NYE

My thoughts align, 
As usual
With next-day worries,
The moment insufficient.
Though midnight flurries
Distract the spirit,
The quotient of the year,
Upon us now,
Brings only fear -
Matters yet undisclosed,
The bolt of time
Relentless, unopposed -
Sap to the rational,
Or any given thought
That might becalm,
Quench the pacing,
Right the hulk,
As it ought.

The very recent re-evaluation of data gleaned from the Drake equation (the probabilistic estimate of the number of active, intelligent extra terrestrials in the Milky Way) has spawned some interesting scenarios. With the help of vastly superior technology and observational capacity than that available in 1961, a group of Caltech physicists have estimated that a significant number of intelligent civilisations may have come and gone already. We may, after all, be rather late to the game.

Given the vast age of our universe, there has been plenty of time for life to have evolved elsewhere, gradually developing intelligence and, through science, the capacity to dominate their planet. In our own galaxy, this may have occurred many times, only to hit a roadblock, or filter, at some stage. If the filter is great enough (nuclear war, runaway climate change etc) then the civilisation dies out.

This is highly speculative, of course, as there is no hard evidence. We have never observed any signs of intelligent life on an exoplanet, dead or alive. But if we ever do, then let's hope it hasn't gone into extinction. Dead civilisations are a warning sign that a giant filter is ahead of us and woe betide our chances of getting beyond it.

Today is Christmas Day. It is a slightly odd one for me, since my family cannot meet together. We all know the reason for that and it is being repeated in many homes all around the world. So I feel a whole lot more reflective, and given that I engage with the Christian faith daily in one way or another, this entry is more religious than usual.

If you believe in God then you will sometimes struggle with the question of suffering. It is an age-old one - consider the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes - and comes up often enough in modern discourse. If God is all powerful, loving and genuinely engaged with humanity, then why is there suffering? How come good people come to grief? Why are there pandemics, earthquakes, wars and the like? Why do the wicked (looking at you Trump) prosper?

You can pick these kinds of questions to pieces if you like and I often do. I don't have any trouble reconciling belief in God with the messy world we live in. Theologians talk about Original Sin and The Fall, which I find unconvincing, unless we can see sin as the many imperfections of human nature. Christian commentators also tend to talk about our inability of seeing the wood for the trees. In this analysis, God sees everything from the beginning to the end and knows that ultimately, all will be for the good. This does not diminish the horror of the human condition, but it offers some kind of balm.

I have raised before another option in this debate, that being the question of free will. It goes - if we do have free will - the capacity to freely make our own choices, then the world has be an unmediated, messy place. If God intervenes to help us avoid poor choices, or waves a wand to remove suffering, then can it be said that we are truly free? In this scenario, we become little more than actors in a simulation, the program written to accommodate this forever sunny outlook. But this is a universe of natural laws and we are bound by them. You cannot unjump off a cliff. Or so it goes.

So, wherever you are today, in whatever circumstances you find yourself, have a Happy Christmas. Or at the very least, make the best you can of the day.

Another Christmas is upon us, one that is being lived in the shadow of a great pestilence. In Sydney in particular, another outbreak in the seasonal hotspot of the Northern Beaches, my old stamping ground, casts a different light upon the way people will come together and celebrate.

It's a shame but not the end of the world. In some ways an enforced break with tradition can reinforce the importance of that tradition. There is always next year and the year after.

Australia is very lucky that the numbers of infected are so low when compared with many other countries. We have generally done a good job in containing the contagion and government has been seen to be active and competent, for the most part.

Yet it strikes me as odd that New Year's festivities around the harbour are still going ahead. You could not ask for a more obvious super-spreader that a million people jostling shoulder to shoulder whilst imbibing alcohol. I'm not a stick-in-the-mud but it does not make much sense to cancel the Sydney to Hobart and clamp down on Christmas if you are going to let rip at the end of the year.

Still, what do I know?

The Debt

When the Earth,
A molten orb,
Swung hot in the void,
And there was not
A single living cell
Abroad, 
The oceans seared
And the moon
Jammed up the sky-
Frank nothingness
Not a thought of us,
Or anything that
Crawled or slid or flew-
From the settling dust
A billion years gone by
A freakish first step 
Somehow different
One-off, yes, alive!
Unlocated yet real,
Such eons spent in
Liquid frames
Heedless of the
Death around.
Can it it be thought of,
Fathomed, borne?
This strange life-game,
So utterly found.

I have written, like many others before, at how music can jog something inside, however dormant. My memory, being what is is, always welcomes the input that music brings, no matter how small, how trivial it might seem. It is like the opening of long-shuttered doors, the glimmer of something that was and might yet be again. Not in its original form, of course, but bearing a pleasing resemblance.

So walking though the CBD a few days ago, I chanced on a shop that was not playing Christmas songs (though nothing wrong with that). The song that was playing was "Concovado" by Tom Jobim and I recognised the arrangement almost immediately as being from a very early album from the 1960's. The English title "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" has been covered almost as extensively as "Garota de Ipanema", most eloquently, (IMHO) by Frank Sinatra on the seminal album he made with Jobim. But as usual, I digress.

That early recording of "Concovado" that I heard in the shop was sufficient to sweep me back to the house of my teens. I was in my own room. My mother came into the adjacent loungeroom and removed the LP from its sleeve. The album The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, was one that I heard often enough, especially when she was unhappy. The power of that memory is striking, reinventing spaces, people, scenes and feelings. If they are not entirely accurate, that's okay. There is a truth at the heart of them that matters.

Anatomies of Changing

Crossing the threshold again,

I spy a distant peg

Begin to hang my things
Sort the space,
Place my bag just so.
Around, the duds of 
Fellow swimmers stowed
In wild array, some so
Neatly put in place,
Zippers tight,
Sock to toe,
Grooved like grid lines,
Or boot-camp beds.
The dishevelled rest -
Towels, t-shirts tossed
As if the owners fled,
Conjuring earthquakes, or
The very last to go.
Still others hang as if
Thrown in jest,
A game of quoits
Or make believe -
Don't fall until we're wet.

Walking the line of pegs,

Through the barred light,
A geography of disrobing
Is as human as it gets.

Back when I used to teach in high school I was given a gold-plated opportunity by one of my Principals. He had looked over my qualifications (unbeknownst to me) and called me into his office one day. 

"You're drama trained," he said.

Indeed I was, but there had been no demand for such teachers. I had a full English load.

"I want you to set up a drama space and run classes, if we can get the students."

I almost fell off my seat. No-one thus far in my career had shown the slightest interest in what I was qualified to do. I had never been asked before.

Within 12 months the school had an impressive drama studio, created out of an old storeroom, a budget, and five classes. My teaching life had been transformed. It was jolly hard work but intensely satisfying. For once, I really felt that I was in my element.

I mention this ancient history only because of a book I received in the post on Thursday last. I had been perusing my library a few weeks earlier and noticed that a volume of a particular series of plays was missing, one that contained a one-act play that I had directed long ago. I had found a second hand copy online and now I have the full set. Just sentimentality, I realise.

But the play itself is a bit of a gem because it falls into the very category of absurdism that I found most challenging. The Smile, by Howard Barker, is a didactic piece ideal for an ensemble of student actors. It lends itself to endless reinterpretation and in fact, the two productions I directed were substantially different on a number of levels.

One day I wouldn't mind reviving it as part of a performance festival. Who knows?

the water boils
and birds cry out in steam
as the blind piper blows

Readers of this blog (surely none-ed.) will know that I have an affection for Chinese history, it being long and broad and full of people and events to recommend it. It is hard not to admire the fact that China has been around for over 2500 years, more if you count the various iterations that occurred before that time.

