And so the old year drags to a close. Outside it's drizzly and overcast and much cooler than recently. I have distinctly mixed feelings about NYE and have always done so. 

There are very few that are memorable. Possible the most interesting was NYE in Florence in 1979. It was bitterly cold and I have no idea why I was out and about in a foreign city at such a late hour, but as one of the cathedrals struck midnight, people broke into song, applause and cheering. A young man near me unwrapped a large panettoni (I had never seen one before) and offered it around. I don't remember any fireworks. Everyone soon drifted home.

Other than that and the odd obligatory immersion in pyrotechnics, I have little to write about. I have always felt that the chance to genuinely reflect upon oneself has been missing, a symptom of the race to the next big thing. Resolutions have become a kind of standing joke. I wish that it weren't so.

But Happy New Year nevertheless. May there be fewer wars, more talk of peace and a kindlier attitude towards one's neighbour.

Hardly a week goes past without someone, often reasonably prominent or respectable, being arrested or charged or indeed convicted of viewing or dealing in child abuse material. The stories are usually quite similar - men who began by casually consuming 'ordinary' pornography, who over time become more involved with harder porn and who finally end up at the child abuse sites or exchanges or whatever they are called.

While the jury on whether porn leads to addiction or not is out (findings are inconclusive) there is little doubt that there are compulsive disorders that arise from porn consumption and which are demonstrably harmful to both the user and his family. It should come as no surprise that the overthrow of all regulation that occurred with the advent of the internet should lead us down this path.

Freedom for anyone to view porn anytime, anywhere has nothing to do with real freedom at all. It is just license, all dressed up. 

With my wife and step-daughter overseas and Tom house-sitting for his mum, I have had lots of time alone. I've said before that solitude is something that you can choose, whilst loneliness is thrust upon you by circumstances. Truthfully I do occasionally feel lonely, used as I am to a house that is constantly occupied by others. Night is probably the most acute time for feeling so.

I have occupied some of my time by watching old space movies. Many were made in the 1950's and 1960's, these decades being the dawn of the space age. Pretty much all of them are B-grade with tight budgets and limited scope for special effects.

But all have a few things in common. Firstly, the science is way off beam, given even the knowledge of the time. Mars and Venus have breathable atmospheres. Travellers (I dare not call them astronauts) wear casual clothes and are usually of an age or disposition totally unsuited to space travel. Security and launch procedures are incredibly lax - a policeman checking a crew list in the dark and using a flashlight to ID the crew member, press conferences with only minutes to go before take-off, flights that should take months only taking a few days. In one hilarious case, the evasion of a meteor storm saw the rocket go into 'infinite acceleration.'

In many respects, the movies take all their cues from ordinary Hollywood films of the time, where the focus was on the characters (especially different character types) and the plot revolved around solving problems and conflicts. There is almost aways a 'love interest.' In this scenario, the space is merely a device which is neither fully explored nor seriously engaged with scientifically.

That is not to say I haven't enjoyed them, though the fast forward button is helpful when the plot becomes too stuck or the acting too wooden.

 I'd like to finish 2023 with a wrap-up of the the general trends of Grand Sumo for the year. Overall, it was an unusual year. The top-ranked ranked wrestler, Terunofuji who is the sole yokozuna, spent all but one and a bit tournaments injured. If he returns in January, it may be for the last time.

The absence of the top man meant that lower ranked rikishi had a chance to step up and win the Emperor's Cup, which they duly did. Kiribayama (now Kirishima) won two, Takakeisho also nabbed two, though inconsistency in other tourneys meant that his 'yokozuna run' came to nought. Hoshoryu won the other, aside from Terunofuji's lone victory in the the one tournament he was able to finish.

There are plenty of exciting and talented young men coming through the ranks and I think we may see another yokozuna by the end of 2024. 

The year also saw the retirement of a number of wrestlers, including the popular Georgian, Tochinoshin. Many retirees go on to other roles in the sport but it seems likely he will return To Georgia.

Roll on the Tokyo Basho.

Christmas approaches again with talk of war, actual war and rumours of war. When it comes to ending conflict, I think the best we can hope for is patched-up compromises which hold the peace together until trouble breaks out again.

Peace projects such as the League of Nations and the United Nations are all well and good and certainly to be applauded, but they remain flawed by their own inbuilt limitations and the machinations of Great Powers. Nobody is going to hand over executive military control to a world body or government, so the unpleasant realities of nation state power politics remain with us.

Ultimately this boils down to human nature, flawed, subject to whims and changes, selfish and fearful, yet still able to imagine a utopian future where peace and justice rule. An illusion it is and little more. We should all work towards greater justice and friendly relations between peoples, but there is a limit to what can be achieved in a fallen world. 

Ann and JJ leave for Thailand early in the morning. Tom is minding his mum's place while she is away, so for the first time in a long while, I will be home alone. While I cherish solitude, I am not very keen on being thrust into loneliness, especially at Christmas time. And yet I realise that I have often been at a loose end at this time of the year for one reason or another.

Some time ago, the Chinese Tang dynasty poet Li Po wrote,

'All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by,

We never tire of looking at each other -

Only the mountain and I'

I can't find the translator's name, and it's very unlikely that it would have rhymed in lines 2 and 4, but I appreciate the point of this short work. Everything has fled except that which is immovable. I think it will shortly be time for a bush walk.

Occasionally I have a dream that seems to linger for a large part of the day. If it is bizarre enough and close enough to sunrise, that period of final sleep, then it can hang like a haze, muddling my brain and leaving me puzzled.

While there are tools enough on how we might think about the meaning of dreams, or why they appear in the form that they do, there seems little we can do to chase away the fog that they can leave in their wake. I have a lot of dreams (though fewer recently) about teaching and classrooms, usually surrounding my being totally unprepared for the lesson.

This morning, apart from the mandatory school one, I had a dream in which I had to take over the controls of a bus. I think that probably sprung out of having actually caught a bus yesterday from Strathfield to Penrith. On that journey, the driver had repeated trouble changing gears after coming to a halt. Watching him struggle obviously stayed with me.

I was reading a book once by Carl Jung on dreams and their relationship to the conscious and unconscious mind. He can be a little obscure and the subject matter is hard to pin down objectively, but I might give it another read sometime.

But on the theme of dreams, this wonderful sonnet by Christina Rossetti. It's a different kind of dream to mine, but nonetheless...

I dream of you, to wake: would that I might
Dream of you and not wake but slumber on;
Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone,
As, Summer ended, Summer birds take flight.
In happy dreams I hold you full in night.
I blush again who waking look so wan;
Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream we are at one,
Thus only in a dream we give and take
The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.

I often run into young women who, seeing me as a safe confessional space, tell me about the travails of finding a 'good man.' They have really tried hard, using dating apps, social gatherings and the workplace as their go-to dating-pool environment. Which is fair enough.

But often as not, and it's usually not, they run into difficulties at the get-go. The usual complaints are not hard to guess at. The men are interested in 'only one thing', they are disrespectful, have poor conversation skills or simply talk about themselves the whole night-through, and are quite open about using pornography, recreational drugs and the like. They stare at their phones for want of anything to say.

If this seems like an odd way to go about a first date then you would have a good point. It's very strange, so strange and so obviously counter-productive that something broader, perhaps more insidious is at work.

Enter modern popular culture, allied with social media and an unfettered internet. A diet of reality TV, conspiracy theories and a crumbling values system is producing the very harvest that was predicted by some social scientists and all religious commentators.

It is hard to put the genie back in the bottle, is it not? It is worth trying, though it will probably take a disaster of one sort of another for things to be righted, even a little. No-one wishes for that, though come it may.

 A couple of years ago I wrote a short poem called 'Birthday Song.' In essence, it was a celebration of life, best understood as what very easily might have been had things gone to plan.

'Before the Mini-Minor there was me, 
Small and struggling in a foreign place,

My ending almost came before you see,

A clinic, the appointed time, a space

To see me off to nothingness...'

