I do quite a lot of work to try to recover more of my memory from those times when it has become, in recent years, somewhat blurred. Apart from family members and friends (who I can subtly ply with questions without giving away the game) I have artefacts (albums, diaries etc) and other resources, such as Wikipedia and music streaming services. Folks who don the rose-tinted glasses as they wax on about the good old days on social media are also helpful, though they wouldn't know it.

So over the last few days I have plunged, via a music streaming app, into the back catalogue of David Bowie. Music really helps me reconnect with memory and Bowie was, of course, massive when I was a teenager. His remaking of self was one of those hot topics of the time and a symptom of a restless, creative talent bent on success. My favourite album, "Let's Dance" came much later (1983) when my powers of recall seem unimpaired. Playing it over is to invite a flood of recollection.

But earlier material is probably more important in my present circumstances. Playing again "Golden Years" or "Fame" or even "Young Americans" gives me a glimpse, which I hope bears some relation to truth, of my senior years at school, fooling around with the lyrics and wondering at the "death" of Ziggy Stardust. You know that one shard of memory can lead onto another or might open up a whole narrative, as if by chance. 

It's not an easy process for me. But I try, I try.

Greater Sydney, which unfortunately, seems to encompass the Blue Mountains, is in its second lockdown following a blowout in the Covid Delta strain in recent weeks. Given what has happened in Melbourne and elsewhere, it was inevitable that sometime, somewhere, we would get hit again. And that's that. An inconvenience for most of us, a peril for those who are infected.

This does not go anywhere near to explaining the kinds of panic that seems to possess some folks when the word lockdown is applied. A lockdown is not a curfew. Even if it was, that is not reason to rush about in supermarkets as if the sky is falling - Australia produces its own food and when I last checked, Warragamba was nearly full. There seems to be a thing about toilet paper too - the mass buying of it - I mean. Tinned food - maybe that has a rational side to its purchase - but loo paper? Something deeper is going on.

I do feel sorry for all the workers and businesses that will have to close or vastly reduce their services in the next two weeks. For many casual employees, each paycheque goes on rent and food and utilities. They will have to dig deep, go into debt or fall back on the family. Far worse then anything in this lucky country are the kinds of suffering that are happening in many developing nations, whose economies have collapsed as trade and orders tailed off last year. Really, it behooves all wealthy nations to step up and support countries for whom globalisation was promised as a panacea for poverty. There are no excuses for inaction.

Suma is a town about half-way between Central Kobe and the Akashi bridge and has its own station on the JR Kobe line. It looks out into Osaka Bay and was once, likely, a peaceful fishing spot and sleepy rural town with a beautiful shoreline. Now it is part of a long conurbation that stretches to Himeji and beyond. You can't blame people for building along the coastal strip. That happens everywhere.

Arai Yoshimune's masterful woodblock print "Suma Beach at Night", created about a hundred years ago, evokes an entirely different perspective. A landscape, two human figures, a tree and the moon point to a changed relationship between man and nature, for even though the Japanese lionize tradition, the coastline and the rivers are often found compromised by concrete and oddly intrusive development. The balance of looking out at the sea becomes something more complicated and inward and our gaze is inverted to human structures.

The few times I took the JR Kobe line, I was on the way to Himeji Castle, usually with guests from back home. Suma Beach did not stand out then in the same way that the following Yoshimune image does now.

There is a lot of complaint about on the internet - inordinate amounts of whining and moaning about often very trivial issues. I'm sure that I'm guilty of this now and then, though I do try to dress things up as critique, rather than just belly-aching. 

Before everything went online, moaning was generally restricted to pubs, backyard fences and letters to the editor. Even then a certain degree of restraint was needed because gripes delivered face-to-face were delivered with personal responsibility attached. There was none of the sine nomine that characterises so much of the poisonous commentary abounding on social media.

This may account for the manner in which people are so easily attacked for such minor offences. If you say something that gives offence then you are accountable and should expect a response - a measured, reasonable response. What happens usually is a personal attack in which matters are globalised and revenge is meted out on the spot.

I was reading an essay by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and came across the following paragraph on this very topic, though in her case it concerned a specific incident. There is no way I could have put it better.

"There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness.....people whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature - the messy stories of our humanity - but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy."

Amen sister.

whales, tail to tail,

float like doves,

like snow

Another View From A Train

From the train
Mild light through gums
Spokes against the glass,
The mellow sway across the plain,
Then, through serious stones,
A figure, bending by cut grass,
Tiny pots of flowers arrayed,
Colours massed near epitaphs.
Just a blur, the long
Straight lines -
A hall of tiles and grid
And hemmed-in creeks,
The very roofs and sky combine
Into a dreamy nothingness,
A place to be, for amid
The utter ceaselessness,
Is found,

Crippled and uncurling,

Though unwittingly bound,
Something like peace.

"Alone and with an oil-paper umbrella in hand,
I hesitate up and down a long, long
and solitary rainy lane,
hoping to meet
a girl like a lilac
budding with autumn complaints"

So wrote symbolist poet Dai Wangshu in his masterful "A Rainy Lane" in 1928. Dai was in love with a younger woman who had spurned his advances and perhaps this induced the melancholia that suffuses the poem. For even as he wishes to meet her, "her colour is lost" and "fragrance gone" in the "sad song of the rain." By the end, he merely hopes to see her "floating past" as if she is an apparition.

Who hasn't felt this way sometime?

It behooves me, after a period of some two months, to give a progress report on my new bike. You may recall that just prior to last Easter, and on the advice of a physio, I bought a Himo C20, an electric-assisted bicycle. 

My initial impressions were glowing. It seemed like a well-built, competently-designed bike that performed pretty much up to spec, save that the 80 kilometre capacity of the battery was a tad sanguine. I haven't tested the distance, it being better for the battery life, apparently, if I recharge after a partial discharge of the battery, rather than let it run down to zero. But I am guessing that 60 kilometres would be very doable, perhaps a little more.

For those wondering whether an e-bike is for them I can only offer this. If you live in a hilly area such as I do, then the electric-assist makes a huge difference, something akin to that first experience of breezing along the road as a kid. You can still pedal hell-for-leather and reduce the amount of assistance, thus getting greater exercise and prolonging the charge. You can also coast along just using the throttle. Up to you entirely.

Petty dislikes include the weight of the bike and the lack of suspension, but these are more than compensated for in other ways. Of course, if you pay more money you can get a lighter bike, one with more bells and whistles. But I was on a budget. 

So in summary, thus far, a good bike. No problems with the electrics nor any with the mechanicals. It handles well and brakes well. The layout of the handlebar is logical. It also garners quite a few admiring looks with its fairly hip design. I am fitter and happier for riding it.

I have cited Yosa Buson's haiku in the past. Alongside Issa and Basho, he is one of the three greats of the Edo period. He was also an artist who worked in ink and wash painting. The other day a sumo fan posted a Buson artwork featuring two sumo wrestlers. There is also a haiku rendered in calligraphy.

It seems to me that the picture captures the real core of a sumo bout, the sense of action and energy, speed and power that is characteristic of the sport. Top-knots, mawashi and technique are all apparent in this little sketch, together with the keen attention of the gyoji.

Unfortunately, I can't find a translation of the haiku, though I'm sure that one will turn up.