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.'