In 1958, my mother was deeply unhappily married and pregnant with her second baby. Realising that this would chain her even more tightly to my father, she arranged for an appointment at an abortion clinic. In those days, abortion was illegal as were the clinics. On the day of the procedure she turned up as planned, sat waiting in a tiny vestibule for her turn, and decided that she couldn't go through with it. And so, here am I.

For years I have struggled with the knowledge that my own story brings to the abortion debate, which in Australia appears to be pretty much settled. Abortion is legal in every state now.

And for years I dutifully bought the line that it was entirely a woman's right to choose and that the tiny blur of foetal material that comprised early pregnancy was largely inconsequential. But part of me knew that this wasn't true. I had hard evidence in my own existence. 

Returning to the church has only strengthened this view. It remains a complicated, emotional and deeply troubling issue. I don't have clear-cut answers. One risks the ire of many in opposing abortion or characterising it as what it really is, murder.

Only if you have survived such a death sentence can you really know.

The Tree

A sky-blue stretch was once a tree,

Its absence now an infinity,

There's no relief from endless space,

An empty pane to see.

The birds that sat at dusk and dawn,

Now congregate upon the lawn,

They cannot reason for the lack,

Or where the timbers borne.

I close my eyes and once again,

Give substance to the ancient frame,

An anaesthetic, yes I know

For the spectre it became.

Robert Frost, one of the foremost American poets of the 20th Century, wrote much about the natural world, often as a way of exploring human psychology and aspects of the human condition. He was a farmer in the first decade of the last century, clearly something that was formative, though he went on to be a jack of all trades.

Frost is popular for many reasons - he eschews the obscurity and difficulty of modernism - so one can pick up a volume and read quite happily about snowy evenings in the woods, the end of the apple-picking season, mending farm walls, swinging from birch branches and so forth. But of course, there is inevitably a deeper meaning, or meanings, which make the lighter reading more satisfying.

I am thinking of Frost today because yesterday a huge tree down the road was chopped down and is in the process of being carted away. Yes, it was dying or most nearly dead but it was also a perch for countless birds. From a window in my back room, I watched them in the mornings as the sun rose and in the evenings when the branches and trunk lit up with the glow of fading sunlight. It had to come down sometime, I know. and Frost would doubtless have found a way of writing about it. That would have been a lovely epitaph.

In the next post, I'll compose a poem on the subject in a Frostian style, though likely, with a genuflection to Thomas Hardy.

When you are retired from full-time work, which I am, every day seems much the same as every other day. The once famous weekends, when the weekly routine was broken and a blessed period of 48 hours of doing whatever you wanted to began, no longer matter. To quote The Smiths, though with quite different intent, "every day is like Sunday."

Sure I have my volunteer work and church commitments which are very day and time specific, but other than that, I can float breezily though the days. Oh, and there is my recording schedule for 2RPH, which theoretically could consume a lot of time. Even so, I can still float.

Some will look at me and say, 'what a lucky chap!' But in truth, I enjoyed working (for the most part) and while the teaching profession has the capacity to both shock you and grind you down, I was very committed nevertheless. Possibly too much so, at times.

So the idea of retirement, a very recent concept incidentally, remains up there with the idea of marriage and the idea of having children or even the idea of happiness. It is partly an illusion, partly wishful thinking. And quite a lot of hoping.

Christina Rosetti is a Victorian poet whom I have written about before. She is regarded as one of the best poets of that period, deservedly in my opinion, though she will not be to everyone's tastes. In particular, her devotional poems, of which there are many, will be off-putting to some, such is the faithlessness of our age. There are many secular poems too, often as not exploring ideas around love, loss and longing.

I have been stuck on a poem in one of her collections called 'I Will Arise' which I seem unwilling to pass, at least not without some comment. The poet is 'weary and weak... downcast in (my) soul' having failed in her estimation to 'reach the goal.' This is a bit like a dark night of the soul, where spiritual dryness and a lack of a sense of God's 'consolation' can cause a lot of distress. It is nothing new, the Desert Fathers talked about it 1600 years ago and it is a theme of a lot of Christian writing through the ages.

What saves Rosetti from despair is her yet deeper understanding of God's love - real, abiding, unchanging and ever-present. In Verse 2, she says,

'One only thing I knew, Thy love of me;
  One only thing I know, Thy sacred same
Love of me full and free,
  A craving flame
Of selfless love of me which burns in Thee.
How can I think of thee, and yet grow chill;
  Of Thee, and yet grow cold and nigh to death?
Re-energize my will,
  Rebuild my faith;
  I will arise and run, Thou giving me breath.'

Aside from her working through a spiritual recovery, it is a masterful piece of writing. Breath-taking I might call it. That is why I find it so hard to turn the page.

 In my final year of primary school (though it may have been the year prior) our school sent a group of choristers to sing as part of a huge chorus for the Choral Concert at the Sydney Town Hall. As with most big sings, individual schools were responsible for auditioning and teaching the material long before the big night. We would then blend in with the many others gathered en masse before the stern conductor's rod.

I recall passing my audition, which simply involved copying notes from the piano and I remember the night too. Some of the songs we learnt still come to mind, such as Masters in this House, Sumer is icumen in and The Sounds of Silence, the latter a bold attempt, I think, to seem contemporary. In those days I was a boy soprano.

'Sumer is icumen' in is 13th century middle English song sung in canon that produces a rich series of harmonies. I think the version we sang was adapted to a more modern English, though it still still old fashioned at the time. In any event, summer has arrived and I will sing this song again.

 My memory of primary school years is still pretty good. An old Go-Set top forty chart from November 1969 sent my mind whirling back to my fifth grade classroom and specifically, the last day of school for that year. Why, you might wearily ask?

This was the day of the class party, when desks and chairs were cleared away (though we may have had morning lessons), save those that made up the makeshift places for the party food that we all brought from home. 5A's teacher, My Morley, was a young and enthusiastic man who kept a tight rein on our miscreant selves, though as for that, we were largely well-behaved.

Some of us had brought music (in the form of 45's) to enliven the day. I had my brother's Beatles single, 'Come Together'( I think it had 'Something' on the flip side) which was duly played, and marked me out, or so it seemed, as the epitome of modernity and style. Well, if only. Mr Morley had dutifully wheeled out the standard-issue record player and had collected our contributions. I guess he was also the DJ for the event.

It was the top forty chart with the listing 'Come Together/Something' at number 3 that reminded me of the party on that day. My shorted-panted self, the year of the first man on the Moon, President Nixon before his disgrace, a time before the confusions of puberty, one also before the onset of the West's cultural crisis, all this, rolled into one, chips, fairy-bread and Tang celebration.

There were many problems in 1969 and many injustices. There was a lot of fixing up to be done. But I do feel for modern kids. There is too much choice. And that is a tyranny in itself.

One of my volunteer job friends likes to needle me about my faith in a kind of good-natured way. We co-host an astronomy/space program and he thinks that he can throw science back at me to show that God cannot exist.

Quite apart from the fact that science has no interest (nor capacity) to prove or disprove anything of the sort, he is dealing with someone who believes in science. If science wants to show what an incredible Creator we have, then it can go right ahead, I retort.

What about the Sun brightening in about 600 million years and the threat to life? How about the collision with Andromeda in about 2 billion years? How could a loving God permit such a thing? 

Anyone who looks at the planet and the human condition and thinks that that will be an issue in 500 million years is kidding themselves. We won't be needing the sun or Andromeda to put paid to life on Earth. Humans in their brokenness are doing a very fine job and that is entirely on us.

My internet provider supplies me with a little supplementary box that allows me to access additional channels and content on my ageing TV. Of course, I have to rent it and the content costs a monthly fee, though nothing like what I used to pay with a previous provider. My needs are pretty simple, a few news channels, the capacity to watch football (soccer) highlights and such like.

One of the channels in my package is CNA, not be confused with the US network CNN. The former is an English-speaking Singapore-based news service. It is an excellent distraction from the awful Australian networks and has the added benefit of making you feel as if you are living overseas when you are not.