So it is with sadness that I witness the current dismal state of affairs between Australia and China. Australia is not blameless in its conduct over the years, having a breed of politician who is inclined to be both tin-eared and indiscreet. This country also has a close military relationship with the United States, a pact which has tended to cast us in the light of a kind of Antipodean sheriff. Once again, some leaders in Canberra have been guilty, in both word and deed, of encouraging this absurd fantasy. It does not play well in the wider world.

Still the Chinese leadership has it faults too, being somewhat thin-skinned and inclined to want its own way at all times. Decades of relentless authoritarianism have not created a mindset conducive to compromise or negotiation. Petty bullying over trifles is the order of the day. It is hard to see how this will play out.

If China wants to loosen the ANZUS alliance then it is going about it the wrong way. Moreover, Australia is already in talks with Japan over closer defence ties and I can only see this trend accelerating with other regional states who fear the same treatment. It seems counter-productive for a country that wants to dominate its region.

Killing the chicken to scare the monkey is a Chinese idiom that may or may not be apt in this case. But if Australia turns out to be the chicken, then who might the monkey be?

My local pool has become much busier over the years, particularly with regular morning swimmers. There was a time when I could have driven an army duck through the water without causing the slightest alarm. 

I remember one cool, wet day - the last day of the school year almost 30 years ago - when I dashed from the staffroom and drove back to the Mountains hoping that the pool would be open. It was, though utterly empty save for one huddled attendant, the steam rising languidly from the warm water.

Nowadays, it hard to find a space anywhere, with two or three to a lane and lots of folks doing exercises of one sort or another. There are more eccentrics too, bless them, for whom the rules of etiquette have no place. They bob and wander like ageing mines, heedless of other swimmers, ready to explode on contact.

It makes things interesting, to say the least.

A lot has been written about the phenomenon of "cancel culture." Most of the material I have read on this topic has been decidedly in the pejorative, arguing that a small group of left-wing activists are out to ostracize anyone who is perceived to have given offence in a particular way. There are others who say that cancel culture does not exist at all and is a figment of the right-wing imagination. Many commentators sit somewhere roughly between these two positions. Me, well I tend to think that it is an intensification of politically correct conduct.

It is a hot fact that in the present age, offence can be taken by anyone relatively easily. Being a subjective thing, offence comes in many flavours. What offends one person may not offend another. Different political affiliations, age groups, cultural dispositions and identity classes are keenly important in how people see the world and themselves in it. There are many triggers for causing offence and it is not always possible to know where the boundaries lie.

Empathy allows us to enter into the world of another person, even if only superficially at first. If you see things through another's eyes then you are less likely to cause them offence in the first place. I suspect a lot of what passes for 'offence-giving' is probably just an ill-advised response to the demands of certain groups for what is a perfectly reasonable quest for equality. However, sometimes those demands seem to be a grab for something more than equality. Resentful remarks about this or that 'majority' or 'mainstream' group are unlikely to elicit much sympathy either and can be the trigger for aggressive push-back.

I have a high tolerance for outrageous comments, though I often disagree with them. That doesn't make me any kind of free speech absolutist - I'm not - but rather, a man who has made his fair share of silly, ill-timed and over-the-top utterances. Sometimes I have paid a price for them, though I have never been 'cancelled.' It's a foolish concept really, whether it exists or not.

bright facetted water
flowers blush in the sun,
a bagpipe awakes

Two Views

You know that there's a snake about
When magpies scream en masse,
They hover in a high phalanx,
Their cries and sharp insistent shouts,
The trees a-shake, a green palace
That's livid with directed sound.
While on the ground, a snake
Weaves cannily, unbound by
Any single agitation -
Save the parting of the grass
Dry weeds in its wake.

among the spray
of bright yellow flowers-
asbestos: no entry

Usually I talk about a Grand Sumo Tournament when it's in its early stages. Today is the final day of the November tourney at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo and the Emperor's Cup is a toss-up between two wrestlers who actually meet up in the final bout of the day. I speak of the ozeki Takakeisho (13-1) and the the komusubi, Terunofuji (12-2) whose bout will be critical in deciding the winner. If Terunofuji wins, the two will then have a play-off for the championship. If Takakeisho wins, then everyone gets an early bath.

This has been a tournament of surprises. The two yokuzuna were both absent with injuries and the other ozeki, Shodai pulled out early on with an ankle injury. Not forgetting yet another ozeki, Asanoyama, who is also out. This gave the lower order wrestlers a better chance of progressing towards the title. Other oddities include the poor form of entertaining lightweight Enho, who seems to have lost his confidence and will probably drop a division.

Finally I would like to salute the great Kotoshogiku, a former ozeki who has announced his retirement. I will miss his signature belly-bouncing of his opponent from the dohyo, truly a thing to behold.

Below. Takakeisho thrusts at Shimanoumi on the penultimate day of the November tournament.

Dreams are odd phenomenon. I have lots of them but remember very few, usually those just before waking. Each night is like a book of short stories written of which only a couple survive the transition to consciousness. Interpreting dreams may be one of the oldest forms of psychological analysis. Today we still hanker after the meaning of dreams, though I think such musings would be best located in the mundane - what happens every day. The unconscious mind goes to work processing the day's affairs. I know that it's possible to get lost in the weeds, especially when we are dealing with symbols and their interpretation.

I once kept a dream diary in which I recorded a few dozen remembered dreams or fragments thereof. I used a book purported to be based on Jungian theory to try to get a handle on what my dreams might mean. It was interesting enough but I realised that most of what I had recorded had a simpler explanation attached to it. My hopes and fears informed my dreams.

I had a surprisingly rare dream last night. I was having one about going to the local swimming pool. something I do regularly. As in many dreams, things were going a little pair-shaped - there were all sorts of obstacles preventing me from getting in the water. No swimmers, the change room door disappearing, the pool being empty etc. At some point I realised that I was dreaming and I began to tell myself that this was in fact a dream and that I should wake up. Now I can never recall this ever happening before as dreams have always seemed real and completely immersive. I know that this is the experience of others but it has always eluded me until now.

Among the darkest places on the internet, worse than those sites that peddle racist nonsense, are those that harbour child exploitation material. Aside from the fact that young lives are being ruined, and surely they are, they attack the very fabric of the family. Children are to be nurtured.

I have been fortunate to never come across any such images in my twenty-five odd years online. But I have come across material that I would consider inappropriate. Sometimes, because I consider it to be a potential gateway to things much worse, I have reported the sites the authorities. I have no idea whether anything will or can be done, or even if my complaints are frivolous.

But it hard for me to stand idly by.

 That members of Australian Special Forces committed war crimes when on duty in Afghanistan does not come as a huge surprise to me. Shocking as it is when laid bare in media reportage, war crimes have been a feature of warfare since humans first took up arms against each other. In fact, the rape of women, the torture and summary execution of civilians and prisoners of war, the enslavement of surrendering populations, has been used a tool of war. When conquering armies entered defeated towns and cities, they collected whatever 'booty' they could as a matter of policy.

Of course, we know this is wrong, very wrong. We like to think that we bring a higher moral sense to bear on issues surrounding war and its conduct. But I beg to differ. The whole notion of deterrence in modern warfare is based upon holding whole populations hostage to instant destruction. Politicians connive in the targeting of cities by nuclear weapons, a war crime of huge proportions. 

Those soldiers who thought it okay to brutalize or murder innocent civilians should be brought to justice. So too should those who think that killing entire civilian populations is somehow justified, or different, from any other war crime.

 It is a feature of the age we live in, an age in which almost everything leaves a digital imprint, that the worst thing about a person often becomes the thing that defines them. Of course, it a feature of any age really, but the modern world accelerates and consolidates the process.

Once upon a time you might escape continued censure in your hometown or village by simply leaving. Moreover, records were more easily destroyed or damaged, and certainly not so well documented, so convictions for various offences might be lost or may never get much beyond the local area. An adulterer in one town might become a shining example in another. Chances are that you could flee your past and make a new present if you had the will to do so.

