The 'Road to Emmaus' is an incident related by Luke in the Gospel that bears his name, where Jesus appears to two disciples who are travelling from Jerusalem to Emmaus, following the tumultuous events of the the days before. It is a wonderful story, the risen Christ unrecognised by the men until some time later that day, when over dinner, they suddenly realise who he is.

I wanted to write a poem about it but many others, including Denise Levertov, have already done so. In the case of Levertov, she has chosen a remarkable painting by Velazquez as the inspiration for the poem. I had thought to do so too, but there you are, too late! The poem is called 'Servant Girl at Emmaus.' The painting below is a precious moment of recognition, recorded forever.

She listens, listens, holding her breath.
Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once,
across the crowd, as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her?
Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely that face—?
The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumoured now some women had seen this morning,
alive?
Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen,
absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

 When I lived and worked in Japan, I encountered lots of strange, incoherent, often mangled English. Most of this was splayed across t-shirts and gift bags, though sometimes on shop signs or giving directions or information. It was fun to collect it and send samples home in newsletters.

Later I discovered the wonderful Engrish.com, where folks can post their tortured or amusing English finds. I include two examples below. There is not a lot of care taken to get these kinds of messages or signage correct and for a a good reason. It doesn't matter. English is present to give cache or prestige to whatever it it adorns. You can argue the toss as to whether this is a good idea or not. 

In cases where a translation is provided as a direction or warning, it's clear that the creator could have asked one of the thousands of English teachers who live and work in East and South-East Asia. But it seems never to have happened. 

This phenomenon has spread to the West with the continued immigration from the region. In Hazelbrook, our local Korean-run patisserie is called 'Sincerely Cake.' Yesterday, I passed a Thai dessert café in the city named 'Sweet Monster.' More power to these cute names!

Readers of this blog (surely no-one: ed.) will know that I have long weighed in against the dangers of pornography. The dangers are not universally applicable but there is sufficient clinical evidence (as well as that garnered in criminal cases) that a sizable minority of men (and perhaps women too) become obsessed, even addicted to using pornography.

A smaller minority again go on to viewing harder and harder pornography, going way beyond what they would possibly imagined they might when they first started their unfortunate journey. And the road gets even worse for yet another subset of this group, who find themselves looking at illegal material, such as bestiality or child abuse pictures and videos. They have truly reached the bottom of the barrel and descended into depravity.

Only today, a world-wide child abuse ring has been exposed in which men, such as described above, actually filmed themselves as they viewed this deplorable content, which they then went on to share with other users. Who could fathom why they would do such a thing? The fact that they have put themselves at such a risk of disclosure and disgrace only goes to show the powerful hold these images have. The drives created seem to override all moral sensibility, no consideration for the poor children abused, no recognition of the consequences.

And you know, there are always consequences, whether you are caught or not, and the fall is very hard indeed. I am not pointing the finger or wringing my hands, for to sit in judgement is foolishness. But if you are reading this and you are somewhere on that journey, the best time to take stock and stop, is now.

In relation to my previous post about online romance scams, I meant no disrespect to those who have found themselves inadvertently involved in one. Generally speaking, scammers come looking for you and may hit up hundreds of potential marks with all manner of clever ways of drawing one in and overcoming scepticism in their kitbags.

The truth is, once someone is falling in love with their online 'date', the capacity for clear thinking and caution is clouded, as emotions become increasingly dominant. If you think someone is genuine then you will think and act as if they were. Very few people are exempt and it behoves us not to ridicule those who fall for the con. There but for the grace of God...

I was reading Proverbs 4 this morning and came across this sage advice:

'Above all, guard your heart,

For everything you do flows from it.' 4:23

It is worth reflecting upon what it means to 'guard your heart' and where not guarding it might lead. The modern world makes this all the more urgent as more and more people are trapped in loneliness with many looking for an easy escape, that right person, that 'if only' situation, a release from weariness. Online scammers prey upon such people and ruthlessly strip them of their dignity and their money. Be careful and guard your heart.