I raise this only by way of making a different point. I took a shine to one of the background music themes for the CNA world weather about three years ago - an ambient piece with an interesting chord progression - and yesterday, thanks to an app that cleverly tells you what the names of songs are, I found the artist and the original track.

I was reflecting upon this, how impossible this process would have been even twenty years ago, like finding the proverbial needle. But there it was, in only few seconds, in the palm of my hand. It's both remarkable and terrifying at the same time.

A Sydney daily recently published  a survey of attitudes towards the current Israel/Palestine conflict in the Gaza strip. It demonstrated that there was a wide gulf between Boomers who largely supported Israel and Millennials who were mostly sympathetic towards Palestinians. Of course, these are not cut and dried positions, for one can be supportive of Israel's right to defend itself and opposed to the bombing of civilian positions, even if this kind of thinking presents a logical dilemma.

I wondered why there was such a gulf, and while noting that young people do tend more readily to take on causes that promote social justice, climate action and so forth, there are plenty of reasons why older Australians should also be very active and vocal too.

I worry also that the issue of Israel's right to exist, denied by Hamas and other radical organisations, has been overlooked in any discussion. There is also the question of the passage of time - the Shoah is now an event as old as World War Two, something which looms large in my mind, but which may be fading from view in some quarters. It seems a long time ago.

I could go on about the rise of antisemitism and the absurd conspiracy theories that I have heard from perfectly reasonable people, but I won't give them the oxygen of publicity.

Having said all that, a two state solution in which both sides accept the right of the other to exist is the only real way forward. I have my doubts that Palestinian politicians will ever back down on this issue. But I continue to hope. A wider peace depends upon it.

 Keats once wrote,

'But when the melancholy fit shall fall

       Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

       And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,

       Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

             Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

       Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

               And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.'

This is the second verse from 'Ode to Melancholy' written by the poet in 1819. Keats doubtless had a melancholic disposition, or was prone to bouts of it, His prescription for the engulfing sadness that can accompany its arrival, 'like a weeping cloud', is to focus on the natural world, to pay attention to it. He further enjoins that we feed deeply upon the 'peerless eyes' of an angry raving mistress, something less obvious perhaps. I'll take nature anytime I think, though I certainly understand what he is getting at. 

While today the condition of melancholy is entirely associated with clinical depression, the literary genre that Keats wrote in would have seen it as something less serious, one associated with a cultural movement, dating back to the 15th century. In this iteration, melancholia was more the province of the artistic or literary soul, something connected with great intelligence. John Dowland, who wrote many fine madrigals in Elizabeth's court was 'always Dowland, always mourning' and Hamlet was better known as the melancholic Dane. It became fashionable to have a somewhat gloomy interior.

I tend towards a very mild melancholy, born largely out of years of contemplating the human condition. It has more in common with, say, Keats, though my prescriptions for its relief may differ. I agree that a good bushwalk will always lift the soul, no matter what. Still another aspect of this kind of non-clinical melancholia is the alienation induced by modernity, the consequences of which are all around us.

 

I don't know if its a matter of my own incompetence, or an issue with the brakes and weight ratios on my bike, but I came off my bike this morning and took chunks of skin off elbows and knees. I had had to brake sharply at a modest speed (about 15kms) because of a car coming around a blind spot near an underpass. It was no-ones fault but the bike came away suddenly from under me and I lay crumpled on the ground. It is hard to explain what happened except in terms of the brakes being wildly out of kilter and the bike itself having a fundamental design flaw regarding the wheel base and distribution of weight . Or I am just hopeless!

I had read somewhere that smaller size e-bikes did have a propensity for being unstable under certain conditions and this may be a case in point. My only defence against it is constant vigilance and caution, something that would likely take the joy out of riding. Maybe I'll have to consider a larger bike in the future.

It was H.G. Wells who first coined the phrase 'the war to end war' in his 1914 book of the same title. It seem unlikely that anyone but the most naïve optimist could possibly believe that any conflict, no matter how destructive, or supposedly cathartic, would somehow be the catalyst for an end to all wars forever more. Had Mr Wells not been so famous, the phrase (which later morphed into 'the war to end all wars') would probably have been quietly laid to rest.

Instead, The Great War, whose end we commemorate today, became bitter tinder for future conflicts right down to the present day. Germany was effectively denied the chance to become a functioning, prosperous democracy as a result of the short-sighted harshness of the Treaty of Versailles. The seeds for the growth of authoritarian rule were planted in 1919. The fall of The Ottoman Empire created the conditions for the Middle East conflicts we still see today, and in fact at this very moment. The defeat of Tsarist Russia ushered in the abysmal experiment that was the Soviet Union and we live with those consequences too. I could go on.

That in no way nullifies the importance of Remembrance Day. No matter what the folly or how we might wring our hands at the benightedness of the human condition, reflection upon this awful war should lead us to be grateful for those who died. It might also lead us to action to head off future conflicts, by whatever means at our disposal, to speak out against the beating of the drums and the shouting of slogans, to read aloud again the diaries and poems of the men who served as a warning. 

Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting', where soldiers from opposing sides 'meet' in death, ends,

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now.....'

Owen himself died on the Western Front before the poem was published.

'At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.'

Lest We Forget.

 My son Tom has finished Year 12, completing his final exam last week. Even though he doesn't expect his results to be spectacular, the very act of completing 13 years of schooling is a worthy end in itself. It is noteworthy, as I have often told him, that he is the only member of his friendship group from either primary school or high school to complete Year 12. While many of his friends have taken up apprenticeships, some have fallen by the wayside and are yet to take hold of life in any meaningful way, though I hope that they all do. There is nothing wrong with being a late bloomer, after all.

Last night was the SHS Formal at Penrith Lakes and Tom took his girlfriend Emma. Formal occasions like this are one of the few rites of passage that we have left. I can't remember my formal in 1976 all that well, except that I rented a suit from a hire shop in Chatswood and that the event itself was held in a room upstairs in the local Grace Brothers. Maybe it was called the Silver Room.

I haven't had a report back from Tom as yet though I'm sure it was fun and worthwhile with lots of, em, Kodak moments.

 'Writers from the Vault', the radio program I host, is always leading me in new directions. No matter what area of research I undertake, the subject of that research invariably throws up one or two writers I have never heard of. In the English language alone, there have been an untold number of people who have taken up a pen, or sat before a typewriter, to write something creative, something new, something that made it into print in either, newspapers, magazines or books.

Often as not, much of their work has fallen into obscurity. Some of it doesn't wear well; styles of writing and attitudes have changed. Things fall out of fashion. Moreover, the digital age and the decline of the printed paper word has added to the pile of books that sit mustering somewhere or are destined for landfill.

On the other hand, worthy online projects like the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg are reviving many of these old texts and making them available for anyone to read. They have both been a great blessing for my program and have given me hours and hours of material that I can use. I heartily thank all the volunteers who have made this possible. What a labour of love!

In the meantime, I look forward to running into more poets like Sara Teasdale to admire, or writers like Hyman Strunsky to ponder over. I didn't make that last name up, by the way. It's a gem, don't you think?

The cult of winning, of being extraordinary, of living a life somehow different, more elevated than the run-of-the-mill is destroying lives. People, who might have been happy settling for what is disparagingly called an 'ordinary' life, rarely find happiness in striving for things like celebrity, wealth, status and all the other related trappings of materialism.

For let there be no doubt about it, the anxiety created by the mad rush to be more clever, richer, better looking or famous than the average takes it toll, leading almost inevitably to disappointment, dissatisfaction, self-abuse, mental illness and even suicide. I have often wondered why conservatives of all stripes have so lauded a rapacious economic system that attacks the very things they love - stability, tradition, family, faith and so forth.

Of course, a few people do get there - that place they dreamed of and strove for - only to find it hollow and demanding more of the same, yet another chimera in the making. 

