person would voluntarily want to label themselves as, except perhaps in jest. And not that often, besides.

Here is where online activity can form an almost perfect self-reinforcing feedback loop. Groups of disaffected individuals find each other at this forum or that site and saturate themselves in material that buttresses their already negative world view. It is a precinct of self-loathing and, oddly enough, entitlement, that together with large dollops of pornography and hate-site propaganda creates a dark stew. I'm guessing that back in the bad old pre-web days, such people either disappeared into the cracks or were forced to get their acts together.

Should the plug ever get pulled, maybe I'll take up parchment and quill.

I have felt a little melancholic of late, a state that often emerges after a period of more intense anxiety. The anxiety is something I have to constantly work on and it's cessation cannot be taken for granted. To that end I have reread some classic texts on the subject (take a bow, Claire Weekes) but also read more widely, as is often my wont. Anxiety sufferers will know that the mountain of release can be ascended from many starting points and by numerous methods, so the more one knows the better. Central to any ascent is the axiom that avoiding what one fears is a sure recipe for worse fear. The flip side, of course, is that only by facing your fears can you conquer them.

Some of the melancholy might have its origins in my reading and podcasting habits. A quick glance from the past three weeks indicates a bit of a trend forming - podcasts on The Black Death and Great Minds of the Medieval World, and Kindle editions of Dante's Inferno and Kempis The Imitation of Christ. Oh and even more recently, Ted Talks on the Great Extinction Events, a cheery reminder of the hubris of mankind. I will try to find more cheerful material to balance the doom and gloom.

Last week a copy of a recommended text arrived in the mail. It was second hand, an older edition and had some handwriting within but nevertheless is proving to be a good read and another arrow in the armoury.