Periodically I get friend requests on FB from unlikely sources. These are not friends of friends or persons somehow related to content or page searches, such as pages that I follow or have liked. They are out-of-the-blue requests and they are exclusively from young, pretty women who just happen to want to be my friend. Occasionally they pop up as unsolicited texts on messenger, sometimes masquerading as 'mistakes', but hey, 'why don't we chat anyway?'

They are all identity frauds and the goal of the people behind these stolen photos and made-up profiles is to make money. They usually target middle-aged men (or older) and doubtless they have some success. I have watched a few expose programs on Youtube in which men and women who should know better throw hundreds and thousands of dollars at beautiful young things who promise love or validation.

When it comes to romantic liaisons online, the old rule applies here too - if it's seems to good to be true then it surely isn't true. But there are a lot of lonely people and some are naïve to the tactics of these scam artists. So here are a few red flags just in case.

1. You are contacted by a beautiful stranger out of the blue.

2. Their photos are all of a type and don't reflect a lived life.

3. They have few friends and their relationships seem very shallow.

4. They quickly fall in love with you.

5. They begin asking for money for urgent bills, sickness in the family etc

6. They cannot do video chats, only text messages or email.

7. There may be inconsistencies in their narrative or their memory of your chat history since they are       probably talking to a number of people.

8. If an actual live meeting is planned, they always have an excuse for not attending.

Most recently, a cryptocurrency scam has emerged. The MO is pretty much the same, but rather than ask for sums of money as in point 5, they will ask you to invest in crypto because an uncle or brother or the like has 'inside information.' The entire thing, including all the websites you are lead to, are completely fake. This scam is colloquially known as 'pig butchering.'

Without intending to give any more oxygen to the frenzy that surrounds one T. Swift's arrival in Australia, I have just begun to listen to her work. I want to find out what its all about - the queues, the stories of ticket heartbreak, the media documenting of her every move.

I'll start with the most recent album and work backwards. Only then can I reasonably offer a critique, should one be needed. There is little point in dismissing something that you are almost entirely ignorant of.

About a decade ago I began an earnest study of Chinese dynastic history. It was so vast a topic that at best I could only undertake a survey. I remember enough to be able to talk generally about trends and significant events, but most of the Emperors and their achievements are forgotten.

Not so the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified (by force) the Chinese heartland into a state that is recognisable today. He was ruthless and ambitious and somewhat paranoid, burning books and burying scholars alive. He was also keen on living forever and combed the Empire for potions that would give him a longer, perhaps eternal life. He even dispatched an expedition in search of the fabled Penglai Mountain. It never returned, perhaps fearing the wrath that failure would incur. As an ironic post-script to this, Qin Shi Huang died at age 49, possibly from mercury poisoning ingested in elixirs created by court alchemists.

The desire for eternal life is embedded in numerous myths in the Greek world and also stories in the modern, notably Wilde's Dorian Gray. We live in an age in which youth is lionised and growing old to be avoided assiduously by all manner of techniques. I think that the decline of faith has lead to an increasing fear of death and an obsession with putting off the evil moment.

I don't blame anyone for this, for if you don't believe in an afterlife, then you are going to cling to every breath. But things can be taken too far. I read today about a tech millionaire (what a surprise!) who is employing a huge range of lifestyle and medicinal interventions (such as blood transfusions from his son and monthly colonoscopies) in an attempt to hold off the inevitable. Apart from the self-importance and narcissism that are key aspects of this audacious folly, there is a cold, hard failure to live life as it is and not as a fairy-tale might have it be.

The tech millionaire has the money and doubtless some time on his side. But we are dust ultimately, and to that we shall return.

'What's in Space?', the program I curate and present with K.McCarron for 2RPH, had its first anniversary last week. That is 26 episodes, one each fortnight, over the course of the last 12 months. It's a bit of an achievement because you have to keep at it, the initial enthusiasm does wear off and then the considerable slog begins. But I think we turn out a good program and we are now heard Australia-wide.