Just look at those who claim to have it all. No, really look, hard, and see if they aren't actually quite miserable beneath the doctored photos and posed-for moments. It is buyers-remorse writ large and you can't ever show the remorse, which would as good be an admission of failure.

It is such a waste of lives.

I gave the 'new' Beatles song, 'Now and Then' a few plays this morning. Digitally recovered and enhanced in extraordinary ways from a muddy-sounding cassette that Yoko gave to Paul decades ago, the song draws a final line under The Beatles output.

More properly understood as a Lennon piece (it would fit unobtrusively in say, 'Double Fantasy'), the other members have all made contributions, Harrison back in the 1990's, Starr and McCartney very recently. It makes for a pleasant, well-produced pop song. Hard to say, however, where it ranks in The Beatles pantheon.

But I do have to say, it's wonderful to hear Lennon's voice, clear as a bell, singing 'new' material. For this alone, it was worth releasing.

I don't have any subscriptions to streaming sports providers, so must content myself with the truncated highlights that are provided by some of these companies on YouTube. Watching 6 or 7 minutes of a 100 minute Premier League game hardly gives you more than a taste of the action. Even then, it's just the goals, goal-mouth action or any controversies that emerged, such as a sending off. You miss the flow and flavour of the game, so when pundits later provide their considered opinions of the very same game, it can seem like you haven't watched anything at all.

I suppose that I should be content that I can watch the brief bits and pieces that I do at all. Before the advent of the kind of services provided courtesy of the internet, the best one could hope for was packaged weekly shows on TV. You were beholden to whatever the content was that was chosen for you. Yet I still have fond memories of 'Match of the Day' and the other programs that brought the beautiful game into my living room.

Of course, we are spoilt for choice and there does remain a universe in which one day I am able to cull the providers I don't watch (but other family members do) and choose one that let's me watch whole football games from the UK. Maybe that day will come and maybe it won't but until then, it will simply be the scraps that fall from the table.

Here's what an AI chatbot thought on the topic (see previous post) in sonnet form. I am little concerned though about who is 'dining' on whom. If you are wondering about Dr Pangloss, he is a character from Voltaire's Candide, a philosopher who believed that we lived in the best of all possible worlds, irrespective of evidence to the contrary.

Oh, romance of technology and industry,

Eros of train, car, electric light, and more,

The skyscraper so tall, a sight to see,

And microchip, neural network, to explore.

The rocket soaring high, reaching the stars,

Split atom harnessing power divine,

Advancements made with the power to spar,

Conquering new heights, we shall dine.

For we are not victims, as some do claim,

Rather conquerors, we shall prevail,

Harness technology, let it take aim,

Humanity's future shall never derail.

Dr Pangloss spoke the truth so clear,

Our romance with technology, forever dear.

I sometimes make use of AI chatbots to amuse myself creating nonsense content such as sonnets on ridiculous themes or essays about absurd topics. And to be honest, they are not half bad at it, given they take less than a second to create what I asked for. Chatbots can only get better and better as programmers develop the software. They may, in fact become almost indistinguishable in terms of output from their human masters

AI is one of those divisive topics that has fanatical proponents in one corner, and naysayers in the other. The latter invariably trot out dystopian futures in which AI seizes control of the planet or decides to wipe out the human race. I suppose that both of those scenarios are within the realm of science-faction, as it were.

Silicon Valley tends towards the opposite with some genuinely Panglossian advocates of open-slather, let her rip positions. One such fellow, a billionaire who shall remain nameless, said in a recent paper ('The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', no less),

"We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom...we are not victims, we are conquerors."    

If this sounds a little familiar in tone, then it is. During and after WW1, a group who became known as Futurists advocated pretty much the same thing, faster cars, airplanes, technology, industry, youthfulness and so forth as a way forward for society. Futurists would be uber-excited about AI if they were around today. For them it was foot flat to the floor and hang the consequences.

I shouldn't need to point out to the writer of the above manifesto that the 'split atom', eros or otherwise, has lead to a point of human extinction unknown in the past and very real in the present. I suppose that billionaire's might be able to build extravagant bomb shelters to ride out the romance of radioactivity, or maybe not.

I do know that we are living in an age of extraordinary hubris, almost unrestrained by any sanction. And that makes it a very dangerous time indeed.

I rewatched Citizen Kane today, having recently bought the DVD. It is a long time between viewings, almost 40 years, but I had forgotten most of it (except the first impression made) and of course, the bits that get replayed whenever Welles or the the movie are topical. These days this is hardly ever, since a lot of time has passed and the huge influence the film made has become a part of the historic woodwork.

Still, it is extraordinary on so many levels that the moniker of the greatest movie of all time is well-earned and impervious, seemingly, to the march of the years and the huge improvements in technology. Theatrical it is, bold and inventive cinematically, and unravelled in a way that even Bertolt Brecht might have appreciated. 

And yet the story is fairly simple, and the conceit for telling it, who or what is 'rosebud', brilliantly direct, keeping the madness of Kane's life in perspective and within the bounds of narrative storytelling. I think that it will pay watching again soon and if the critics are correct, again and again.

We suppose, I think reasonably, that "way leads on to way", not because any poet or philosopher needs to tell us so, but because life demonstrates that it is so. It certainly seems to be the case, if we accept causation, say, or if we are simply keen observers of how things turn out for different people.

Ways, pathways, roads, tracks are inevitably the result of choices (although not always our own) that often as not take us into places that can be difficult to return from, or which alter things irrevocably. Sure, you can appear to go back and choose a way you should have taken, but something has changed.

If I choose, through poor effort, to do badly in my high school leaving exam I can never come back and replicate the experience exactly. If I repeat the year and do much better, or if I sit the exams years later in another place, something has still changed that cannot be altered. I am not the same person as I was and I am surrounded by different people. The job market or university vacancies and entry scores may be changed too. It is not the same road as before.

It is a subtle thing too, much like the will of God, which believers can sometimes discern  and other times not. Whichever path you tread, I hope it is a blessing.

 Ann and I went to Canberra over the weekend, staying in the adjacent township of Queanbeyan. The weather was lovely and the time passed quickly and pleasantly.

Our principal reason for going was to suss out the potential for moving one day to the ACT - selling in Hazelbrook and moving house. Being at the bottom end of the market tends to limit one's opportunities as a buyer, so we are firmly in the realm of the apartment or possibly the townhouse or villa.

Things have to go in the right direction for a move to transpire so its really only a proposal at this stage. But I'm happy to think about it and nudge things closer to its realisation if I can.

I have often told Tom that team sport is one of those places where one can learn to develop aspects of character and co-operation that are rarely learnt elsewhere, or in the same way. I played soccer for about ten seasons from the late 1960's, firstly for Forest, then Killarney Heights Soccer Club. The experience was important, indeed seminal for me, in many ways.

At best I was a very average team player and it took me a while to develop confidence, for which I can thank a couple of inspiring coaches. If you are lucky enough to have a good motivator as a coach, then you are lucky indeed. It can make the difference between being average and playing okay from week to week, or being average and turning in a blinder more often than your actual talent should permit.

My memories of at least part of my playing time are hazy at best but now and then I get a little shove and things hove into view again, as if just yesterday. And so it was that a photo posted on Australian Football History on FB, which showed a Manly-Warringah side from the late 60's and featuring none other than Gordon Nutt, came to my attention. Gordon was my coach somewhere in the '70's (I think the Under 16's), and he was one of those inspirations I mentioned as a coach. At the time I don't recall that we knew much about him, but he had played for Arsenal in the old English Division One before emigrating to Australia. Which is impressive.

Gordon is top row on the far left of the shot.

My mother rang this morning to tell me that I was born at St Luke's Hospital, Darlinghurst, at 3.20am, 65 years ago today. I invariably forget things like that. I've forgotten my blood type too, which my wife Ann says is a kind of capital crime. I think that if you squint hard enough, its possible to imagine that it might be so.