The current era permits no such luxury. There are copies of copies of just about everything that is likely to condemn a person to a lifetime of labelling. You may have led a blameless life apart from that one murder (say, a crime of passion)- but you will forever be known as John Smith, the murderer. If you are caught out in any way, no matter how out-of-character the offence may be, then that plaque of condemnation will be around your neck. It happens all the time in the presentation of the news, quite unfairly, in my estimation.

It has nothing to do with informing the reader or viewer, and much more to do with titillation and sensationalism. People deserve the opportunity to redeem themselves and if they do, then their past should be of no consequence.

Memory is a tricky thing. Every time we retrieve something from our past, we recall it through the previous recollection. It is like a hall of imperfect mirrors, each reflection minutely corrupted by the previous reflection, and so on.

Our memory naturally fades somewhat with age and can be completely undone by diseases of the brain. It must be sad to find someone who has forgotten utterly everyone and everything. They are essentially a different person, stripped of the accumulation of life experiences and memories. The storehouse of the mind appears to be empty.

I battle with my own oddly selective memory loss. I have mentioned in previous posts that there is a period in my mid-teens which had become almost a total blank, as if part of a disc had been wiped. I have struggled over the past four or five years to find ways of remembering that period - a formative time if you think about it, being middle high school. There are photos and old school diaries that pop up, conversations with friends and family, objects, songs, even old advertisements from that time. Sometimes they elicit that faint glint of something remembered. Sometimes a whole fully formed memory of something or someone emerges. Is is a true memory, I often wonder, or part of a dream I once had?

This is an ongoing project. Things from that period turn up fairly regularly and in truth, I do go looking for them. Driving past my old family home a few months ago, I was startled to find a park at the end of the road. Sure enough, it triggered certain feelings and glimpses of time spent there. I began to isolate some of those recollections in order to rebuild a solid event. Is is real, or illusory, I cannot tell. But try I must.

Eleven Eleven

A hundred years ago today,
The wailing cannons ceased. 
The subterranean veins were dry
The end begat a war-like peace,
That seemed more like a waking dream-
All losers down, all victors high-
The lamentations of the dead
Hushed beside the quickening,
The world above still rushing by
Fond grassy coats and earthy seam,
A stillness of the reckoning.
Twenty years was all it took,
For these same pastures to be shook.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning
 We will remember them."

                                        

                                            Lest We Forget.

 How I feel today is best summed upon in a verse from the Old Testament from the Book of Jeremiah.

"Stand at the crossroads and look;

 ask for the ancient paths,

 ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

 and you will find rest for your souls."  (6:16, NIV)

When you have children in the kind of world we have today, then sometimes there is a hankering after the wisdom of the past. Sure, these times had their own problems - slavery, poverty, injustice, discrimination and so forth, but there were also deep truths and ways of being that created stronger communities.

I see less and less of that today. I think that kids in the West are to be pitied - the competition for their attention has grown so much that there is a constant background noise where there is no peace.

 After four tortuous years, the free world can breath again. Good people have put up with insults, demeaning behaviour, arrogance, outright lying and incompetence. It has been a daily affair for the totality of those forty-six months (there are still two to go) and such has been the onslaught that truth and falsehood entered a twilight zone where it became difficult to distinguish one from the other.

It is not really a loss for the Republican Party though. They have done well enough in Congress and in the state races to feel quite satisfied. And they have gotten rid of the ogre at the top of the ticket. Biden's win, however, may well end up being pyrrhic in nature, for his administration could well be stymied by a hostile Senate.

But even so, there is a kind of moral victory abroad today, one in which the tone in the White House will change and something like normality will ensue beyond January 20th. Sure, Biden is an old white male, but then, what was the alternative, this time round.

Afterparty

I'm not so old, yet old enough to know,

The laws of diminishing return,
The way each body-blow resounds.
Formerly benign, now they earn
A world of newly-minted scars.
In sequence and in secret do they grow,
Till bursting forth, they manifest
As just how it is, or getting on.
The grate and grind and slow untimely
Slide towards the near beyond,
Every day a jot closer now.
Not to complain, merely a jest
That cannot be fathomed, 
Nor, like the sum of our ills
Compounding,
Can it be put to rest.

For the past 12 months or so I have been filling in for presenters at 2RPH. Sometimes this has been quite ad hoc, a program here and a program there. Other times I have been lucky to have a run of a few weeks or months. The latter is usually preferable since you get to know the reader and the general setup. You can also stamp your mark stylistically on the show and tweak the format a little. Our objective is to faithfully  read the daily news as clearly as possible, remembering that the listener is our primary focus. Within this remit, there is scope to create a program that offers as much variety as possible within the time constraints. There are certain parts of the paper that must be read in full, such as the front page and the editorials, but other than that, there is some room for flexibility.

So it was with some joy that today I was given my own permanent shift on a Wednesday. I have been doing this fortnightly gig for a three months - filling in - but now the job is mine! I guess that I must be doing something right, or, at least, not a lot wrong. I am not as nervous as I was on those first half dozen shifts when the board, the computer and the role kept me on the edge constantly. I have had some very good mentors and role models, for which I am very grateful. The road ahead is not without briars. But then, what other worthwhile road is there for one to take?

Like many people around the globe, I share the hope that these may be last days of ole '45, the incumbent in the White House. Polls are continuing to favour Mr Biden both nationally and in key swing states. If they hold and if they are not in error again, then he will become the 46th President of the United States next week. Of course, 45 could try to stage some kind of coup by claiming electoral fraud and many of his supporters could flood the streets in protest. There are quite a few scenarios in which 45 could cause trouble and I don't doubt that he is up for it. If the result is decisive, this rear-guard action will be much harder to pull off and the Republican Party might decide to grow a spine, once again.

Meanwhile, folks understandably fret at the chance of a recurrence of the 2016 result. There most certainly is a chance (currently around 12% by 538's reckoning) that 45 could lose the popular vote and yet win again through the Electoral College. But things have to go just right for him and there must be another polling error in his favour.

Even if he loses, the ghost of 45 will linger in the White House and in American politics for some time to come. It is an odious thought to say the least. A poet has written,

"Yesterday upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away..."

The long shadows of past presences are there for us all really. But in this case especially, they may not be benign.

Since the end of World War 2, the greatest threat to human survival has not come from climate change (though that is serious indeed) nor pandemics. It has not come from space rocks or solar flares, nor from cosmic radiation, overpopulation or food shortages. Nor has it come from volcanism, tsunamis or earthquakes. Rather, the greatest threat has come from nuclear weapons.

Seventy-five years on and the world is no closer to solving this most dangerous dilemma. Treaties to reduce the potential threat have come and gone, one Cold War has passed and yet the major nuclear powers are engaging in a modernisation program that will render the danger greater than before.

The other day the fiftieth signatory to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was made, by Honduras, I believe. Astonishingly, yes astonishingly, Australia is NOT one of those signatories. I can only think that we are bowing, yet again, to pressure from Washington. What a pismire response from Canberra. Shameful, abject and embarrassing.

I have heard the argument that nuclear weapons saved us all from a major war. I have not been convinced by the evidence (largely based on the observation that there has not been a major war, so nuclear weapons must be the reason for that) and even if I accept such an argument, its frail logic only has to fail ONCE for the calamity to be upon us. That almost happened a few times during the Cold War.

So I salute the fifty nations who have so far signed up and pray that the weaklings and cowards who run this country decide to step up for a change.

Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, said afterwards,

"When I had learned that we had reached our 50th ratification, I was not able to stand. I remained in my chair and put my head in my hands and I cried tears of joy."

 I woke up this morning with a line of poetry in my head, I forgot the line almost immediately but remembered the poet, Bruce Dawe. Dawe is not a forgettable poet - he has many memorable lines of verse - but my waking mind was about something that I didn't quite understand.

