There is a lot of debate about Australia Day - the 26th January - and whether it should be changed to a less controversial date. It is not hard to see why, for the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 signalled the doom of Aboriginal civilisation. Indigenous Australians rightly see the 26th as a day of invasion and from their perspective, it is. They have very little to celebrate.
I am wondering if there might be a compromise position, one which establishes a tension between the celebration on the one hand, and the sadness on the other. I don't see why Australia Day can't be both a salute to the nation and a day of reflection. After all, this is essentially what happens on Anzac Day.
It is not for me to say, of course. I am not an indigenous Australian. But Australians do not fit comfortably into the patriotic, as Americans do, for which I am grateful. But a day which is both celebratory and given to reflection may end up creating something entirely new, something perhaps unifying. And altogether different.
At the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, a record 17 wrestlers (rikishi) are absent from the top two divisions. A combination of injuries and Covid-related matters are the culprits. Watching the Makunouchi daily, as I do, the attrition is obvious from the leader board. Sure, one of those wrestlers, Shodai, is an ozeki, but the feel at the top is distinctly spooky.
It is hard to know when we will see the two yokozuna again. Both are veterans who must have one eye on retirement. There is a pretty good crop of younger men coming through, though I cannot see a Hakuho amongst them. Granted, he is pretty special.
Day 14 will give a clearer picture of who will win the Emporer's Cup. Daieisho and Shodai are in the drivers seat, locked at 11-2 each. But if they both fall today, there is a chance that one of the pack may be able to come from behind on Day 15.
If you're interested in finding out about sumo, then NHK World online has lots of stuff, including previous tournaments and video of all the matches in the top division in the current winter tourney. Sumotalk com has a glossary of all the sumo related words that I might use and much more.
The passing of Phil Spector got me thinking about the often rambling conversations that I had had with a friend, the late (but great) Robert Mumford. I have written about Robert before but to refresh, he was one given to obsessions with certain topics, the contents of which became quite esoteric in his hands. He had the ability to cover the same ground in many different ways, all to the same end. We had heard all of it before. Strangely enough, this was a part of the joy of knowing Robert.
So on hearing of Spector's sad demise, I could very easily construct the kind of conversation that Robert would have engaged in. Having a deep and abiding knowledge of The Beach Boys, I know that he would have given me a blow-by-blow of the relationship between Spector and Brian Wilson. How the latter had heard Be My Baby on his car radio and had been forced to pull over, overwhelmed by the sound. How Wilson had been influenced by Spector's production techniques on Pet Sounds. And on and on.
I was listening the other day to some Spector outtakes from sessions spent at Gold Star laying down the tracks for Walking in the Rain. A room full of musicians played the same thing over and over. The material was multi-tracked and given various treatments (echo chambers, reverb etc) until it was melded into a block of sound in which individual instruments no longer had a separate voice. Finally the vocalists (The Ronettes) were added, trapped in the wall but still emphatic. It was powerful and innovative technique for the time though it took a toll on the musicians, who were often likened to puppets in Spector's hands.
Robert would have said that Wilson was a more imaginative musician and producer than Spector. I think he would have been right too. Both were subject to their demons - for one this led to violence and murder, for the other, pained introspection. Musical history is likely to treat the Beach Boy more kindly, I suspect.
We are now sufficiently into 2021 to realise, again, that the movement of a timepiece at midnight on a particular date makes little or no difference in human affairs. Sure, I have noticed a lot of new swimmers at my local pool, and passing the gym this morning, every machine had a customer. But that is the particular and here, I mean, the general.
The world is much the same as it was, in equal parts awful and good. Last year was a bit of a zinger for the current generations who, having been coddled by modernity, are ready to stage a revolt over the colour of a toothbrush or the use of a pronoun. I don't deal with adversity all that well myself but having a broad historical perspective, I can locate analogues for 2020 at many times and places in the past. That brings some comfort. Complaints about having one's lifestyle impeded in some way by a pandemic, when all the basics for human survival are intact, does not cut the mustard.