I am surprised to have made it thus far, for there was a time when I didn't think I would make it past thirty. But God had other plans for me and so, no matter how much time is left, I will try to unravel them as best I can.

Today Australians go to the polls to vote on a referendum, a First Nation's Voice to Parliament. The poll is likely to be heavily defeated in just about every state, unless a miracle is at hand. I do believe in miracles but don't know the Divine lie of the land on this one. I cannot project that far into the future, except by guessing.

It is sad that so much energy has been expended on misinformation. It is the age we live and some people are all too credulous. Sure, everyone has the right to vote yah or nay, but this should be on the basis of establish facts and not prejudiced fantasies.

Maybe some good will eventually come out of a no vote. It will not be clear in the short term, but perhaps it will increase activism in the longer term amongst First Nation's people and the determination to change things themselves. In the absence of a majority that is sympathetic and supportive, there may be no other way forward.

Scammers are getting better and better at what they do, for the most part. I come across them from time to time on Facebook, the only social media platform that I have any connection with. I have a lot of Asian 'friends' because of my wife, and its common to get requests from friends of acquaintances of family members, if you get my drift.

So it was a few days ago when a woman, fairly typical of those making FB requests, asked to be a friend. A mid-thirties Singaporean who lived in LA (and sometimes in Sydney, as it turned out) her profile seemed legit at first glance, though I didn't probe it deeply. 

But things took off from there rather too quickly, the first 'red flag', if you like. She was persistent about wanting to chat on FB Messenger. I took my time, suspecting a scammer. When we did engage, she gave a very plausible account of herself, seeming sincere and well-intentioned. Actually, quite likeable. But at the end of that first chat, she asked if I could go off FB to another social media app. Second red flag.

I politely refused the request, not being interested in having any more social media accounts and, to her credit, she accepted it graciously. But the second chat raised a third red flag, inconsistent English (a sign that a team was at work) and misnaming me 'Anthony' in one response.

She sent me a picture of her dinner later on, which was nice. I can't blame 'her' for trying. I just hope that that the dozens, perhaps hundreds of men out there she is chatting to are as cautious as I am.

 

Charles Sorely was a Scottish poet who died at the age of just 20 in 1915 during The Great War. He is less well known than other major poets like Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, though Robert Graves considered him one of the three best poets of the war. His works were collected after his death in a volume called 'Marlborough and Other Poems.'

I print this poem today not only because it is a fine sonnet, but also because war is much in the news, and as ever, rarely resolves anything satisfactorily. Soldiers will tell you so and civilians invariably pay the price in modern conflicts. 

 XXVII

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

The history of conflicts in the region of Palestine is as old as the oldest history records and comes down to the present day intact and with many unresolved issues. I saw a map that someone published this morning dating from 1947 and showing Palestine as a 'unified' state. Prior to that it had been a part of the Ottoman Empire - since the 16th Century - becoming a British protectorate only after WW1.

Any student of the history of this region will know that 'ownership' of the lands we know as Palestine has changed hands many times; at one stage or another being a part of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel and Judah, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Crusaders, a number of Muslim Caliphates, with the Ottomans bringing up the rear. It has rarely been in control of its own destiny.

So waving a map from 1947 is not going to cut it in terms of who should be doing what now. We are talking about the last five minutes after all, in a game of changed ownership and boundaries that is several thousand of years old.

I don't aim these remarks at the most recent Palestinian occupiers, who have a valid claim to live there, though hardly one that has a deep historical imprimatur. A two state solution seems like the only solution to me, but the current outbreak of war will set that back decades.

But I'd like everyone to truly give peace a chance.

The prevailing view is that humans are becoming more progressive, that practices, laws and relationships are now in a better state than at any time in the past. Modern medicine means we don't have to die from an infected cut, people aren't imprisoned for their beliefs or orientations, torture is not an aspect of capital punishment as once it was, psychiatry can explain a lot that was once just plain superstition, science can help us understand and even harness the natural world. You get the picture.

Sure, there is climate change and we still have nuclear weapons, but we will get around to doing something about that someday, as well as evening out the inequalities that we still see on planet earth. Its a rosy view all up, and certainly, partly true.

But the human condition remains the same, driven as it is by unseen impulses and desires. It would only take the collapse of the economic order, globalisation and whatever succeeds it, for old tribalism's to emerge again, for democracy to be swamped by the demand for strong, decisive leadership, for all the gains that progressives talk about to be swept away in a rush to meet the needs of survival.

I don't mean to be dystopian, but this awful prospect is not a fantasy novel. It is within the realm of the possible. As a Christian, however, I have faith that God knows the end from the beginning and is the best one to make sense of the human situation, with the best remedy. That doesn't mean the dystopia can't happen, and we all pray that it doesn't, but that we can only see the fragments, a few pieces, if you like, of the 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Those who can see more are often called prophets. The one who sees it all is God.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Palgrave's, Golden Treasury, first published in 1861. Thomas Palgrave originally conceived of the volume as a 'little collection' differing from others in its attempt to include 'all the best lyrical pieces and songs...by writers not living, and none besides the best.' No tall order that.

Palgrave appears to have been remarkably successful in his selection, for the Golden Treasury has never been out of print, as best I can tell, and has gone through a series of new editions, where editors after Palgrave have continued to add poets of their own era.

The tiny volume I bought yesterday, however, is a facsimile of the original 1861 edition, brought out to celebrate Macmillan's 180th anniversary as a publisher. It's a wonder that it has survived the times, particularly the ascent of modernism, which might have consigned Palgrave and his little work to the dustbin of irrelevance.

But quality will always out, never mind the naysayers.

The first day of the middle month of Spring. Hot. Windy. Dry. For someone living in the Blue Mountains, those three words are sufficient to conjure the potential risk that the day entails. It's not necessarily a conscious condition, but one that's creeps out at the corner of the eye, from a shadow cast at midday, or a high cloud that seems somewhat too dark.

Yes, the prefect storm, as the cliché goes. All we need is the ignition of an errant lightning strike, a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, or an idiot bent on destruction. The rest is left to the prevailing elements.

And then the highway is a sea of sirens.

 

I asked an AI chatbot to compose an entry about springtime in the style of Samuel Pepys. Here is what it wrote:

It is a glorious day in London as springtime has finally arrived. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the air is filled with the sweet scent of fresh blooms. After enduring the harsh winter, it is such a relief to experience such a rejuvenating season once more.

 As I walked through the cobblestone streets of London, I couldn't help but notice the greenery that has begun to blossom around me. The trees, which were once bare, are now adorned with vibrant leaves once more. The fields outside of the city are covered with colourful wildflowers and the sound of buzzing bees is a constant reminder of the abundance of life that spring brings.

 Yesterday, I took a stroll in the park with my wife and it was delightful to observe the lively atmosphere. Children skipping, dogs running around, and couples lounging on the grass, it was a welcome sight to see after the dormant season of winter.

 As I sit now at my desk writing, the breeze blowing through the window fills my room with the scent of blooming flowers and the distant sound of chirping birds. It is a reminder of the beauty that nature holds and how springtime brings a new hope and zest for life.

 I am grateful to experience another spring season and look forward to witnessing the change it brings.

 

Yours truly,

 Samuel Pepys

I like to give money to charities. There are a lot of things I can't do as a volunteer, by dint of my age and other restrictions, but I can pay regular sums to a range of charitable organisations. I like to spread it out across a range of needs and so have a dozen or so places that get a small boost from me. I have worked it out so that if I give to a different cause weekly, then everyone gets something every three months or so.

It's not that I have a lot to spare but there is always room to give and its good for your wellbeing as well as for someone else, someone you have never met before. Government can't take care of everything - in fact it's not especially good at helping the poor - so charities of various stripes are important in taking up that role. They provide a far more personal face.

If I have a gripe about the 'system', the way charities request and collect money, its that they often seem tone deaf to the capacity of those already giving. Phone calls, mailouts, shopping kiosk salespeople and the like are unrelenting in trying to squeeze another drop out of people already pulling their weight. It is morally questionable, never mind the need.

