A national daily yesterday had an article about the inroads pornography is making into the lives of increasingly young boys. Astonishingly, kids as young as 4 or 5 are accessing (often inadvertently) internet based porn and presenting with all manner of inappropriate behaviours at school and elsewhere.

Thirty years ago I warned anyone who wished to listen that if porn moved online (from the once restricted bricks and mortar premises), then there would be serious consequences for both young men and women. I remember some people giving me odd looks, as if I was a weirdo. But I had read enough clinical evidence even at that time about the effects of porn addiction in the lives of users to know better. And there is much more evidence today and it is all pointing the same way.

If a society does not protect its young from physical or psychological damage when it has the means to do so, then that is surely a mark of decline in my estimation. And that is where we are. In decline.

I come around again and again to many texts - poems, plays, prose extracts, religious tracts and writings and so forth. Each time the revisiting creates a new layer of understanding in some way, even if I have forgotten what once I thought. I have read 'A Pilgrim's Progress' a dozen times, each time seeing something new, perhaps at the expense of forgetting something old.

So it is with Julian of Norwich, an anchoress and theologian from the Middle Ages, whose work, 'Revelations of Divine Love', is a classic. I have a small book of daily readings extracted from the text, curated by folks at the Julian Shrine in Norwich. 'Revelations', as the name suggests, is based upon Julian's 'visions' that she had at age 30, and later reflected upon and wrote down, or dictated to another.

In one of the final chapters of 'Revelations' she wrote ( here modernized),

'In our making we had beginning, but the love in which he made us was in him from without beginning, in which love we have our beginning.'

I have always struggled to understand what she meant because there seems at first glance to be a paradox contained within the thought. But unravelling it is not so hard if we consider God's eternal nature. Our individual existence in the real world begins with creation. God's love, the very essence of his being, existed before creation. It is therefore the source of our being in it.

That is still a little mind blowing, I know. It is hard to deal with eternal time and in this case, it might help to think about the 'eternal present.'

 In my teens I was in the thrall of the Romantic poets, especially Keats and Coleridge. I began writing poems 'in the style of', which, in hindsight, were woeful. I do remember a line that opened one such example, 'Sweet seems to me that tree' and upon this I rest my case. Fortunately nothing remains, the loose sheets of paper long degraded in a local tip.

But imagine if I had digital access and reproduction back when these pieces were first composed. They would be swirling about in the ether, so to speak, for as long as humanity had not destroyed itself. The latter appears to be closer than one might think, by the way, the parlous state of the planet and the human condition being a millstone about the neck of the ever hapless homo sapiens species.

But I digress. The fact is that everything produced today is extant and is probably reproduced over and over. I have to contend with this fact whenever I write in this blog and sometimes I forget the severity of not paying attention to the flashing red lights. I guess that there are still many poems that I would like to disappear but now it is too late.

I will just have to graciously accept the laughter that ensues.

The past 12 to 14 months have been very difficult for my family, with multiple health problems, the passing of my mother and sundry continuing sagas. I think it has been the most difficult time of my life and one which I would loath revisit. But is that not what life is - mountains and valleys and long wide plains?

Truthfully, I think it unlikely that I would have survived the onset and duration of one trouble after another without my faith. Being able to pray and surrender seemingly intractable problems to God has been a blessing beyond description. Sure, I would probably still be here and breathing in all likelihood if I was not a Christian, but in far worse shape, I suspect.

Those who argue that faith is a crutch, which I have just conveniently described for them, are missing the point. My Christian faith does not provide a means to avoid suffering and trials. The chances are that they will increase as one's faith increases. People don't become converts in order to avoid pain. But trials can build greater faith if we focus on the promises of God, found throughout scripture, especially that He will abide with us and that His plans will come to fruition, no matter how much we cannot see past our noses.

I guess my poems should reflect a greater joy than they do. I have always been a little melancholic and this comes out in my writing. If I could write like Manley Hopkins, in a more modern way, I would.

'I caught this morning morning's minion/ kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn drawn Falcon'

Radio transmissions, including the type we know as radio broadcasts, travel much further than an antenna to your receiver. Depending on the strength of the transmission, they can also travel beyond the Earth's atmosphere and into space at the speed of light. They will keep moving at the same speed for thousands or even millions of years, though their strength diminishes with distance travelled. The Inverse Square law says that the intensity of radio waves decreases with the square of the distance from the source.

We have been sending radio waves hither and thither for over 130 years, meaning that some may have reached a distance of 130 light years from the Earth. Of course, they would be much weakened and perhaps impossible to distinguish, should someone have a powerful enough receiver, from the background noise of the universe.

Still, it's fun to think of all those broadcasts, including ones I have been doing for the past six years, spreading out into space and heading off with their human-made content. The first episode of 'What's in Space' is two-thirds to Proxima Centauri. 'Writer's from the Vault' has breached the heliosphere and is whizzing into interstellar space. Who cares if no one is listening, its still a wonderfully romantic notion, split infinitives notwithstanding. 

The recent Federal election saw the seeing off of two party leaders, Peter Dutton and Adam Bandt. Both initially came as a surprise to me given their high profiles, but became less surprising with the passing of time.

