4 “O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!

5 Behold, you have made my days a few hand-breadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!" Ps.39

It doesn't take an especially religious person to understand the nature of our mortal lives. As I have said elsewhere, it helps to have faith, not least because it establishes meaning and purpose in the here and now. Others might argue that this kind of meaning is bollocks and therefore merely a crutch for the weak or gullible. I am not convinced of their reasoning, which can begin to sound a little like envy at times. It seems to me that regardless of whether the religious faith can prove the truth of its beliefs (which is well-nigh impossible and rather pointless besides) the act of believing can undoubtedly improve a person's life psychologically. From that, much else that is good follows.

On the other hand, it is possible to stare into the night sky as a fervent non-believer, to consider the vastness and wonder of the universe, and know "how fleeting I am." You don't need faith, just a sense of perspective. We are tiny in the face of hugeness, which is sobering.

The increasing tragedy of this late-modern era is that many people who should know better are besotted by ego and hubris, failing to see that they are "a mere breath." To miss this point is sad. Who can not look at a cherry-blossom and fail to see the bitter-sweet truth of its beauty and its fleeting fragility. Those people should not be in positions of influence, or power.

a gloaming eve,
then suddenly the far-slung moon-
autumn kip

late fall-
the reddening of everything
just got redder

Last month I began entries in the series entitled "Ten albums that were most influential(for me) by age 20" and got as far as number 2. I should add at this stage that they are not listed in any order of importance, rather, in the order that I likely took possession of them. It is worth noting also that the kinds of music one listens to as a youth doesn't always translate into later life - tastes change, but sometimes, of course, it does.

The third album that makes it into the top ten is The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers. I can credit here the influence of my older brother John who had one of the singles from the album in his collection (Wild Horses, I think). One day I went looking for the song and found the LP instead. I can quote here from an unsent letter from this period,

"There is a strange alchemy on this album that moves from slow to fast, from rock to blues. The lyrics can be brassy and sexual or just very sad. Sometimes they are a little odd - "What am I doing in this place/Why does the doctor have no face?" Why indeed!  And the cover - pure Warhol, of course!"

I can't say why I still have a few unsent letters from my misspent youth, except to say that none of them were finished, so perhaps I put them aside and forgot to complete them. I wrote quite a lot of letters at the time and most were not replied to(some of my friends were not especially literary), though I know that they were well-received at the other end.

shoals of bright leaves
and the unbordered sky
shake my reverie

My last post did not come out of the blue. I had been rummaging in a box full of old university papers and documents when I came across a faded sheet of point form notes about a debate I had been in in my second year at UNSW. This was my last formal debate as I recall and I was a ring-in. I had been attending a weekly bible study at the chaplains office and somehow, though I can’t exactly remember how, a vacancy had occurred in the team. I may have mentioned, however, that I had once debated at high school. Cue second speaker.

This was a kind of lunchtime inter-faculty debate of no real consequence. The topic “That there can be no absolute law without a deity” might have been one better suited to a theological college, but here we were anyway, a patched up team of Arts students taking on another from across the way in the Philosophy Department. Of course this put us at a distinct disadvantage, philosophy undergrads being in their element on this hallowed ground, in addition to having recourse to a couple of thousand years of philosophical debate. I think that we expected to be whacked.

Good debaters, however, can sometimes work a kind of rhetorical magic if their opponents don’t rise to the challenge. I am a pretty average debater but my teammates were first class and we won. The funny thing is is that I do think that the affirmative on this topic ( which we were) is true and that without religious faith, what’s right and what’s wrong are located on shifting sand.

As always, happy to be proven wrong.

The venue:

Much as people might hate me saying it, religion has proved to be an important civilising factor in human development. Quite apart from the seemingly innate tendency within us to seek what is transcendent, religions of various stripes tend to set behavioural benchmarks for adherents. They set up rules by which to live ones life, ways of acting in the world and relating to others. By and large these tend to make us better people.

The decline of religion in the West has tended to coincide with an increased brutalisation in human relations. Consider how awful were the conflicts of the 20th century - the two World Wars, Stalinism, Maoism, Fascism, The Holocaust, nuclear weapons, Pol Pot, African genocides and so on. The current century has started off little better than the last.

Within individual societies, there is a coarsening of both public and private relations and a race to the bottom in popular culture. There are many signs of social progress, sure, but they tend to be small beer when compared to wider trends. You might argue that religious belief has caused more trouble than any good it has done, but I would reply that it is the exploitation of belief by elites and fanatics that is the real culprit.

A crisis of belief inevitably leads to a crisis of individual purpose. One can find purposes outside of faith to build a meaningful life upon. Philosophers have weighed in for centuries on this matter. Sartre located the creation of meaning in leading a bold, intentional life in which authentic action in the world is the fundamental building block. But most people don’t have either the luxury of deep thought nor the time to consider such authentic action, so busy are their lives. So when things start to fall apart, when the mortgage is too much to pay or the marriage crumbles or ones health fails, then what is there to fall back on?

The "ghostly silt" may have dispersed, but people are still hungry for something beyond the mundane.

Covid 19 has had a salutary effect on global tourism, amongst other things. Much has already been written about the cruise ship and I will not add to it, except to say, bon voyage. But empty airports, tour buses and famous landmarks speak to the depth of what has occurred.

Thinking about tourism in general and how it has evolved over time, I listened to a podcast about The Grand Tour, a phenomenon that began in the 17th century. Well-to-do folks, many of them English, would take a long tour of France and Italy, ostensibly to complete their education. Taking in the ruins of antiquity and imbibing the cultural milieu became essential additions to the portfolio of the aristocratic lady or gentleman. Many diaries and letters attest to their experiences.

