In the park


two beer-bottles
and a couple of crows
see out the summer

I read somewhere that the chances of being born on February 29th are 1 in 1,461. That is not hard to work out in your head. Since for the rest of us, there is a 1 in 365 chance of being born on any given day, you just multiply by four to get the odds for those lucky leap-yearers. I guess any good parent would make provision for the "missed birthdays" that occur in between and that many would opt for the 28th, since the following day is March 1, an entirely different month. But then some might argue that since they didn't exist on the 28th, the following day better represents their nativity.

This is not a question that has exercised the minds of great thinkers and philosophers over the ages. We cannot help but travel around the Sun in the allotted time, with the necessary correction every four years. But it is an arbitrary measure of sorts. We could have set up an Earth year based on our relationship to other heavenly bodies, though this may have been chaotic, or perhaps one year could have been the measure of how long it takes our solar system to do a circuit of the galaxy. That would be a very long year, about 230 million years, I believe.

Best to leave things as they are.

Today was a baptism of fire of sorts. Fridays, I normally read articles from the Newcastle Herald at 2RPH with the shift presenter Peter, from 10am until 11.30. It's a fairly straight forward two-hander, easier for me since my job is just reading - live to air - sure, but not difficult once you get some experience. But today Peter was called away on an emergency so I was in the presenter's chair. That is no panic either since I have done enough shifts in this role to feel reasonably confident of not throwing the show under the bus.

Only, there was no other reader today, no replacement for myself, that is, so I was left with doing both jobs. Ordinarily this would probably have meant that the program would not go to air, but I did it anyway. To give you some idea of the challenge you need to understand that the presenter is also the producer, setting up the whole program from start to finish, running both the computer and the board, troubleshooting any problems and keeping to the schedule. On top of that, of course, is all the announcing work that makes a program into a cohesive narrative.

However, when the presenter has to do this job and also read all the news articles and the program is live-to-air, well, that is a tall order. Aside from brief sponsor messages, program promos and music stabs, there is no room to even take a breath. While you are reading one article you are planning what is coming next and watching the time. As you come to the end of a story, you are reaching for another imminent story, whilst loading something else on the computer monitor to break up the talking and give listeners a small vacation from your voice. Do you get my drift?

On the way home in the train I listened to the recorded podcast of the broadcast and was surprised by how calm and in control I sounded. Some of the readings were too fast and I stumbled now and then over a word, but hey, I had one eye on the page and the other on another task. Sometimes it is good to push yourself. If it comes off you have something to be proud of. It not, it is practice for the next time around.

We are past the worst of the heat. The last few days have had an autumnal feel about them, hard to describe, just a sensation one gets. Well, there is a cooler breeze about but as yet no leaves on the turn. We will have to wait at least another month until that begins.

Autumn is my favourite time - there is a sad beauty about it - the going of leaves is itself a kind of a death. It is that paradox - splendour in decline, that seizes me. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote this lovely sonnet in 1917. It is hard not to feel this way sometimes. Harder, perhaps, to feel otherwise.


God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

As we get older, there is a tendency to forget more often. I don't mean those "senior moments", when a word or name is lost for a while, later to be retrieved when no longer required. I mean, longer-term memory, recollections and details about the past. Over the past few years I have noticed that certain key aspects or parts of my life are increasingly drawing a blank, or at best, an inaccurate account of the past. And they are all located at a particular time in my life.

It started with my high school reunion in 2016. At that event I was forgetting the names of people who had been very prominent in my school days. Luckily I had my best friend from that time doing introductions and everyone seemed to know me, so I just nodded and asked the obvious polite questions. I got by but it was disturbing none the less.

Later I sat down and did a house plan for the Killarney Heights home I had lived in for 14 years. I matched it with the actual plan (on a real estate site) and found I had dropped one bedroom, a dining room and one garage from the original floor plan. I knew that something was up, but what.

I have discounted typical brain diseases like dementia because the forgetfulness is quite selective and tied to a period in the early to mid 1970's. My own studies in psychology and readings beyond that suggest that it may be a symptom of PTSD, since that period was one of significant trauma for my family. It may be worth taking further or things might just right themselves. It is a shame to forget a whole chunk of your life, especially a formative one, don't you think?

After The Fall

The banksia fell in the night,
There was no sound, nor
Any fight that I could tell,
Just a massive root unearthed-
Core of the old tree slumped
Like a drunk on the grass,
Mute where it fell.
Gone before its time
There was no foretelling
Such gusts and sodden earth
Conspired at either end
To do it in, Only
The solemn trunk down,
Smashed cones, brushes
And a shattered blue bin.
Perhaps sleep
Is not the realm of stillness,
After all,
Dark silence a verso
Of sorts for an unwaking
Unbidden violence.

Meanwhile, at the local pool.....


Thresholds

Something about a change room door
The goings in and out,
Attracts whistlers,
Something unseen perhaps,
A trip-wire on the floor,
Or thoughts of shaving,
All that damp and steam about,
Memorials of the camping trip,
Or just a craving for another time,
When it really didn’t matter.
The whistling, I mean,
It starts like a fragile song
Slightly out of tune and
Segues into hopeful alleys,
None of them wrong,
Just off-beam.
Warblers are rarely
Found in pairs,
They cancel each other,
Or so it would seem.
Only so much room
For so many airs.

Whilst sweeping water and mud out of the garage the other day, I came across a book of old poems that was teetering above a murky puddle. I brought it inside and later read some of the things I had written two or three decades ago. I think that I have become a better writer, which is odd, since I was fully engaged with teaching literature at that time. Maybe it just takes a while for the good stuff to lodge sufficiently in the dim recesses of the mind. A few of the poems weren't bad, and I print one below, written in 1994, showing the abiding influence of Mr Larkin.