So I googled Dawe to see if he was still alive, only to find that somehow, I had missed his passing last April. He was 90, a ripe age, as they say, but I wondered how I hadn't heard or read about his departure. It seemed odd as I am attuned to such events. I had taught Dawe as an HSC poet in senior English classes and I enjoyed teaching him because, students liked him. And they got him.

Dawe makes his genial turn of phrase, his song of the Australian vernacular, seem so easy to do. His subject matter was typical of what concerned 'ordinary people', cornflakes stuck to kitchen walls for example, but his writing was deceptive in this sense. I tried writing in the fashion of Dawe when I was teaching him only to come a cropper. It's not easy at all.

I remember being at a party of arty folk in the 1990's and chatting to a published poet. I mentioned Dawe as someone I regarded as important to the cause of poetry only to be met with a half sneer. Said poet then pulled a sheaf of poems from his cloak (I jest, they were in a folder) and let me read them. His work was erudite, intense and opaque. He had a vast command of the most arcane vocabulary. Even though I knew the subject from the title, the meaning of the poems was never clear, lost in the tight, self-enclosing world of the abstruse. I said some kind words about his obvious skill as a poet and left it at that. I didn't want to read any more because his work was a dry as a bone.

Poems should be challenging, their compression of language and literary devices making us think, and then think again. Bruce Dawe's work did not take a lot of unravelling but it challenged students to think how poetry can say something meaningful even as it is comprehensible.

Vale Bruce Dawe.

This morning I was the sole swimmer at my local pool. The weather was cool, misty and drizzly but the pool water was warm. Steam was rising from it's surface as I prepared for my first immersion into its aqua stillness.

Swimming in the mist in the mountains is pretty special, the elements combining to create a soothing, even romantic backdrop. If you could apply a calamine to the soul, then this would be it.

But something quite unusual heightened this already bucolic moment. As I was nearing the end of my swim, a lone piper sounded up from the adjacent bushland. I don't mean the bird variety, no, for it was a man playing the bagpipes. His plaintiff tunes resounded about the valley in which the pool sits, the mist and light rain adding to the illusion that this humble part of Lawson was actually a Scottish glen.

He played on and as I went to my car, I could see him nestled up in one of the old picnic huts near Wilson Park. I hope he comes again.

Birthday Song

Before the Mini-Minor there was me,
Small and struggling in a foreign place,
My ending almost came before, you see,
A clinic, an appointed time, the space
To see me off to nothingness.
Perhaps I'm lucky, or just blessed,

However contrived within this race,

A million billion stars coalesce,

The making of such randomness.
If life is given, then it's given free,
To make a mark upon a family tree.

frail conversation
the unspooled lines invisibly real,
rendering such words

The road-side fence is smothered in the white bells of the wonga vine. Our front porch is a sea of swaying jasmine. The plum trees have flowered, the blossoms have fallen and are now in early leaf. My mind, focussed as it is on the seasons, was drawn to a short poem by Meng Haoran, one of the Tang Dynasty superstars of poetry.

Spring Morning

Spring, I am half asleep and do not feel the dawn
But everywhere black birds are crying
Last night I heard the howling wind and rain
Do you know how many blossoms fell?

 We have fallen into a time of lovely spring weather, the days mild and sunny, the nights cool. The garden is alive with insects and birds, all of whom appear to sense that the moment is now and should not be missed, for there may not be another. It's a kind of "gather ye rosebuds while ye may/ Old Time is still a-flying" point in the yearly cycle, understood instinctively in the natural world. Humans, who are becoming less in tune in spite of aeons of being, need a shove to remember what they are increasingly losing.

October is a different kind of month in the Northern Hemisphere, where autumn is settling upon the landscape. Apparently it is a month for political surprises too, one thinks of the Comey email imbroglio in 2016 which may have cost Clinton the election in the US. Australia is not immune to scandal or controversy - the current Premier of NSW is embroiled in a scandal over an ill-conceived romance with a dubious former MP.

It is easy to throw stones and from what I've heard, many have been hurled before a thought is given to the action. It is the time we are in perhaps, of instant judgement, made possible by social media, anonymity and the rise of the irrational. Readers will know that I do bang on about these things periodically.

But really, I would just welcome a return to the considered opinion. Ideas expressed calmly and rationally. Disagreements between mutually respectful parties argued out reasonably. The volume to be turned down a notch or two.

 R.S Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who has a strong dislike of the manner in which Wales had been anglicised. It is often the destiny of smaller nations that are consumed or are in the thrall of larger states to suffer such a fate, though the Welsh have fought back with attempts to preserve their language and cultural heritage.

It is not Thomas's nationalism that I want to salute today, but his capacity as a poet to observe and capture the moment, splendidly. This one is about autumn and while it is spring here, the theme of recollection is universal.

A Day in Autumn

It will not always be like this,

The air windless, a few last

Last leaves adding their decoration

To the trees shoulders, braiding the cuffs

Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening

In the lawn's mirror. Having looked up

From the day's chores, pause a minute,

Let the mind take its photograph

Of the bright scene, something to wear

Against the heart in the long cold.

"Thought I saw at my feet an origami crow

It was only the street hidden under the snow"

Good verse does not have to be obscure, or allusive, or clever in its use of devices. It can, as the lines from Aimee Mann's Snow Goose Cone demonstrate, simply be a deft observation about the world, or perhaps immersion in the inner life of a character. It might be both of these and other things too.

Mann is actually a very good song-writer who takes the artform seriously, crafting words, no doubt with many revisions, before she begins to set music to it. Or perhaps she has a tune in snatches in her head, and the words flow from it. There is a wonderful tension between the music and the lyric, at least, for Mann there is.

It is really just too easy to turn out endless cliches in popular music, the dross being hidden, often as not, behind layers of sound and production. I think that good writing should be able to stand on its own merits, collected and read like poetry, even if it remains a kind of poor cousin.

It is interesting, even if a little maudlin, to wonder how long the mark of humans will remain after our extinction. As a tool using and now technological species, humans have come to dominate the Earth with all manner of artificially created objects. Look around.

But most of what has been made or built will be gone in a million years and an intelligent life-form visiting the planet in a billion years would find nothing to show that once mighty civilisations lived here.

However there are at least five objects, currently speeding through or beyond the Kuiper belt, that may live for billions of years. These are the two Pioneer and Voyager probes and the New Horizons spacecraft. They are hurtling in different directions and without meeting some calamity, carry the best hope to show that humans once existed. Sure their power will give out long before that, but they will be intact creations shuttling through the darkness, nevertheless. And all, bar New Horizons, carry some kind of message about their creators.

Hoping that one will be captured by an advanced alien species, should one exist, is a very long bet indeed. Imagine being stranded on that proverbial desert island and sending a message in a bottle on the tide with the hope that it will be found and read by one specific person someday. Similar odds, I think.

Bon Voyage!

Courtesy of NASA.

October comes and finds the unwanted shells of cicadas awash on the ground, or clinging like ancient corpses to trees. The cicadas themselves are busy evading birds or signalling their presence with a high-pitched buzzing.

And, of course, there is me in the garden, digging out the many shoots of new bamboo that have survived the massive harvest of the central stand on my neighbours property. Surely the Vietcong learnt the lesson of tunnelling and re-emerging in a new location from watching bamboo. I swear that it grows while my back is turned!

October is often a surprising month. Being the middle month of Spring, it can put on a burst of heat or just as easily a cool snap. Bushfires can get going in October under the right conditions. It is a doorway to the summer, beginning with school holidays and ending with the onset of daylight saving.

Despite the difficulties of the past seven months, I nominate October as a month of hope. And joy!

It seems to me that we are in a bit of lull at the moment. The dreaded Covid has been temporarily tamed and in most Australian states, things are returning to a kind of normal. We cannot be certain, however, that it won't return with equal force.

