Every now and then I read a book from a list of the accepted literary classics in an endeavour to become better acquainted with The Canon. The latter has taken a reputational battering in recent decades from many quarters. Some have argued that there is no such thing, others that it is the preserve of privileged white men whose entitlements necessarily excluded minorities and women and many others besides. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that many were excluded from taking up writing or being published by dint of their sex or nationality, but unreasonable to say that the works that do comprise said Canon are not very good. They are - that is why they are a part of it.

And so it was that today that I finished Steinbeck's slim volume, Cannery Row. Steinbeck is a good writer in every sense, though Cannery Row came in for some criticism at the time. It seemed an inferior text to The Grapes of Wrath, curiously devoid of plot, somewhat fragmentary in structure. It reads, so critics argued, like a series of vignettes, characters at the edge of society whose paths only cross because of their proximity. That's true enough but that does not make it an inferior work, just a different one. The story of these grifters and outsiders is largely held together by being centred on the character of Doc, a marine biologist who lives adjacent the canneries. A group of out-of-work men who are bunked down in an old shed want to throw a party for Doc because they recognise he is a swell guy. Cannery Row is essentially the story of how this comes about, going predictably pair-shaped as it eventuates. The novel is the process of getting the party up.

So different, I guess, from Of Mice and Men where there is a discernible plotline. Though as for that, it is full of the same types of characters, people locked out of the American Dream

Epidemics are common enough and human history is awash with examples that have killed but a few people, down to others that have decimated the population of a country by a third. The Spanish Flu killed more than The Great War. The Black Death removed a vast swathe of the population. Ebola and Sars remain potential causes for alarm.

The coronavirus joins this notorious list and is currently the cause of much panic, particularly in the given-to-much-hysteria media. Sure, it is a a dangerous virus but some perspective is required. My wife has been haranguing me to avoid parts of the CBD where Chinese tourists might be found, which is pretty much everywhere. I replied that there was a greater chance of me being knocked down at a street-crossing than contracting the coronavirus, especially since there are so many red-light runners nowadays.

Of course I am careful. I don't want to catch someone else's cold at the best of times, and using trains regularly puts one at risk. But life has to be lived, does it not?

In English, we don't really have any words that properly capture the meaning of the Japanese word, nastukashii. It implies a sense of wistful loss, of desire for something missed, of a fond memory evoked by an object, smell or taste, even a thought. It conjures a joy and gratitude for a past experience. The closest we might come to it in English is nostalgia, but even that is not quite right. The Japanese have a strong attachment to the natural world, to the idea of the bespoke, practices handed down, old ways of arranging. Never mind the hi-tech, these ingrained aspects of culture are everywhere.

Cultures that have a deepness may well tend to evoke a sense of nastukashii in a different way than Western societies might if they could. Nostalgia has a sense of sadness within it, a momentary grieving at what has passed and cannot be recaptured. For the Japanese, there is less regret than a luminous gratitude for the experience that once occurred, not a hankering for it to come again. It may be that the Buddhism that is common to many countries in East and South-East Asia has much to do with this - the moment comes and goes - there is no rush into the future.

We all have warm memories that we are thankful for. A few years ago I passed a pungent-smelling bush that instantly transported me back to my boyhood. My mother was guiding my 6 year old self along a footpath in Rose Bay. Our destination was the dentist and I was due for a checkup. Dentists don't normally evoke joyful memories but on these occasions (for surely they must have run into each other in the mind) the day was warm and sunny, the dentist Mrs McQueen, friendly, and afterwards, there would be a visit to the pie shop to fetch something delicious for dinner. Nastukashii.

As if to taunt the dry, burnt earth, the heavens have begun opening, extinguishing fires in some places and causing flooding elsewhere. It has ever been so in Australia - there are poems written about it - but there are changes also. There is something in the sheer volume of fire, the gigantic dusts storms and the length of droughts, that hints rather strongly at climate change in progress.

In Australia, it is the habit of some especially mediocre fossils to rise to the top in politics nowadays. It is common enough also for them to make the most egregious excuses for doing very little or nothing at all. The only thing they do care about is the economics of things, something they know only a little about but have much to say on. Jobs figures, economic growth, budget deficits, surpluses and the like make them sit up like meerkats. This the real stuff of governing a nation.

The economy has always been an aspect of government, but its elevation to all and everything is aberrant and irresponsible. It is a fetish that needs to be resisted. There is a kind of obscenity in it - a fire almost feverishly fed and tended even as the timber runs out. And bugger what is over there in the shadows!

Out of joint, the times, I say.

All cultures and peoples have their superstitions, many with deep historical roots and regional variations. On my first trip to Thailand in 1994, I became duly acquainted with some of the more exotic Thai superstitions because my guide book had them dutifully listed next to the Social Etiquette in Thailand section.

Now I make a point of reading up on such things before I visit a foreign country, the better to present a smaller target of myself to the locals. 'When in Rome' is a pretty reasonable pointer to behaviour when overseas. Mass tourism has only made the need greater and all the more so since we are confronted daily by examples of cultural boganism. But I digress.

Amongst the more interesting Thai superstitions that I learnt were the following. You should not whistle at night. Now I don't ordinarily whistle at the best of times but in the unlikely event that I had the urge to pucker up whilst perusing a night market, I was told that it would summon ghosts and malevolent spirits. I would be a kind of pied-piper of the demon world.

Ghosts could also be summoned by bending down to look between your legs, which is not something I do everyday, in fact, only on the two occasions that I can recall, those being in Amanohashidate in Japan. I will leave it to you to find out why.