I know of at least one person who stopped giving altogether because of the constant harassment to give more. That won't happen to me - I have become very firm with my boundaries - but I can understand the impulse.

Charities! - never mind what marketing tells you, get off the backs of the givers and find ways to reach those, who, with a little gentle persuasion and a ton of guilt, might find a way to be generous themselves.

I just completed a short online 'snap poll' about the upcoming referendum. In doing so it brought up all the things I don't like about my country. The good still outweighs the bad by a long shot but I am reminded, in the debacle that has passed for a reasonable discussion, of how foolish, ill-informed  and plain ignorant a sizeable number of Australians are.

I am also reminded of the cynicism of many of the pundits and political figures who would rather wreck a simple, symbolic addition to the Constitution (ask the constitutional experts if you don't believe me) in favour of a lie-infested slanging match. Without a doubt, there is also an element of racism.

I am tired of them and the whole process. As with the conspiracy theorists and their ludicrous freight of nonsense, I withdraw my attention. Why waste time trying to argue for justice and decency? These people are not listening.

I'm not sure what may have been added to tap water, but recently there has been a spate of car burnings - cars stolen, then set alight a short time later. I don't know if there are movies that model this kind of stupidity, nor whether social media has a part to play.

But burning things, especially cars, is very much in vogue. Sure, this is clearly an attempt to defeat forensics, to nullify the tell-tale way people can leave evidence at the scene of a crime. Removing the genetic fingerprints.

In his poem, The Burning Truck, Les Murray describes how the town's 'wild boys' chase a driverless burning truck through the streets,

'And as they followed, cheering, on it crept,
windshield melting now, canopy-frame a cage
torn by gorillas of flame, and it kept on
over the tramlines, past the church, on past
the last lit windows, and then out of the world
with its disciples.'

I don't think the current crop of 'wild boys' would have read Murray, though I could be wrong.

Even though I live in a small town in a national park, no day is free from artificially produced sound. Sirens on the highway, lawn mowers, whipper snippers and leaf blowers, cars with dodgy exhausts, hammering, a medley of power tools, chain saws and mulchers, school bells and PA systems, car horns and pulsing stereos, to name but a few, are daily present in varying forms, duration and volume.

And it is really getting worse. When I first moved here 30 years ago, you might have lain across the road for twenty minutes before a car dawdled along. It was eerily quiet then compared to where I had come from in Sydney.

'Progress,' I hear you say.

I don't think it's that.

 'For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, the more knowledge, the more grief.'  Eccles. 1:18

It might seem odd that greater wisdom, achieved through the pursuit of knowledge, should lead to sorrow. After all, it was customary to brag about one's academic achievements, show off a large library, and have all the best quips for general conversation. This was considered to be pleasurable.

This is not the kind of knowledge that the writer of Ecclesiastes (often attributed to King Solomon) means when he talks about wisdom gained through knowledge. You can be the best read person on the planet and still lack wisdom. You might have a string of PhD's next to your name and have no insight into anything other than your subject areas and even there, little beyond the accumulated facts and dry analyses. 

This kind of wisdom is a result of a greater understanding of the human condition. It can come through conventional study, of course. An historian might lurch into deeper grief as a result of the realisation that the long cycles of history seem to be repeating themselves, largely due to the unchanging flaws in human nature.

A test of durable wisdom is apparent in those people who see past the present fashions, accept the foibles, would love to see change but realise that a radical alteration to circumstances is not to be found in human endeavour, however determined.

I have had my electric bike for almost two and a half years now and, apart form the regular hassle with disc brakes and the odd puncture, have nothing to complain about. It brings great, if undeserved, joy.

But oddly enough, yesterday, it began to make a regular beeping sound. At first I thought it was a particular bird tweet, then realised that the same bird had to be stationed in every second bush that I passed, all about five seconds apart, and very much in sync with each other. I dismissed this theory and realised that it was was my bike that was emitting the sound.

Now I knew already that e-bikes made in China had to beep by law, due to the hazard they might present in an urban environment. This was commonly at speeds of 15kms and over. But my bike had been re-gigged (obviously) to eliminate the sound before I had bought it.

It is strange indeed that it has taken 30 months for this feature to mysteriously re-appear. It is a fairly annoying sound and disabling it means fiddling about with screw drivers and boxes and wires in awkward places. I want to disable the beep, not my bike. I'll give it some thought.

 Ex Libris

A volume of verse
With a library stamp,
The dates of borrowings,
Marks and imaginings,
And the brutal cross-hatch
Of its cancelling,
A literary execution,
One final unshelving,
But now, in my hands.
 
Gingerly I turn each page,
Not to let the sound,
Nor to let the touch,

The silent imprimatur
Of each memory, of thought
And place and age,
Escape from the leaves.
Here, a coffee ring
Stamped on 'summertime',
There, an underline by,
‘Why ask for more?’
And then another,
A faded underscore,
With just, ‘Who grieves?’
I linger on the most worn,
Where a broken spine,
Or fragment torn,
Show an unexpected halt.
And almost magically,
I take the place
Of the one before,
Poring over words
Like a little child,
Alone and standing,
Without a single notion,
By a shining crack,
In a cellar door.

I got my guitar serviced and re-strung a couple of months ago and have been trying to press it into use again as regularly as I can. The new strings make it sound much better than I had anticipated and playing it again can be a real joy.

Looking back over the songs I used to play at the Anglicare café in Mt Druitt some years ago, many are no longer of interest to me. Maybe I played them too often, or maybe I was just compelled to pander to the expectations of my audience, but there are some that will never be sung again. At least, not by me.  

So I'm looking around, hoping to find tunes I like, that I can play, that I can sing.

 Ann and I celebrate our 7th Wedding Anniversary today. We married in the back yard of a friend's house, with my choir director, Suzanne, as our celebrant. Ann dressed in traditional Thai garb and I just wore a black suit. It was a nice quiet day, on the whole.

And we are still here. Seven years is not such a long time, I know but inter-cultural marriages are a challenge. Our marriage remains a challenge but one well worth accepting and conquering. I hope I can say the same thing in another seven years time!

Here is a sonnet by one of my favourite poets to celebrate the day.

The First Day    Christina Rossetti

I wish I could remember that first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me,

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or Winter for aught I can say;

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it, such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know! 

Resentment is one of the most corrosive and dangerous of emotions. It can shorten your life, make your actual life a misery and lead to all manner of outbursts, arguments, slander and even murder.

Resentment can come as a result of a real personal affront or injury, or an imaginary one. In many cases, offence is taken where no intention nor knowledge of the fact was known by the 'offender.' But it looms large in the thoughts and emotions of the one offended.

I think the seeds of a resentful nature are sown in childhood, where a unsafe or unloving environment can generate low self-esteem or a fearful world view. The teenage years are particularly unforgiving - kids can be very mean to each other and are quick to punish difference or highlight any weakness. Heaven only knows how much worse it is now as a result of that benighted influence of social media.

I know resentment first hand and struggle with it often. Writing about it helps, thinking rationally helps and prayer always helps. Ultimately, it is about forgiving, understanding and casting-off that which only harms ourselves and barely touches the perceived offender.

At Home   Christina Rossetti.

When I was dead, my spirit turned
To seek the much-frequented house:
I passed the door, and saw my friends
Feasting beneath green orange boughs;
From hand to hand they pushed the wine,
They sucked the pulp of plum and peach;
They sang, they jested, and they laughed,
For each was loved of each.
 
I listened to their honest chat:
Said one: 'To-morrow we shall be
Plod plod along the featureless sands
And coasting miles and miles of sea.'
Said one: 'Before the turn of tide
We will achieve the eyrie-seat.'
Said one: 'To-morrow shall be like
To-day, but much more sweet.'
 