Meanwhile, the world economy has tanked and getting out of that hole will preoccupy political leaders of all stripes for the next half dozen years. The dark spirit that is Climate Change remains, as always, a looming presence. There is a hot contradiction between these two entities. If we stoke up the same old economy as before, then the climate will get worse, faster. On the other hand, if we decide that climate mitigation should come first, then a slower economic revival will likely ensue.

It is really a matter of short term thinking. Political leaders respond to their national audiences and promise improved standards of living and economic growth. It is hard to square such promises with doing the hard stuff around climate action, which would probably dip GDP for some time to come. The short term is likely to win then.

So this is the lull. We have choices, but where will we jump?

It amazes me that the 45th President of the United States only trails his Democratic Party rival by half a dozen points in most opinion polls. Sure this is a sufficient margin for him to lose office. But only 6 or 7 points?

It strikes me that a person who demonstrates such a wilful unfitness for office through both word and deed should be so close to being re-elected (538 have him at about 25% chance of winning) is extraordinary. One might have reasonably imagined that those who did vote for 45 the first time round purely out of a dislike of Hillary Clinton or a desire to give the finger to the Establishment would now be having second thoughts. Such as not voting at all.

But apparently not, or at least, not many of them are. This does not augur well for humanity - that there are enough folks who are willing to shoot themselves in the foot, twice. When things go pear-shaped in a small state, the consequences are largely local. When they happen in a superpower, the effects ripple out, often gaining strength as they do. They cannot be ignored.

I am not much given to reading science fiction. I don't dislike the genre, rather, I have had too much other stuff to read to pay it much heed. Having said that, I have only just finished an audiobook of Arthur C. Clarke's, Rendezvous with Rama. I came to this tome by way of an interest in science speculation, especially the concept of generation ships and O'Neill Cylinders.

Rama is an O'Neill Cylinder for all intents and purposes. This kind of structure is a very large spaceship, as big as a city, which rotates about an axis, allowing for a kind of artificial gravity to exist through centripetal force. Within it's curving walls are rivers, cities and plains, permitting something like normal habitation and settlement to take place. The Ramans, who do not appear in the book, have journeyed for hundreds of thousands of years and have entered our Solar System. A team is dispatched to investigate.

Clarke has a vibrant imagination and his writing is situated within the realm of science possible, rather than pure science fiction. His prose style is somewhat flat, plodding and particular, with undeveloped characters at every turn. Still, it's a very interesting book and worth a read.

It made me sit up and think again about Oumuamua, the interstellar object that passed through our Solar System three years ago and caused considerable excitement. More than likely it is a natural object, though there is an outside chance that it has 'alien' origins. That would be a once in a million thing if it were true, given how vast space is and how unlikely the chances of intelligent life being extant in our cosmic neighbourhood.

Not Rama

Courtesy of NASA

You might have guessed it already, but I'm not a huge fan of a lot of modern architecture. There are some contemporary buildings both large and small that I do like, but many that grace the skylines of cities around the world are dreadful. Inside, they may be comfortable, air-conditioned and bright, nice places to work, no doubt, but nothing can shake off the sheer awfulness of their exterior presence.

Australia has it's fair share of these sky-piecing shards. The CBD's are full of them, all clamouring for attention in the most brazen manner. Beauty is in the eye, yes, but it would take a wrecking ball to improve these pretentious monsters of glass and steel. Razing them to the ground would be a mercy.

Yet, more and more are planned and of an increasingly intrusive height. Soon the urban landscape will be filled with these follies, huge silver fingers jutting from their surrounds. Alas.

The autumn Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo has begun with the same anomalous atmosphere as before, with crowds restricted to 25% capacity. There is no cheering allowed - applause only please! Now, this is all very sensible given the way Covid is transmitted and I suppose we are lucky that there is a tourney at all. But it certainly puts a dampener on what is usually a vigorous display of noise and emotion from the mostly Japanese audience.

This basho is noteworthy for a couple of other reasons too. Both of the yokozuna have withdrawn through injury. That is always a little disappointing for fans. But it does give lower ranking wrestlers a better shot at winning the Emperor's Cup. Another interesting feature of this tournament thus far are the number of matta, or false starts.

A sumo bout begins by mutual consent, with both wrestlers touching the dohyo with their fists prior to clashing at the tachi-ai. Matta have happened repeatedly in the tournament so far, often multiple times in the one bout. It may be that the rikishi are not getting the kind of practice that they would get under normal circumstances. Perhaps its the lack of atmosphere. So, their timing is out.

As to performances in the ring, a number of wrestlers are tied for top position. Takakeisho is looking particularly strong as is Shodai. But there are a bevy of strong contenders and I will surprised if it does not go down to the wire.

I like travelling by train and do at least one long commute a week. I also like buses and have used them since I was a little boy. Just now I have hopped off a bus from Springwood which delivered me seamlessly to Hazelbrook Station.

Back when I was very young, the buses were somewhat different. The ones that I took from Rose Bay Public home were old and seemed barely able to rouse themselves once passengers had boarded and settled. I remember the conductor who issued a paper ticket from a leather pouch, the rear exit which had no door, and the mysterious climb to the top deck. Once up there the clapped-out suspension appeared to be constantly in crisis, the bus swaying like a ship in a swell.

Ascending the long steep incline that is Old South Head Rd was always a bit of a lottery, for when the driver changed to a lower gear, the slightest mistake on the clutch threatened to stall the engine. Sometimes we would wait in silence before the motor gasped back into action, the whole chassis shaking as if gripped by St Vitus Dance.

Oh, but what fun!

A restored example of an AEC Regent III, exactly as I remember it.

"The Sea of Faith was
Once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar"

So wrote Matthew Arnold in his masterful poem, 'Dover Beach.' The son of a liberal Protestant, Arnold's faith was challenged by the scholarship and scientific headwinds of the 19th Century, leaving him with little alternative but agnosticism. He nevertheless saw the value in a Christian faith shorn of its metaphysics, a kind of Christian humanism, if you like.

I can understand the deep crisis that descended upon people of faith at that time, given just how much conventional belief and wisdom was being challenged by new knowledge. We have the benefit of time passing now, allowing for a measure of reflection on issues  that Arnold could not have reasonably considered. It doesn't have to have be one or the other. I don't have any problem with God or science, no matter who argues otherwise.

 A cursory study of history from any period will confirm that life is full of chance events and that human folly is as common as human brilliance. There is no straight line of progress morally or ethically, improvement comes in fits and starts and sometimes goes backwards. Memories are short and for any lesson to be learned, it must be repeated over and over again. Even then, a few generations passing can induce a kind of amnesia.

So it is little wonder than 2020 is widely touted as a kind of super annus horribilis, one that has wreaked havoc on the human experiment. To be sure, Covid 19 was and is a clear threat to the health of millions. It is a huge economic cost, particularly to the less well off, who typically bear the brunt of any change for the worse. It has generated much anxiety.

This plays out almost endlessly in the media and on social media, where anyone and everyone has a platform for comment and opinion, for better or worse. I think that is kinder to say nothing than moan about the loss of personal liberty, the inability to carry on a particular lifestyle or to support outlandish conspiracy theories. I have talked about freedom and license before and don't want to go over old ground.

Which brings me back to the study of history. You can set your mind better at rest if you have an idea of what has come before and how, for the most part, there is nothing new under the sun. Technology may challenge that maxim but it is unlikely that unmediated human nature will ever attain the kind of higher plain that lets us ignore the past, or make it somehow irrelevant.

pale clouds rise -
the dun valleys warming so,
and oh, a jasmine lane!