It was while perusing some of these sources that I came across Tobias Smollett's Travels Through France and Italy, published in 1766. A map of Smollett's journey in the front struck me as strangely familiar. Where had I seen this route before? Of course, I thought to myself, this is the same path I took on my first trip to Europe in 1979/80. I didn't stop at all the places that Smollett did, but then, he had two years and I only had three months. But the route was almost identical, from Calais to Paris, through Dijon, Lyon, Avignon, Nice and into Italy.

Now that brings back a memory or two.

The face of Sydney, like many big cities, is a constant work in progress. I like nothing better than rambling through streets that evoke a sense of the old town, the Sydney built largely before World War 2. Much of that charm was erased by a spate of ill-conceived projects that began in the 1960's - ergo- building a modern skyline above and canyons of asphalt and concrete below.

Still, there are places that are untouched as yet, even if developers are eyeing them with their accustomed bland greed and predictable mediocrity. The precinct around Central Station has parts that are largely in their original state. Of course, the station itself if a magnificent pile and commands the skyline, for the time being.

For the meantime, here is a photo comparison of the road adjacent Belmore Park in 1957 and 2017, leading up to the concourse of Central Station, posted originally by Phil Harvey of Sydney Then and Now. The trams are back in a modern iteration and much else seems the same. Though folks did dress better back then, don't you think?

John Clare was an English contemporary of Keats, Byron and Shelley. Unlike these three worthies of the Romantic tradition, and despite being well-known in his lifetime, he fell into relative obscurity in the 19th century. His reputation as a major poet was restored in the 20th century through the clamouring of poets like Edmund Blunden, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.

Clare had only a basic education and spent much of his time as a poor farm labourer, but his verse is extraordinary, revealing a prodigious talent. He wrote as he rambled in his native Northamptonshire, writing powerfully of the natural world and his sense of alienation as the enclosure of land set in. He also wrote some fine love poetry, such as the one below. It probably helps to know that the Mary in the poem was a woman he met as a young man, fell in love with, but could not marry because of a parental veto. Such was life back then for a peasant poet.

To Mary: It is the evening hour.

It is the evening hour,
How silent all doth lie:
The horned moon she shows her face
In the river with the sky.
Just by the path on which we pass,
The flaggy lake lies still as glass.

Spirit of her I love,
Whispering to me
Stories of sweet visions as I rove,
Here stop, and crop with me
Sweet flowers that in the still hour grew,
We'll take them home, nor shake off the bright dew.

Mary, or sweet spirit of thee,
As the bright sun shines to-morrow
Thy dark eyes these flowers shall see,
Gathered by me in sorrow,
Into the still hour when my mind was free
To walk alone--yet wish I walked with thee.

I keep finding old bones in the garden. These are the remains of the handiwork of Ruth, who once chewed happily upon their formerly more succulent selves. Ruth no doubt buried or discarded bones in many locations, both in and outside the property. Being a dog who refused to be contained within boundaries and this being a time when dogs roaming about was viewed with a more relaxed attitude, she obtained food from many people in the street. It was not unusual to see her trotting up the drive with a huge specimen in her mouth. Complete bones and shards of bone and now emerging, pushed from their resting places by water and time.

This makes my garden a kind of archaeological dig. If I play my cards right it might even become a kind of shrine, pilgrims wending their way from far and near to see or even touch the sacred bone fragments. Ruth was a very popular dog. She may well have an afterlife as a kind of saint.

Ten Chi'n 's poem Translucent Jade, begins

"My grandfather made me a gift when I was born,
I used it for a while until another gift, my mother's
Flashed in view"

The poet goes on to say how, having been given a new name in Australia, ostensibly to fit in, she rediscovered her old name, which she "retrieved from its silence." The rest of this luminous poem is a brief exploration of rediscovery on many levels. It is probably typical of the migrant experience, of covering up the 'old country' so as not to make a fuss, not to be noticed. My own wife chose the new name Ann when she came from Thailand, even though Arunee is both simple and lovely. I understand the impulse, though it is baleful indeed that people should feel compelled to change their identity, their precious birthright.

By way of a meandering road this reminds me of my first trip to Japan as a teacher. I was very surprised to find, upon checking the class lists, that many of the students had "Westernised" Christian names. I became even more surprised and not a little alarmed when I found out that the previous teachers had arbitrarily given students these names, because they were "too hard to pronounce."

So the first change I made to school policy was the abolition of this ridiculous imposition and the reinstatement of the student's real names, which was enacted with all discretion. After all, how much harder is it to say Keiko, than Katie? The small effort involved is worth it, to the benefit of all.

Since my last post I have been busy with connectivity issues. Broadly speaking, I am quite good with technology and like to solve problems myself. Usually I manage to do so.

But with the NBN and allied setups I was out of my depth. Once out-of-the-box instructions had been tried and tried again, and once forums and help lines had been exhausted, I had to concede that only a technician could complete the job. As it turned out I had been doing everything correctly and the problems lay in a communications pit about 50 metres from my abode.

Then came the constantly crashing iPhone and appalling battery issues. Such was the unreliability of the device that I have retired it(having tried many solutions) and bought a low-end Samsung. Even if the operating system is less appealing, I know the battery will keep me in good stead for at least a few years. Meanwhile Apple might like to put some of their massive profits into making better batteries for their over-priced products.

But enough about technology, the nuts and bolts of which is as dull a subject as I can think of!