'To-morrow,' said they, strong with hope,
And dwelt upon the pleasant way:
'To-morrow,' cried they one and all,
While no one spoke of yesterday.
Their life stood full at blessed noon;
I, only I, had passed away:
'To-morrow and to-day,' they cried;
I was of yesterday.
 
I shivered comfortless, but cast
No chill across the tablecloth;
I all-forgotten shivered, sad
To stay and yet to part how loth:
I passed from the familiar room,
I who from love had passed away,
Like the remembrance of a guest
That tarrieth but a day.

Some might regard it as a little maudlin, but imagining yourself in the past tense might have some advantages in the present. Not unlike Scrooge on his supernatural contemplation of his possible future, though without the moralising, Rosetti considers how her friends and family, those close to her, might get on when she gone.

In contrasting the joy they feel at what pleasures they will encounter 'tomorrow', for they have agency, with her entrapment in 'yesterday', she highlights the contradictions of love and loss. Life must go on surely, and suits of woe cannot always be worn, even where the loss is quite recent.

Another take on this poem I have read is that Rosetti, who was a deeply devotional Christian, considers the life that she is required to 'sacrifice' in order to please God. She must give up some pleasures in order to love God, which is a different kind of joy.

I'm not sure about this interpretation. If you read Rosetti's religious verse, she seems quite certain in her faith, though acutely aware of her shortcomings. As I said before, belief is much harder than not believing. It is so much easier to just let things slide.

The Hoarder

The fire burnt you out,

You and your earthly trove,

In madness the curated lot,

The sundry items that you strove

To stack and set and lay just right,

And ageing pieces got,

All - the brooding flames engorged,

A private Armageddon wrought

In the lodgings of your mind.

Next day, the ancient frame

Stood curious in a gibbet light,

Indifferent to your fought-for,

Seared remains of friends,

For if the ends

Do matter in such a lament,

In your limitless game,

Though we see not the thread,

Nor the way the mind is bent,

We should bear such gifts,

And so, on coming together,

Float them down,

Your ashen river.

Ah, the first official day of Spring, here in the Southern Hemisphere! It's sunny, with a slightly chilly breeze, which prompts the sensible person to don a pullover or hoodie or suchlike. The washing is dancing on the line and most birds are convinced that the season is in full swing. 

Yesterday I watched a bower bird dancing in front of his impressive pile of twigs (the bower) with a confidence that a mate would shortly arrive. The day before that, I was swooped by my first magpie. Now that is early!

To segue shamelessly, I have been compiling coming episodes of my pre-recorded 2RPH show, 'Writers from the Vault', and find that with every path into literature I take, multiple paths open up, each as inviting as the first. The other day I stumbled on a review of a short W.H. Davies poem, 'School's Out', whose way led onto other ways.

I mean, I began to muse on my own school days, particularly primary school, since beyond that it becomes rather dark. But first, here's the Davies poem,

Girls scream,

    Boys shout;

Dog's bark,

    School's out.

Cat's run,

    Horses shy;

Into trees,

    Birds fly.

Babes wake,

   Open-eyed;

If they can,

   Tramps hide,

Old Man,

   Hobble home;

Merry mites,

   Welcome.

I don't specifically recall any horses, babes or tramps, but I can identify with the joy with the final bell that signalled that the summer holidays had begun. For kids it was an especially wonderful time, with Christmas just around the corner and the long, long idyll that stretched into and beyond the new year, a time of bike riding, hot sand beaches and cricket in the yard. Call it halcyon if you will, but we were young. It still resonates with me today.

The above poem had an attendant photograph, simply labelled 'School's Out in 1931.' What would these boys have to say now if they could? Most, if not all, are long gone. Some would have fallen in World War 2. But here, in this old snap, they do look happy, don't you think?

Photo courtesy 'The Guardian.'

My friend Da who lives across the road asked me, last night, to pray for a man who was in critical condition in a hospital in the UK. Scant were the details but pray I did. Alas, he passed away in the night, having given his life to save another's.

I have prayed before for God to spare the life of a person in similar circumstances, one just as desperate really, though in this case, someone much younger. Doctors were about to turn off the life support, the family had been readied for the worst. But she recovered remarkably and with her memory intact. The hospital was dumbfounded. There was no rational explanation.

I cannot know the ways that God answers prayer, nor how its fits in with his all-knowingness. If you know the end from the beginning, then the causes and effects of everything can be discerned in advance and with it, supreme clarity.

We stumble in the fog, but hold on to the light of  faith. In as much as some critics call belief a crutch, they are sorely wrong. It takes far more courage to believe, than not.

For now, at least, we see only, 'through a glass, darkly.'

 Australia has a referendum, the date of which will be shortly announced for a First Nation's Voice to parliament. It recognises Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples as being the first folks here, then establishes a body that will advise the parliament on relevant. matters. The latter has no power to legislate, hold up legislation or interfere in the parliamentary process. Here is the unabridged text of the proposed change to the Australian constitution. (Chapter 9, 129)

Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

1. there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
2. the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
3. the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”

It should be fairly straight forward, and a matter of simple justice, that the vote is passed comfortably. Alas, the debate has fallen amongst the worst of voices, the hectoring, the foolish and dare I say it, a residual racist rump. I fear that it will go down and be yet another scar on this nation's attempt to come to terms with its past.

I hope that I am wrong and that the better angels prevail.

Landing a craft safely on the Moon is much harder than one might expect. There have been a number of crash landings recently, with the Russian Lunar 25 being the most recent example - only yesterday. India, Israel and Japan have also had landers that suffered similar fates over the past few years.

Space is difficult. It is dangerous and uncompromising. Despite leaps in technology since the Apollo missions, we are learning just how much a tiny miscalculation can affect an entire project. Voyager 2, which has pushed out to edge of our solar system since its launch in the 1970's, may be lost to us as a result of a faulty command signal from Earth. NASA is scrambling efforts to repair the bungle.

Of course, none of these missions are manned. Space is especially toxic to biological life forms, so robotic expeditions are de rigueur for the time being. It's romantic and exciting to think of humans aboard vessels to the Moon and Mars, but the risks are great and the payoff not necessarily worth it. AI is coming along rapidly and most of the decisions astronauts make will be replicated by machines.

 Lately I have been reading a few articles that deal with the potential for the collapse of human civilisation. Such speculation, based upon the methodical collection of data and computer modelling, goes back to the 1970's. It is not based upon any one event (such a climate change), but the confluence of a series of events that have predictable though likely unforeseen consequences too.

In the most optimistic evaluation, humans adapt to the warming climate, get a handle on population growth, are able to increase the yield of food production and throw technological advances at sundry and other problems. We avoid nuclear and biological war, overly fatal pestilences and an AI takeover. This is indeed optimistic.

All other potential outcomes are downhill from there, from complete extinction to a return to a kind of stone age existence. Most writers think, as I do too, that the gravity of the situation is not understood and may never be understood, even when the writing is plainly on the wall. Denial is a powerful psychological phenomena and we are very good at self-deception.

I don't talk about this with the teenagers because I don't want them to fall into a torpor of 'why botherism.' Why crush them just when they are getting started?

As for me, I can see no solution to what is ultimately a problem of the human condition, except in God alone. Religion is declining at a time when a powerful spiritual awakening is needed, but very few believe that anyway. For my family, I take up this burden as best I can.

Today is a day of high winds. I cut short my ride but not before dodging fallen garbage bins and gusts that felt like the shove of an invisible giant. Even my daily walk was challenging, with dust. leaves and stray papers assaulting me from all angles. 

There are things about windy days that I really like though. There is a constant jostling of things, rattling of windows, pell-mell of funnel and rush. Robert Frost, in Now Close The Windows, wrote,

'Now close the windows and hush all the fields:

If the trees must let them silently toss;

No bird is singing now, and if there is,

Be it my loss'

for Frost craves a silence and yet, wants to 'see all wind-stirred.'

I can hear the caterwauling through my windows, never mind them being closed.