Yesterday was Father's Day in Australia and for once, the whole family, including Tom, went out for lunch. Not wanting to stray far, we went to the same Thai restaurant that hosted our wedding reception some four years ago. When I think back about the amount of administrative work I have done since that blessed betrothal - visa applications, police checks, drivers licenses, more visa applications, resumes, medicals and so forth, then I think it is wise that one never attempts to contemplate that endless stream of form-creation and form-filling in advance. That way lies madness.

This morning on a walk I saw hundreds, possibly thousands of small birds swarming, flying in short darting patterns and swoops, from east to west. I could not tell whether they were wrens or swallows, each birds velocity and eccentric manoeuvring rending it a blur. None came to rest. The Spring is definitely upon us. The birds have said so.  

In the city fields
contemplating cherry-trees....
strangers are like friends

Issa

It's funny how Spring sneaks up on you. I notice the obvious signs of its approach, the budding on the stems and the odd errant flower that has made an unexpectedly early entrance. There is also the perceptible warming of the air, the mildly scented eddies that suggest change is afoot. Then, all of a sudden, the jasmine is out, the plums rampantly in bloom. There is a constant drone of bees and of course, the sounds of people sneezing, though not necessarily in that order. Pollen can go to work at all hours.

Lunch with my beautiful wife in the city yesterday was uneventful, except that Sydney seemed more abandoned than last week. I am used now to the half-empty trains - what a blessing - but the streets in the very centre of town were thinly-populated canyons. Ordinarily they are surging with life.

I cannot help but feel that we are turning a page in the human project - if you don't mind me calling it that - in which survival depends on some key decisions that are being made now.  By that I mean things are done and things that are left undone, since not to act is also a part of decision-making. To watch the antics in America, a country that should be offering genuine leadership by word and example, is dispiriting, to say the least. There are lots of good people, of course, trying to make a difference.

But where the power lies there is a brain-dead rot that offers neither hope nor the prospect of change, just more of the same. That is a recipe for extinction.

Back in the dark ages, when I was first sighted in short pants, I began a great love that has persisted to this day, a love of Association Football. As distinct from the majority code in my home state of NSW, it was played with a round ball, principally on the ground. I began watching highlights from the UK on the TV and in my last year of primary school, signed up for a local club. I wasn't much good at first but improved under the tutelage of some excellent mentors. But I digress.

Just about every boy coming into the first bloom of English football needed to have a team to support. My mother's side of the family comes from Staines, just west of London. So a London club would have been fine. I was a fan of The Beatles so a Merseyside team was also an option. Two things conspired, however, to settle on a far less glamorous club than I might have chosen. Not the Liverpool's, Manchester's or Arsenal's for me, no, but rather, a humble side from the Lancashire. Oldham AFC.

Those two things were these. I found out that a relative on my grandfather's side had played for OAFC in the 1950's and had also been a groundsman at Boundary Park thereafter. Secondly, my Welsh 5th grade primary teacher, Mr Oldland, once joked that he were going to play football across the (Welsh) border, it would probably be with Oldham Athletic. He never said why but I suppose it was the similarity of names. It's even odder when I recall he seemed to be a big rugby fan.

So it is that I have seen Oldham rise and fall over these five decades. They languish now in League Two but have recently acquired a new manager, one Harry Kewell. I wish the former Socceroo well and a stonking good season for The Latics in 2020 and 2021. 

We are having a late cold-snap, perhaps the last before the warming that will come before Spring. And with that snap we have had some snow falling at the higher reaches of the Blue Mountains and beyond. Being close to a major city means that the first report of snow leads (usually) to a massive influx of car-bound tourists, all hoping to catch a moment of white magic. The highway had been in-passable due to the sheer volume of traffic, though I'll wager that they will be lucky to find much settled snow this side of Oberon. Here at Hazelbrook it sleeted yesterday but was not quite cold enough to snow.

I understand the attraction of snow, the way it silently creates an entirely new landscape seemingly out of nothing. Even the unsightly can wear a short-lived loveliness. I have written in the past about living in a country in which it snows heavily (Japan) and how this can make life quite difficult, once the first gasp of adoration is lost. It is not much fun to walk or drive in and if you have pneumonia, well, the romance is quickly diminished.

Yet still, the feeling of waking up and finding everything so stealthily changed is quite powerful. Yes, like the frost, snow flakes perform a "secret ministry."

 Since first meeting Ann some five years ago, what and how I eat has changed quite a lot. I have always loved Thai food but came rather late to realise that most suburban Thai, while delicious in its own right, is different in so many subtle ways from the food Thai's actually eat. The latter can be had in Sydney but you have to know where to look. And for that, of course, one needs a Thai friend, or a Thai wife.

Ann has two favourites in the CBD, both in Thai Town, which she attests do the real thing. There is something about the flavours, but also about the ingredients, that make a dish authentic in this regard. She doesn't like to see certain vegetables put willy-nilly into Thai dishes - if they are not used in Thailand, then they are out. The combination of sauces and ingredients should combine to give the diner a saap saap experience, something deep, spicy and complex. I am afraid that I am out of my depth when explaining this phenomenon.

Ann's daughter JJ is even more of a purist when it comes to this authentic experience, so buying take-away for her to bring home is fraught with danger. A perfectly delicious meal from a Thai-run shop in town might get the thumbs up, or it might not, but I am unable to explain why this is so. If I put two boxes from different shops side by side and which, to the average eye, may seem identical, you can be sure than one does not meet the minimum standard. Even if I do a taste test the difference may be that one is slightly spicier than the other. Alas, one must be counterfeit, for so it is written, somewhere!

I find it amusing. I am not a fan of foodism or any of the TV shows that play to this strange hedonism. But I know what I like and most Thai food, no matter what the shop, hits the mark for me.

On an unseen cue, the plum at our bedroom window is coming into flower. It is early. Spring is still a fortnight away, but little good does it for me to nag at the open window. The plum knows something I don't and will never know.

But I feel the unwintering sun stronger on my shoulders each morning, building inexorably towards the new season. That is a little ominous for August, though the wind is still cold. What will it be like in October, when the first curlicues of smoke arise from dry bushland?

As usual, I turn to Mr Larkin to express what I cannot. This one is from an early volume called The North Ship.

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again?
And we grow old? No they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

 I have urged caution before at the current penchant for 'cancelling' things from the past which appear to be offensive in the present. It is a poor use of the word cancel, in the first instance, because the term that should be used is obliterate. A cancelled event can, after all, be rescheduled. That which has been destroyed is difficult, often impossible, to put back together again. That is what is intended. But I digress.

One of the most benighted attempts to 'cancel culture' in the recent past happened in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a chaotic and disastrous attempt by Mao to regain the initiative and defeat his perceived enemies in the CCP. Tens of thousands of teenagers were released from their school studies to roam the towns and country to destroy the "Four Olds", one of which was 'old culture'. Priceless books, scrolls and artifacts, not to mention temples and monuments, were seized, looted and smashed and are now lost forever. This is "cancel culture" at the extremes.

In a recent article in The Guardian (13/8/20), Nick Cave has lamented this parlous turn of events. He noted that "the refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas (has) had an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society."

He also said,

“Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. It's once honourable attempt to re-imagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) – moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption.”

I really could not have put it better myself, though coming from someone with street cred like Cave it sounds all the more convincing. But as I have also said before, there is always room for a case by case approach, involving a lively discussion from across the spectrum of opinion. There may be statues and books that are beyond the pale, but even those might better find a new home in a museum, the more to learn from past mistakes. 

Not such a good idea.

Tomorrow it's back to business at 2RPH with the presentation of the Newcastle Herald. Readings from the latter have been shuttered (for the most part) in recent months due to the pandemic. The new start comes with a different studio and a much reduced program, only 45 minutes.

My usual Friday stable mate Peter Ryan has kindly let me take charge over the next few weeks as there is no place for a reader in the studio. The announcer will do all the chores and that it me. There is no time to take a breath but I love the challenge. One is entirely focused on the task in hand and there is no room for distraction. It is an altogether joyful busyness.