This was just the beginning for Keith and me, because, in addition to the space show, we both went on to host 'The New Statesman.' Later, I surrendered the latter to create a brand new program, 'Writers from the Vault', which being original, takes up a lot of time. I am always on the look out for material for future episodes. But I feel at home with a literary show, more than anything else.

I often think about how far the radio waves from our programs might have travelled. Notwithstanding the fact that such waves degrade over distance, a gigantic and supersensitive receiver might just be able to hear our first space show somewhere between the Kuyper Belt and the Oort Cloud - about one light year away. That means that the waves have passed Pluto, all the known objects in the Kuyper Belt and are being 'received' in that mysterious icy cloud that is thought to exist between 2,000 and 5,000 AUs from the Sun.

I find that very humbling, no matter that no-one is listening. Here is a simple chart courtesy of NASA that shows some of these distances, beyond the first light year. Next stop Proxima Centauri!

Lost in Space

'If you look hard in that bed,
You'll see some idle strands of hair, '

She smiled drily then, for

I said this more in jest,

Or as a foolish dare.

We were deep in talk,

About endings and thus, this

Being a walk to universe end,

Was an obscure speculation -

Ramblings on star death,

Plotting the final photon,

The kind of thing where,

You have to catch your breath

For fear you lose your mind.

My clumsy segue was the kind

That often distracted me,

Equating that final heat death

With another demise,

That being mine,

And the limp heredity

Discarded in the grass

A paling memento mori, for

As the fleeing cosmos goes,

All should be fine,

All should be well,

Given enough space and time.

On a half-distant line,

the dull gamelan of

A forty-truck train,

Brings me back to now,

With its sharp disquiet,

Again.

 If I am honest, I would have to say that I was not astonished to read an item in the SMH today, that argues for the inclusion of Taylor Swift's lyrics in courses alongside such greats as Shakespeare, Aristotle and other persons of the literary canon. To quote a paragraph from the article,

'The study of Swift's great works, alongside those of Shakespeare and Aristotle, is becoming a fixture of courses at Australia's top universities, as academics challenge entrenched ideas about what constitutes worthy art.'

I don't have any problems challenging such ideas myself, but I would likely use far worthier, more talented wordsmiths that Swift to do so. It's apples and oranges really. Swift writes pop lyrics - repetitive, cliched, often banal - which is absolutely fine as she is a pop musician. That is her world and she does very well at it. More power to Miss Swift.

But Sydney University, apparently, is getting its students to compare The Bard's sonnet with Tay Tay's output in the hope of, what? Surely the latter suffers terribly by comparison with one of the best writers in the language. I assume that this is a serious project and that no satire is intended, so what can we make of it? Shameless band-waggoning? A victory for theory over reality? Loss of marbles? Who is to say?

There is a loss of faith in the West, not just religious, but also in the way the West was built and by whom. There are shameful episodes and glaring omissions, of course. They can, in part, be made up for and supplemented. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Pop, delightful as it can be, is anything other than Pop.

I was reading an article the other day by an academic who was discussing the changes between the political Left and Right over the past 40 years. They are stark indeed and make for sober reading. 

While the Right appears to have gone stark-raving mad, the Left has departed its traditional home of economic fairness for something quite different. I can readily identify with government programs that set out to offer better opportunities for the disadvantaged, ways of helping those who fall through the cracks, policies that improve health outcomes, and so forth. Lifting people up and giving them hope is fundamental.

I am interested in climate change and ways it might be managed (since the prevention horse has now bolted), I don't like discrimination against people for any reason and I certainly see consumer capitalism in its current phase as dangerous, but I can't buy into much of the Left's remaining project. Whether intended to be or not, it is needlessly divisive and caught up far too readily into the manufactured narcissism of our time.

By all means, try to level the playing field as much as possible, legislate against discrimination, but keep the focus on that which we have in common. The central thing is our humanity and everything else pales by comparison. That won't please everyone, I know.