Further to matters of poetry, I read today at the BBC the Belarus is banning some poems from the 19th Century because they are extremist. In the spite of the fragility of that nation's dictator, Heinrich Comb-Over (surely Alexander Lukashenko) I will publish the details. Just so anyone who wants to can read them.

Vincent Dunin-Martsinkevich's,  'The Winds are Floating' and 'Conversation of an Elderly Man'

Pass them on.

 Further to my previous post, and to clarify, not all banks are as greedy and incompetent as the one in my last post. Smaller banks tend to have better service and are less obsessed with the entitlements of the CEO or how large the annual profit increase is.

The Teachers Mutual Bank(TMB) is one such example - my bank for the past 40 years. Loans have never been a problem, service levels are high, things can be fixed, people know what they are talking about.

They were able to cancel my stolen card (see previous post) and issue a new card within days as well as provide any backup I needed. They surmised the problems with the ATM that took my card and the poor level of service I got when trying to get help. I think they had heard the same story a few times before.

That's my shout out for the TMB. Please don't change.

It is a pillar of orthodoxy that banks, being an essential part of the capitalist economy, cannot be allowed to fail. No matter what level of mendacity or risky behaviour a bank might indulge in, no matter who else is hurt in the process, banks must be protected from themselves with large wads of public money should the occasion call for it. It is not hard to see where this might lead, such as if a parent were to continue to buy one new car after another, only for their teenage son or daughter to write each one off and then ask for just one more.

Last week one of Australia's leading banks announced a massive profit. I think the word used in some quarters was 'obscene'. The CEO was dutifully wheeled out to make conciliatory noises about helping the needy or those at risk of losing their homes, no doubt to gales of laughter from board members.

Yesterday this same bank seized my ATM card as I was trying to make a withdrawal. I inserted the card, the machine took it, then decided to go 'Out of Service.' The theft complete I dialled the help line on the ATM screen only to find that this bank had a different concept of help, that being 'no help at all.' The young man who took my call could not answer any of my perfectly reasonable questions (eg. 'If the machine comes online again, will it spit out my card.') He didn't know this and he didn't know that and neither did his supervisors. The help line did not know how to help, under any circumstances. The bank with the massively bloated profits could not even run a phone assistance line about its own machines.

Next time, let's just let them fail, and see what happens. Maybe what rises from the ashes will actually provide a genuine service.

Today I find myself in the enviable, or unenviable, position of having two pre-recorded programs running on the same day at 2RPH. My final episode of The New Statesman airs at 9.30pm, while my new show, Writers from the Vault gets its first outing at the earlier time of 3pm.

This is purely a coincidence as a result of the new programming schedule which came out on Monday and nothing at all to do with my competence or otherwise. As I said earlier, creating and presenting a new show such as Writers from the Vault can be a challenge and is certainly time-consuming. It remains to be seen whether a I have the stamina for the long haul, though I hope that I do.

Ultimately, it not about me, but the listeners who rely on the station for their daily news and entertainment. That is always worth remembering.

 A couple of years ago, Venice banned giant cruise ships from docking inside the city. I had no idea of the problem ( I don't recall any cruise ships in the Grand Canal on visits there) but having seen a few photos, I can only applaud the decision. They are totally out of scale with the architecture and completely inappropriate in any circumstance. Gone are the days of the elegant liner, alas.

This is but one of the many symptoms of the over-tourism which threatens to engulf famous or desirable destinations. Many more people are now well enough off to travel, which is both right and fair, but with it has come a problem of overcrowding that turns a joy or nascent discovery into a series of long queues, over and over again. If you start with an airport wait, you can continue in a seeming endless number of lines - through another queue in customs, then at the Louvre, then at the Eiffel Tower and everything inside and in between. It can't be fun seeing the backs of people's heads most of your trip.

There is a problem though. As a citizen of a Western country, it has been my privilege to be able to travel largely as a result of the affluence of my country. My twin self in a developing had no such opportunity. So I am beholden to say, for all who can travel, please do, it is your right to do so, as it was mine.

But what to do about over-tourism, I have no idea.

(Photo courtesy, Ken Fong)

In my meanderings through old books, magazines and newspapers, in search of material for the new program, I occasionally (no, actually quite often) encounter what would, by today's standards, be offensive material. I mean, stuff that is racist, sexist or generally just off. 

It can pull you up quite short even when you are half expecting it. I won't be repeating anything I have found here, nor laying blame for its existence. I am not even prepared to condemn the authors. They wrote in a different era, when attitudes were very different and most people would not have blinked to hear them said or written. That is the context. Full stop.

I know that there is a small, tediously vocal group who want to stamp on the grave of these long-dead folk. They appear to have no understanding of history or social context, but they do have big mouths and like shouting.

Leave people from the past alone please. Try to get past your first thought to a greater understanding (after all, you would probably have held the same views yourself if you were born then), stop typing, talking, shouting, just for a while. Enough.

Putting together an entirely new show for 2RPH has proved to be a far more challenging task than I had thought it would be. I knew it was likely to be hard. Almost all of the other pre-recorded programs are based on readings from existing magazines or news sources - Time Magazine, The Economist, Women's Day, Frankie and so forth, are essentially straight reading tasks. Sure, there is a selection involved, but you could, if you wanted to, turn to the first article, begin reading and just keep going until the allotted time was up.

My new show, Writers from the Vault (a literary hurdy-gurdy), is based upon no just single source, but runs the gamut of the Western literary canon (and beyond!), archived magazines and newspapers and any books I deem relevant. So I choose the whole lot from a vast and seemingly endless trove of information.

Easy, you might say. But it isn't. I am spoilt for choice to such an extent that the curating becomes almost a nightmare. Where to start, where to end, what thematic links, how much prose to poetry and so forth. Just writing about the process is making my head spin.

I think the principle I will follow is this - keep it simple stupid! Some longer readings from fiction, some poems here and there, the odd review and letter, something quirky, a spot of bio. 

As always, only time will tell.

The improvement in and hype surrounding AI systems has begun to lead to a panic of sorts. Though not unexpected in a era of crisis (the panic I mean), AI is seen as a potential destroyer of the human race.

It is not hard to see how this could come about. Put AI super brains to work on some of the problems that the world faces, ostensibly to find solutions, and you might get in trouble. It's that pesky little law of unintended consequences.

For example, the question, 'How can we bring climate change under control?' could go either way. On the one hand, AI might come up with some brilliant ways of mitigating climate change, or, considering the question from other angles, might conclude that since humans are responsible for what's happening, they need to be eradicated.

Building in safeguards such a prime directives and ways of 'turning off' the AI system may be possible. Then again, a super intelligence is likely to have taken those things into consideration, and headed them off in ways that we can only imagine.

It is unseasonably warm for winter in July. Even though we are past the deepest part of winter, there is no way that I should be sporting a t-shirt in the back yard, nor riding my bike with just a hoodie for an overcoat. Anecdotal evidence is usually not good evidence, but allied with the concerning weather in the northern hemisphere, it carries greater weight.

It may be too late for the human experiment to be salvaged, I don't know. As a Christian I have hopes beyond what we perceive with our senses, or comprehend with our minds. That same hope is also a spur to action - you cannot help the needy, the homeless or the oppressed if you are not interested in the stewardship of the planet. They will be the first affected by the decline of our environment.

There are many good people working towards a better outcome, but are there enough? And where is the time going?

The victory of sekiwake Hoshoryuo over rank-and-filer Hokotofuji yesterday to win his first Emperor's Cup may usher in a new era. Hoshoryu is the nephew of legendary champion Asashoryu so he has some pedigree in the sport.

His win was made a little easier (though still a great achievement) by the absence, partial or complete, of  the three rikishi in the top two tiers. Given the nature of sumo, injuries occur quite often though some wrestlers are more prone than others.

Having seen both the great Asashoryu and the soon-to-be-great Hakuho at the Osaka tourney way back in the 2006, I think it is entirely possible that Hoshoryu could be headed for the top rank, once he has proved himself as ozeki. We all expect him to be promoted to that rank shortly.