Oddly enough, a person cannot procure a haircut on a Wednesday as this is also unlucky, though my wife disputes the veracity of this one. Perhaps Phetchabun has an opt-out clause. Likewise it is terribly unlucky for one who points at a rainbow, for you will lose that finger if you do. Pointing with the index finger is considered rude anyway so maybe this is just tying up lose ends. Beware also if you get a twitch in your right eye - something ill will befall you - though this could be offset by developing a twitch in the left eye, which augers well.

Finally, at least for now, if you hear a gecko, do not venture out.

Don't even think about it!

cool dark night
strangers from a distant land
falling from the sky

This year will be a busy one for this family. Ann has started a certificate course in Aged Care in Parramatta. She is also scheduled to finish her AMEP English course at TAFE, though she can continue at the next level. JJ starts at Springwood HS after completing a bridging course with flying colours at Evans HS in Blacktown. Tom will hopefully grasp the nettle and make an effort in his studies, though, as I well know, teenage boys can be very slack in this regard.

As for me, I feel more like a manager of events, for I am in constant demand to assist with all manner of things - assignments and homework, cross-cultural negotiations and much else besides. Truthfully I enjoy being in demand as I have quite a lot of time on my hands and I do have the capacity to help.

I know also, from sometimes bitter experience, that the best laid plans of we humans can go astray. So often I crave certainty while knowing at the back of my mind that everything can be thrown up in the air at the last minute. Nobody I know has a lively expectation of being in a car crash or falling off a cliff, but they happen. Folks lives are turned around by chance events that, for the most part, could have happened to anyone. Their random occurence in the flow of ordinary life is what leads to such confusion and hand-wringing, such plaintive 'whys?'

It has always been so. Read the ancient philosophers or Ecclesiastes. On this matter, there is nothing new under the sun.

The new year, not unexpectedly, brings with it the usual freight of human folly. The news is generally skewed towards the negative, as this tends to attract more attention than feel-good stories. They appeal to the pessimist in all of us. There are plenty of good news stories about but they usually only get dragged out at the end of a news bulletin, or are buried somewhere deep inside the newspaper. It's as if we can't quite trust any positive turn of events, a kind of perverse inversion of the idiom about dark clouds - the silver lining is an illusion, after all.

The assassination of an Iranian general, a retaliatory strike on US Iraqi bases, and the the likely accidental shooting down of a 737-800 in Iran are just a few of the cheery offerings served up at the beginning of January, with more to come. The bush-fires at home continue to linger dangerously and may well do a lot more damage if weather conditions encourage them sufficiently. And royal watchers have a lot to digest with Harry and Meghan, bowing out. Of course, the latter might be seen as good news. It depends on who is reading the story.

Let's hope we don't meet with another major war this year. The problem of war seems unsolvable - short of some Divine of alien intervention - humans fail to learn, or forget what they have learnt. Each new year is a commitment to bright new personal goals and a yearning that things will change, even in the tiniest way. The truth is more prosaic, though in the following lines, a tad poetic.


"Delighted with their takings, bars
Are closing under fading stars;
The revellers go home to change
Back into something far more strange,
The tightened self in which they may
Walk safely through their bothered day,
With formal purpose up and down
The crowded fatalistic town."


from, New Year Letter

W.H. Auden

walking in the garden,
a world of cornflakes underfoot-
oh when will it rain?

Today is as hot as the devil's armpit is purported to be, currently around 40 degrees centigrade. In Penrith it is touching 48, which must be some kind of record. And all across the nation, bush-fires are burning, many uncontrollably. People are starting to connect the dots but human denialism being what is it, perhaps it will turn out to be all too late. But I hope not.

We have put shallow bowls of water out for the birds, though most seem too bothered to make the effort to drink. They are hiding in the shade, though as for that, the wind is like a phalanx of hairdryers set to high, so little respite is to be had anywhere.

I learnt years ago that it was best just to sit with heat, allowing the body to acclimatise. It isn't a pleasant task but, in view of the lack of any air-conditioning in this fibro box, it is the only option. There is a southerly coming through in the late evening, with a precipitous fall in the temperature tomorrow. Phew!

Usually the summer holidays are a time 'unrecommended by event'. Australians go to beach-side camping grounds, the cricket and tennis come on for an eternity, politicians flee the country and a large sleepiness descends. Folks often forget the day of the week, and, freed from work and school routines, even who they are. This year is different - the nation is in the thrawl of fire - and it seems unlikely to go away any time soon. Only days of solid rain can bring that about. They may come, though meanwhile, a nation is fixated on burnt houses, dead animals, evacuations, disruptions and an army of selfless firefighters.

Roll on autumn, please.

And speaking of decades, Auden could write quite reasonably of the "low dishonest decade" that was the 1930's. He penned this in 1939, and one might see a kind of prescience in his remarks, even in retrospect. That decade was book-ended by the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and World War Two in 1939. In between saw the rise of fascism and its appeasement by Western powers, the Spanish Civil War and the lingering hangover from The Great Depression. That's quite a load for a decade to bear, though the one that followed saw the bulk of a world war fought out, the deployment of atomic weapons and the beginning of the Cold War. Who's keeping a count on the dishonesty?

I don't know how the last decade fared in this race to the bottom, but I wish Clive James has been around to offer his witty commentary on it. Alas, his passing leaves a gap that is unlikely to be filled anytime soon. Even though he had not been active in this way (on TV) for a decade and a half, I can hear his voice making light of the Trumps, Putins and Johnsons, and much else besides.

And finally for this first day of the bright new decennium, JJ returned safely home from her harbour cruise on MV Dilapidation. I cannot find this ship listed anywhere, nowhere is a name apparent, only a mysterious number adjacent the bridge. Apparently it cost $800 a pop for this particular jaunt, but fortunately JJ and her friends were gratis. She said that the fireworks were magnificent. Alas, I missed even the TV broadcast - fast asleep was I!


Preparing for departure, though thankfully, not for the open sea.