Sub-urban

Utterly bored
I mow in long cut chains
The grass
And pass, the insect-cluttered
Grove of lemons, limes and
Cumquat
Then kneel and stop the sound.
Here, space and snakes,
Lone-white lilies and
Ragged recovering blackberry
Abounds
And other sounds emerge
Like a layered tide –
The fig-stealing pride
Of currawongs,
And cockatoos on drunken
Turns across the yard.
How hard then, to stop
The thought of being bound
In a sliced-down sphere
Of inexcellence,
Whilst free-life, above and
Around,
Has no self to fear.

This morning as I was finishing my laps at the pool, I thought I heard the distinctive sound of a bagpipe playing in the near distance. It continued as I left the water, a plaintive drone in the morning mist. A light rain had started to fall. Strangely, no-one but me seemed to be aware of the piper, so I thought, for a brief moment, that I was finally taking leave of my senses. It is never too late, even at 61, to do so.

But on the walking to the car, there was he, a lone man with his trusty bagpipe, in yon shady glen. I mean, in Wilson Park. He was in his own world, amidst the play of rivulets and water falls (surely, bonny banks -ed.) with a melody so sweet and so sad, that it changed my mood. It is certainly worthy of a poem, though by someone more able at that craft than me.

Last might I was driving to choir when an inky blackness suddenly loomed above and the heavens opened. Thinking we might be about to get a massive hail storm, I diverted into Springwood Station carpark. I think that this photo says is all. It really was a-coming down.

We are having the most extreme wet weather in quite a while, perhaps half a decade. Living on the down-side of a steep hill means that water higher up uses all premises below as a kind of river. That is what my place looks like. It is flooded and rivulets are flowing on all sides, making their way to the road. My garage is inundated though the house is intact, for now.

Looking out the back window this morning, I noticed a large banksia had come down in the night. It fell most considerately, for, while it took out a neighbouring apple, it missed the fence and only just scrapped the garage. That tree has been with me since I moved here almost thirty years ago and I know, from the old tyre at the base, that it started from a seedling or a sapling. So I am rather sad and not at all looking forward to chopping it up.

It's strange indeed that it was but a mere two weeks ago that heat, fire and smoke were our main worries and that the news was full of grim reportage of a blackened landscape. Now, rain is coming at the windows sideways and the magpies looked soaked through and miserable.

This is usually a cue to quote Dorothea Mackellar, but I'll resist, just this once.

The Lock

Looking for something else,
I found you, or at least a
Part of you, wholly preserved.
Forty years is a long time
In forgetting, reserved for
Lesser things really. So
The lock of hair, curled
Inside a dollar-souvenir, a
Florentine forget-me-not,
Was slightly upsetting, I
Thrown fool-like back
To an innocent past, of
First love, re-imagined-
Clay feet, awkwardness,
You on the tender pedestal
Me, the flailing bellhop.
Oh, days on the rack!
Such gyrations, deep incisions.
Now these fifty strands,
A timeless curlicue
Limp in my hand, are all
That was you, was us really,
A golden spray too
That formerly was brick-real
Inhabited by ourselves.
Outside, rain is falling,
I replace the lock, pondering
The uncertain day,
Inside, a kind of gloaming.
Such strange alchemy-
gold into grey.

I have been reading the ancient sayings of the desert fathers and mothers for over twenty years now. These early Christian ascetics were largely desert-dwelling, sometimes living in loose congregations or groups, some in larger monasteries and others living completely alone. Their goal was simple - to become as close to God as possible - though pursuing it in the manner that they did was arduous. Today we might think of them as somewhat mad for they turned their back on the world completely. Their lives were pared down to the simplest possible - lots of prayer, little food, no possessions nor comforts of the flesh, monotonous physical labour to pay for the few basic necessities they did consume. You get the picture.

Yet in many respects they were triumphant, for as others have found out too, the life stripped down to the bare minimum can offer a plenitude of meaning that would not be found otherwise. Now and then I come across a short passage that makes me chuckle. The spiritual point is made, even so. Here is an example:

A brother asked a monk,"Suppose there are two monks: one stays quietly in his cell, laying many hardships on himself; and the other ministers to the sick. Which of them is more pleasing to God?" He replied, "Even if the brother who fasts six days hung himself up by his nose, he wouldn't be the equal of him who ministers to the sick."

I can read a book of these sayings through and then start all over again, each time gleaning greater understanding. Their thoughts run contrary to contemporary thinking and we are all the worse for it.

Today's date, the 2nd of February, 2020, is a palindrome, if you render it thus - 02/02/2020, dd-mm-yyyy. You can use different dating formats to get different palindromic outcomes. If you think about it, we write the date many different ways, such as d-m-yy, d-m-yyyy, not to mention the fact that the Americans write it the wrong way, with the month first. But then, they still use the Imperial System of weights and measures.

But the first rendering dd-mm-yyyy is quite special and rare, since the last occasion this occurred as a palindrome was 11/11/1111. It is unlikely that that date excited much attention, since most people at that time could neither read nor write and many did not even know their date of birth. Nothing out of the ordinary appears to have happened on that day and I hope that nothing of great import happens on this one, either.

Palindromes are more common though in words, think of Bob, ewe, madam, level or rotor for starters. They can also occur, though often by comic design, in sentences - "Was it a rat I saw?", is one such case. And another -