I know that I think too much, certainly too much for my own good. But thinking is also a wonderful pass-time when others systems fail or when normality is up-ended. It is a resource that connects with so many other resources. Having had more time on my hands has meant I have written more. I apologise for the appearance of additional poetry in this blog. It happens when the gloomier side of me is in the ascendant. A correction is due soon.
After Us
The events in Washington two days ago may have surprised and shocked many, but they should really have been seen coming. Denying election results, sulking in a stew of victimhood and demanding others do the bidding he will not do himself, Trump is almost the perfect agent of destruction.
Coddled from birth with the proverbial silver spoon, enabled by legions of sycophants, never held to account for his deceits and incompetence, this awful person somehow captured the highest position in a once honourable political party and then, the top position in the land.
It is not such a long road from that point to what occurred on Thursday. The people who raided the Capitol Building were themselves much deceived, feasting and as they have on a diet of lies and geed-up at every turn by the master coward to 'bombard the headquarters'.
He cannot go soon enough.
Omissions
What's memory but a wintering tree,
That holds the ground,
Though Spring is a recovery,
It's incomplete-
The last to fall, the unremembered,
Do not recall
The blights of past Decembers,
Perhaps but faintly
Regenerations of Septembers.
The project fails
Upon such grains of recollection-
Unceasing age,
Vast compostings of thought,
Pitched over,
Until the aggregate of time,
Is a single page.
After a long hiatus, I have started writing poems in the longer form again. They are not very long, in fact, quite modest in length, but still a good deal longer than the three-line jobbies I have been writing these past two decades.
I suppose that I have wanted to capture more than a moment in time for a while now. The extended thought gives me a chance to be more expressive, though others would say, long-winded. Still, the output is paltry and patchy at best.
I used to write a lot of longer-form poems after I left high school, most of which were hand-written in a book given to me by a kindly colleague during my first teaching appointment. I think that I wrote and collected about 50 or 60 poems in that volume, of which only a few survive. Somehow the book went missing in a house move and has never been found. Except for a few stray pieces on loose paper, there is nothing to show for the effort I made, though as for that, they were not very good at all. So, no loss really.
More recently, I have been interested in different kinds of rhyme, ways of linking sound across lines and within lines so as to not be too prescriptive. I'm enjoying writing too, even if the completed work falls well short of what I would like. I am not a major or a minor poet, just a happy amateur. And that will do.
Osouji is a Japanese spring cleaning regime that takes places in homes just before the New Year, in the middle of winter. Doors and windows are flung open as every space is scrubbed, dusted and vacuumed, never mind the fact that it is bitterly cold outside.
We noticed this oddly timed event every December as our neighbours began the laborious task that is osouji. Lest you think they have lost their minds (why not do this deep clean in the Spring?) the Japanese clean their houses at this time to purify each residence in order to welcome Toshigami, the Shinto deity of the New Year. Said deity is said to visit homes in the New Year, dispensing good luck and robust health. So there are reasons other than cleanliness for the Japanese to participate.
The West also looks at the year's end as a time of cleansing - throwing out old bad habits, making a fresh start. Resolutions of various types and levels of difficulty are made, often with a fierce determination. Suddenly there are more swimmers at pools, more joggers in the parks, fuller gyms and fridges emptied of fatty, sugary treats. Some stick at it and achieve their goals, while others fall by the wayside. Good intentions, however laudable, do not always make for good outcomes. It's the process that matters, in the final analysis.
I don't ever recall making a resolution on January 1. It has nothing to do with being perfect, quite the opposite. Every day is a struggle for me even to achieve a little. And so, every day must necessarily be a commitment to do better, no matter what the odds tell me.
Below:
A New Year's decoration, kadomatsu will often be displayed at the front gate, though we had one in the genkan.