I was walking home by a back way from Linden Station, having caught the train two stops from Hazelbrook. This was my planned walk for the day, as having become a little bored with my regular routes. The trouble was, I didn't know if a continuous footpath existed the entire way back to my abode, the sections between towns often having no houses and therefore being without (perhaps) a reasonable pedestrian access.

As it turned out, there was a clear path home, via back ways, tracks, old sections of the highway and narrow corridors of gravel, so I was home in no time at all. Near Linden Station, which services what is essentially a hamlet, I stumbled on an old grave. It was by the side of the road, a simple headstone (described in a book as the Georgian Colonial-era style) to an early pioneer, one John Donohoe, who left this life in 1837, aged 58. Little accurate information can be found on his life except to say that this is an early example of a grave from that period, remembering that the Blue Mountains were only crossed (by white folks!) in 1812. I didn't take a photo out of respect but perhaps one day I will, the better to document the life of an early settler.

Choir is back though under considerable duress. Masks and a decent social distance are de rigueur. Doors to the rehearsal hall are wide open to the elements (remembering that this is winter) and some of us are still only present via zoom. I am one of those zoomers.

It is interesting to be a kind of Peeping Tom to the proceedings. I can watch but I cannot be seen. Of course I am participating via audio though my mike is muted. I am getting some practice in but at the expense of the social aspects of being with a group of people with a common purpose. I guess that will come soon enough, pandemic willing.

With the weather turning cold and wet, I have been watching more than my fair share of  TV lately, though much of this is of the "catch-up" variety. A BBC series on key dates in the history of the Roman Empire, the outcomes of which still reverberate with us today, has been most interesting. It's strange how choices made two millennia ago can still inform our lives today, but I guess that is a part of that mystical continuum that is time.

Though as for time - the arrow that appears to us - it is far stranger than any line you might draw from then to now. Everyone once thought that they were living in the present - the now - yet they are currently our ancestors. Later, we are the ancestors, with all the baggage that that word carries. It is hard to imagine sometimes.

Congratulations to Terunofuji on winning the summer Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo. The size of his achievement needs to be seen through the lens of the last three years. Plagued by injury and ill-health he fell through the ranks to the second lowest division (Jonidan), had knee operations and five times asked his stable master if he could retire.. The latter refused, urging the Mongolian to get well and get fit. He did.

Consider also that Terunofuji was starting from the lowest rank for this tournament, maegashira 17, and the picture of a remarkable comeback is complete. It's hard to say whether he can keep it up for any length of time. Many rikishi carry injuries and the turn-around time between meets is only two months making a full-recovery almost impossible. But I wish him well. At his best, he is a wonderful wrestler.

Terunofuji removes Mitakeumi from the dohyo on Day 15 to win the Emporer's Cup. Note the heavy bandaging on his knees and ankles.

 

I first heard of Misuzu Kaneko during the tsunami that devastated the north-east coast of Japan in 2011. One of her poems, written 90 years earlier, was being broadcast on TV in place of commercials. That poem was called "Are You An Echo?" and apparently inspired a call-to-action for nearly one million volunteers. 

Kaneko's life was brief and ended by her own hand in her mid-twenties. She was locked in an unhappy marriage with a pretty awful man. Before her death she was able to write hundreds of short poems, all for children, though as for that, they resonate with adults too. Her themes echo classic Japanese ones such as the impermanence of things, the beauty of that which must fade. She also took on the part of animals and plants, imagining their thoughts and inner life. There is a gentleness about her writing, a knack for observation and a capacity to put into words what most can only feel, but rarely articulate. Here is one of them.

Big Catch

At sunrise, glorious sunrise,

it's a big catch!

A big catch of sardines!

On the beach, it's like a festival

but in the sea, they will hold

funerals

for the tens of thousands dead.

I was reading The New Statesman in the train the other day, in which could be found some fabulous opinion pieces by people whom I would probably classify as British intellectuals. One piece was by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as thoughtful a man as you might ever meet. He was opining on the necessary uses of education for a modern society in which critical thinking skills and the capacity for deeper reflection might be held in a higher regard.

He wrote,

..we need to ask what our education system should do to nurture intelligence about citizenship, which is ultimately intelligence about human behaviour and language; human collaboration about making a shared world. A system that is obsessed with skills and their marketability, that is interested mostly in problem solving, educates, at best, half the brain. The sense of shared human project needs a lot more resource from the worlds of imagination, sympathy, faith in all its forms, conventional and unconventional."

I have lamented at this blog before, though with far less erudition than Dr Williams, the current obsession with skill-driven outcomes as the only meaningful measure of educational progress. Skills are important and yes, they do need to be measured somehow, but they are only a part of the story. I would like to see philosophy and comparative religion jostling with science and maths for the attention of young people, amongst many other disciplines. Of course, the syllabus is already crowded out with a lot of subjects, but why should school be 9 to 3 five days a week? 

There are new ways of engaging that make more choice possible. Let's throw out the one shoe fits all outlook. After all, for every ten bankers, there should be at least one paid philosopher.

winter gazing-
through the beech tree
the boat of the moon

The summer Grand Sumo Tournament has finally started after an hiatus of four months. But like the last meet, it is not business as usual. For a start, the venue has moved from its traditional summer spot in Nagoya to Tokyo's Kokugikan. Also, due to the potential spread of Covid, only 25% of seating is being allocated. Individuals are spaced one to every masuseki (boxed enclosure), places that would normally hold four people. But at least there is some atmosphere this time round. In Osaka in the spring, the stadium was empty, save for the officials and the wrestlers.

As for the rikishi, they are masked up until they exit the tunnels and set well apart from their retinue. Of course, once the bout is underway, all bets are off. I am guessing that most of them were happy with the extra time to recuperate from injuries. Tochinoshin, for example, looked far more comfortable on his feet yesterday.

As always, the basho is Hakuho's to lose. The magnificent Mongolian still dominates the dohyo, even at 35 years of age. There are up-and-comers but no-one yet has the consistency to claim a string of victories in the same manner as he does.

Below, the new ozeki, Asanoyama (right) and Takanosho, on Day 1.

Since changing to the NBN, I have a few new channels on TV, all through a different set-top box. One of them is based in Singapore(CNA) and offers a range of Asian profile programs, including one called Japan Hour. Naturally this attracted my attention and luckily so, because one recent episode was about the Kobe Dentetsu line, specifically, the line between Sannomiya and Sanda.

Readers of this blog (surely none! - ed.) will know that I have a mild yet incurable obsession with Japan, having lived there in the first decade of this century. It is rare for any program to feature the town that I lived and worked in (Sanda), so watching the train and its presenters wind their way through familiar terrain from Kobe to Sanda was really special. Seeing landmarks, shops, stations and places that were my habitue was just plain exciting. Ann remarked later that it was like sitting next to a little boy waiting to open his birthday presents.

Oh, I must get a life!

Just finished yet another excellent podcast from the Slate Political stable, one of my go-to weekly programs. Sure, it is American content but there is enough meat to chew on, especially given the quality of the presenters. If I had to characterise its politics, I would say sensibly centre-left, a position I tend to occupy too.

One of the topics this week was cancel culture, something I have written about before. We are not talking about folks who espouse openly racist views or incitements to violence or murder. They are not people who hate minorities or necessarily wish to turn back social reforms. By and large, they are writers, thinkers and academics who cite contrarian views or hold contrarian views themselves.

The right position, it seems to be, the honest position, is for those who are offended to challenge those views in turn. A dialogue ensues. That does not appear to be what is going on, and mores the pity. The moral strengths of an individual can be lost in tumult of the crowd, the latter relying on pure emotion. It is a hunt that is not worth going on.