For Liberal Party leader Dutton, the ascent of Trump proved a powerful drag on his chances of becoming the next PM. A man of little charisma and with a penchant for the negative, he became the wrong man at the wrong time.

Bandt's demise caught everyone on the hop. The Greens had been growing in popularity in recent elections. Not so this election in which a swing against the party has seen 3 of their 4 House of Rep seats fall.

There is a wider narrative here which will be fleshed out in coming months. Two decades ago the Greens were the party of environmental protection. Now and then I cast a vote for them in the Senate. Somewhere in the last ten years, they have morphed into a more fully-fledged left wing party, beholden to many issues that ordinary Australians have little interest in. Moreover, a tone of the most egregious self-righteous moralising, together with unconstructive behaviour in the parliament, has seen their star begin to wane.

It's too early yet to say whether the rot has set in. They may bounce back in three years. Hopefully the focus will return to their strong suit, the environment.

 

January 17^th 1836

‘In the middle of the day we baited our horses at a little Inn, called the Weather-board. The country here is elevated 2800 feet above the sea. About a mile & a half from this place there is a view exceedingly well worth visiting; following down a little valley & its tiny rill of water, an immense gulf is suddenly & without any preparation seen through the trees which border the pathway at the depth of perhaps 1500 ft. Walking a few yards farther, one stands on the brink of a vast precipice, & below is the grand bay or gulf, for I know not what other name to give it, thickly covered with forest.’

The quotation above is a part of Charles Darwin's diary entry on January 17th 1836. The place where he 'baited' his horse, the little inn called the Weather-board, is where Wentworth Falls is located today. And the walk he did, or a close approximation of it, is now called Charles Darwin's Walk.

It is really an easy stroll by the usual standard of Blue Mountains tracks - very little up and down - and is currently being reconstructed with new bridges and stairs. Today, Ann and I went as far as construction allowed us to and we will save the rest for another day. The portion that we did (perhaps half) was well worth it, somewhat more than the 'little valley and...tiny rill of water' though nothing compared to what we would have encountered at the cliff face ahead.

Sometimes I forget the sheer joy that singing can bring. I enjoy singing by myself, of course, but enjoy even better singing with other singers. They don't necessarily have to be very good at it, though of course that helps in the long run. If there's an audience present, it helps them too.

Moo Choir will shortly begin our 2025 season, starting with a favourite venue at the Buckland Village. Our repertoire leans heavily to pop influenced arrangements this time, most of which will be known in their original form to the audience. It is a nice relaxing gig with no pressure.

I have been in choirs a long time now and have done a lot of shows. It is never quite like the very beginning days, when we filled Mountains venues with our not fully rehearsed or remembered material. You could have cut the air with the nervous energy from those somewhat chaotic choristers.

Not so these days. Preparation is everything. There is no stone left unturned with Mr Fox.

Having watched Federal elections for 50 years now, and knowing how tenuous the hold that Labor has had on being in power is, last nights election result were a serious one off. It was not expected. Even when the polls pointed to a comfortable outcome for the Government, few people thought that the avalanche that occurred could ever take place. Australians are simply too cautious for that, right?

But there you are are. We have a majority Labor Government with a mandate to implement. It has three years of experience being in government, so no excuses about being green. The Opposition is decimated. World events could well prove stumbling blocks but even then, good management can see us through.

A lot of folks are putting much faith in this second Albanese Government. It needs to deliver over the next three years.

The other day I answered a fairly comprehensive survey about my political, economic and social outlook. Vote Compass was looking to best match my outcomes with the most appropriately placed political party. Here are the results represented on a chart. I was surprised just how close I came to the party that I support.

 A Federal election is upon us tomorrow after what most commentators have called a desultory campaign by the major parties. Lacking in any well-founded vision for the nation's future, both the Government and the Opposition have opted for handing out election 'sweeteners.' That is a kind way of saying bribes to vote.

It may have been impossible in the current climate to create an exciting program within the broad parameters of financial restraint, but no-one has really tried. Unfunded handouts are much easier and only the economists can tell you why that's not a good thing. But no one if swing voter land listens to them.

For obvious reasons, this election might have allowed for some daylight to be shed on the US alliance, which currently has a question mark over it. Sure, Trump is gone in a few years and things might right themselves, or they may not. AUKUS, in my opinion, was a mistake. Politicians seem only look at the prestige of taking delivery of nuclear powered subs. Good as they are, I don't see how they are effective for a regional player like Australia, who might have been better served by a modern fleet of diesel-electrics.

As for tomorrow, the polls favour the Government. But they have been wrong both here and overseas in recent years. Can they be trusted this time? We shall see.

Getting On

I had not thought much,

Of the precipice below,

Well, not seriously so,

Just a lightish touch,

A wink and a nod

To bleak nothingness -

Unknowing unbeing

In prose and verse.

It was a mist of

Not sensing or seeing

Where others had trod,

As if turning each sod

Was uniquely just me.

But I am no Adam,

Who at boundaries lip

Was the first to clock it,

Whose ancient slip

Led to this very bluff,

As if free-falling,

Were not enough.