Ann and I don't get many chances to eat out together these days. Cafes and restaurants were closed to diners for a few months, so some of our regular spots were no-go zones. Even now things are tentative, a second wave being in the offing here in NSW. But anyway, yesterday I took her up to Katoomba to a relatively new pho shop, Pho Moi, to sample their wares.

Ann gives the establishment 10 stars (out of 5!) and I agree. The food was fresh, delicious and moderately priced. Obviously others think so too, as all available seating, including outside in the cold, was taken. Social distancing and responsible cafe ownership were much in evidence too.

My wife looked lovely, as always.

One of the seminal events in my life was the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975, a notorious episode that caused more than a decade of uproar. I was a senior high school student at the time. This is an event that still reverberates to the present day. To briefly recap, the Australian Federal Opposition, lead by one, M. Fraser, blocked the Government's money supply bills in the Senate (the Australian upper house). The money to govern began to run out and neither party would budge. The Government refused to call an election (why should it?) the the Opposition LCP continued to refuse the passage of the bills. Enter the Governor-General, John Kerr.

Kerr sacked the Government and appointed the Opposition leader as caretaker Prime Minister. This act in itself demonstrated Kerr's inflated view of himself and his overstepping of his role. He could have instructed the Opposition to pass Supply, or at least leaned on it to do so. He must have been aware of the upheaval that his unwise decision would have generated. But Kerr was a pompous, vain fool. It is clear from correspondence released yesterday that the Queen had no forewarning of the dismissal, which is just as well. Kerr must wear the opprobrium for eternity.

The Great Man on the hustings.

We do live in interesting times. Apart from the lethal virus stalking the planet, the recession that has thrown many people out of work, and the peculiarity of necessarily changed lifestyles, we have an ongoing culture war. The latter is a fierce debate about which symbols and images from the past do not measure up to a particular level of cultural purity.

I've spoken about this in the past, ergo, the folly of viewing old texts, paintings, cultural artifacts etc through the squeaky-clean lens of the present. Firstly, it just plain unfair to judge the past by present standards. Secondly, who are the people who have developed the criteria for these standards? Thirdly, of course, who says that they are right? Finally, why should artifacts that were once deemed worthy not be allowed to remain in a dialogue with the present?

In a recent open letter to Harper's Magazine, 150 high profile authors, commentators and scholars signed a letter which bemoaned a growing "intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."

I couldn't have put it better myself. The morally perfect should beware lest the same fate awaits them in the future.

bleak sunshine-
invisible claws of wind
scratch at the door

We are now in the middle of winter, the days being quite pleasant and sunny, the nights chilly. I have been re-engaging with my woodsman's skills, using my trusty splitter to get logs into the smaller size required to fit in the combustion heater. Not being the Temple of Adonis that it once was, my body creaks under the strain of thwacking wood into shape. I like doing it, its just that things are wearing out after much use.

As for the pandemic that dare not speak its name, the second wave is upon us, having an epicentre in the southern state of Victoria. Generally speaking, the authorities have handled the whole outbreak fairly well, the population has taken its lumps with reasonably good humour and it seems we are well situated to deal with whatever is next. Those could, of course be famous last words.

How different is the view across the Pacific, where the world's preeminent democracy is in what can only be described as a shambles. The daily footage is most disheartening, for while most people are likely doing the right thing, a critical mass is not. America's second wave looks horrific. There is an election in November and I pray that at least one of the causes of this shambles is gone and quit the scene. If ever the US needed an unhurried, decent and stable pair of hands at the helm it is now.

I have been reading a lot of the writing of Roger Scruton recently, the conservative British philosopher who passed away earlier this year. A brilliant and erudite man, it is impossible not to be impressed by the breadth and quality of his thinking, even if one does not always agree with all his analysis or subsequent conclusions.

Scruton would probably have been mildly aghast at my previous post, showcasing as it does an entirely popular taste in music. He is of the opinion that much has gone wrong with popular culture (readers of this blog will know that I can only agree) but in my defence I would argue that this list represents only a slice of my life. And anyway, this is before things went really wrong.

So, I was gratefully reminded of just how much wider was my musical taste after speaking with my mother the other day. She pointed out the diversity of music that was often played on the ONE stereo player that we had. There was the multiple-LP Readers Digest Classical set, diverse albums by Vaughn Williams, John Ireland, Debussy, Mozart, Verdi and others, Dixieland Jazz, Cole Porter, The Andrews Sisters, Swing Bands, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, then, lots of Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Perry Como. This was ably abetted by a large gobs of Latin jazz, spear-headed by Antonio Carlos Jobin.

When I consider also that I had some very obscure albums in my collection at that time (eg: Musicke of Sundry Times, Anthony Rooley's Consort of Musicke, Madrigals by John Dowland), then I feel that I have at least made some effort to approach a higher plain.

In the end it doesn't matter because the line between high and low culture is often blurred. Popular culture can be genuinely good when it wants to be, when it has authentic roots in a community or shared experience.

To complete the project I began two months ago, at a most tardy pace, I present this collage of the remaining seven albums. The question again - "What ten albums most influenced you by the age of 20?" It was a difficult winnowing process, to be sure, since I had to try to give some balance to the decade. Truthfully there would be at least one other Elton John album represented, but one cannot have too much of a good thing. Or can one?

We are currently revisiting behaviours that first occurred with the Covid outbreak about three months ago. There was panic buying of some staples, such as tinned food, sauces and dry spaghetti, which makes at least a little sense. But another product that produced an almost hysterical agitation was toilet paper, which disappeared from the shelves almost as soon as it was put there.

There was much talk about this strange phenomenon for it is in all honesty really, really odd. It doesn't take a lot of people to clear a shelf if they are hoarding or planning to resell at a profit, so the number of folks actually doing the buying is unclear. It might be quite small. But the psychology behind it is puzzling, for what is the connection between a viral outbreak and the need to have 200 toilet rolls in the linen closet?

If you think about it, it is not difficult to think of ways to replace toilet paper in the short term. It is not something you have to have, for you won't perish for the lack of it, and you can't eat it. It is not worn on the body to ward against the elements, except, embarrassingly, by accident. Moreover, the panic to buy seems to have been triggered by scenes of people who were panic buying themselves, seen on the daily news and far less reliably on social media.

Is it the case that not buying somehow means "missing out"? Is a crisis really felt "in the bowels", as was the case in medieval times? Is one of the Riders of the Apoocalypse (surely, apocalypse? - ed.) in the saddle and shortly to be upon us?

I don't know. But if this is the extent of human endurance, to be able to think clearly and rationally even when the emotions are in the ascendant, then we are doomed. This is a mere paper-cut compared to what may be ahead.

The trials of Hercules.

The Australian Government has decided that in the near future, degrees in the humanities at university will be vastly more expensive, whilst science and maths (and so forth) will become a lot cheaper. I have no truck with the latter, since we need people skilled in these areas in a modern economy. But the former is an outrage, revealing the deeply philistine nature of the Federal Government.

Considering that the Arts includes subjects such as History, English Literature, Classical Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Archaeology, Linguistics, Foreign languages etc, this is a mighty blow to the ambitions any society claiming to be a champion of Western modernity. I know that there has been concern at the influence of Postmodern ideas on tertiary curricula, and I share some of those concerns. However, much of the criticism is based on a poor understanding of postmodern thinkers and it seems likely that the fever will abate anyway.

The Humanities is critical to an understanding of ourselves, both as individuals and as members of a society. This blog is a testament to the abiding influence of ideas and writings that explain how we got to this place. There is already a radical forgetting of what is worth filling your mind with, if popular culture is anything to go by. Taking away the skills and habits that allow people to think critically will weaken this country and leave us open to charlatans of all stripes.

Both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees came at important moments in my life and gave me the skills and motivation to learn more. I would be loath to kick that ladder of opportunity away from anyone, though it seems that there are those who cannot wait to do so.