Back in our Japan days Nadia and I used to cycle quite often down to the river. We would bike alongside the Muko River on pathways that were generally flat and arboured by cherry trees. In spring-time this was a popular spot with locals and blue plastic picnic sheets were common as people snacked on festival food and drank sake under the flower-pregnant boughs.

On one occasion in May we were passing by a farmhouse that sat on this narrow river plain and noticed that it was flying flags or kites. These were Boys Day kites in the shape of koi (carp) and many houses sported them from early May onwards.

I found a smaller version of the originals when I was shopping in Daiso recently. Using a long bamboo pole, I hoisted it into a pile of dirt and there it flutters in the Australian spring.

another wide-moon night
mops of jasmine-scented sky-
uncoiling in your arms

The internet is a wonder to behold! While it is not necessarily indispensable (for really, I could get by without it ) it is a marvelously useful tool for news, information and much else besides. This blog, now in its 10th year, is written and stored online and would almost certainly be different if it were written down in a book in diary form. Structure often informs content.

The web has also democratised the citizenry in all manner of good and bad ways. The pre-online informational world, by which I mean TV, radio, newspapers and books, was largely dominated by informed or expert opinion. There have always been shock-jocks and wayward columnists and letter-writers, but popular opinion was largely confined to informal channels such as friends, family, social events and the pub. Now anyone with a computer and an internet connection can chime in to any forum, start up their own webpage or make commentary in pretty much any way they like. And much of it - at least amongst the stuff I have read - is dross. It is poorly written and ill-thought through, sometimes full of vicious invective against any differing point of view and frequently anonymous in one form or another.

Bill Bryson recently bemoaned this kind of writing. Folks who have not taken the time to inform themselves or can't be bothered learning to write or spell properly seem to feel entitled to express opinions that better belong at a family bbq or local hotel. Bryson has advocated the following rule, which I heartily support:

"Well, here is a new rule: if you are too stupid to spell 'disappointed' even approximately correctly, you are not allowed to take part in public discourse at any level."

The full article is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11895215/Britains-heritage-at-risk-due-to--ill-educated-internet-critics-says-travel-writer-Bill-Bryson.html

Yesterday I took Tom to visit my mum in Dee Why. She has been unwell lately and also very keen to sort out some family business. I spent the afternoon with her listening to her recollections of her father and mother, which was prompted by some issues around family history. I won't dwell on the details at this time.

While we were there, a storm came in from the sea and in the midst of it (which strangely yet beautifully involved a conflation of blue sky and sunshine) a double rainbow appeared, forming an almost perfect arch across the near-sea expanse of Dee Why. And here is part of it.

flowers turn to leaf
grounds shrouded in the fallen,
your slippers, just so

The end of the Abbott era could not come soon enough. Whatever one might say about Tony Abbott's political talents, and he certainly had instincts and convictions that made him formidable, he was not suited to being Prime Minister of Australia.

After years of rehearsing for the role, Malcolm Turnbull has assumed the top job and now has 12 months to convince the electorate that the Coalition is relevant. I am not a conservative voter but I like Turnbull and wish him well. The Labor Opposition have their work cut out for them if they want to stay competitive.

Tom plays football (soccer) for the Hazelbrook Hawks FC. Today was the club's gala presentation day at Gloria Park and the weather decided to become spectacularly Spring-like. This is Tom's third season and he is beginning to get a handle on the game, though still inclined to daydream!

There was a good turnout and the trophies have certainly improved over the years. All players get an individual trophy, a substantial improvement over the pennants we used to get. Trophies only went to Best and Fairest and Most Improved back in the day.

Below, Tom waits with his team while trophies are being awarded to junior divisions.

NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster, is hosting a haiku-writing site, so I decided to hop in and write one based on one of the photos they supplied. I am in two minds about the last line. Maybe you can help me decide. The second haiku will please purists, since its third line numbers 5 syllables. However, writing haiku is not about purity, but sensibility.



errands detaining
you wait in the long cool light
warming my seat

or

errands detaining
you wait in the long cool light
willing my seat warm


And here is a link to their page.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/haiku_masters/

As an addendum to my last post and by way of giving some balance to the debate, I applaud the Federal Government's decision to take a significant number of refugees from camps inside Syria and adjoining nations. Dragged and screaming it might have been, but in the final analysis it was honourable and decent. My faith in Australia is partially restored for the meantime.

On a different topic entirely, my girlfriend Ann and I went up to Wentworth Falls this afternoon to check out the scenery. Today we just took in a lookout or two, but I have plans for us to descend to the valley floor for serious bushwalking. Here is Ann at the Princes Lookout, which sits high above the waterfall and looks out into the Jamison Valley.. She is so cute.

For the little boy who was found drowned on a Turkish beach - Aylan Kurdi was his name - and to the many others who in trying to find a better life perished through no fault of their own.

I am sorry.

For the policies of Western Governments, this nations no less, who turn their backs on people displaced by the very conflicts they give lip-service to or engage in.

I am sorry.

The shameful and illegal actions of Australia ramify most for me as this country, in its modern iteration, was built on the labours of immigrants, one wave after another. It augurs poorly for a nation to act in a manner that is moral bankrupt, but such is the abysmal level of political leadership now, this is the case.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/someone-has-placed-an-anonymous-heartfelt-notice-for-little-aylan-20150904-gjezcw.html

blossoms on my bonnet
spring shrapnel to wayward breeze,
lambent hitch-hikers

The house that Tom and I live in is very small. Two little bedrooms and some living space with no storage. So imagine my delight now that my new garage is finished. Yesterday Kieron and I added the finishing touches to this many-month project - meaning a couple of downpipes, gutters and trim - and now the garden is free of trailers and colourbond panels and off-cuts of metal. The ladders are stowed and tools returned to their rightful places. No more barked shins and stabbed toes. Edges of metal sheeting are invariably sharp!

It will be a great relief to have a dry, coherent and stable location to store my documents, my library, bicycles and what not. It has dried up my savings but that is to good effect ultimately. So, below is a photo taken yesterday of Kieron at work. We had a few hours ahead of us but the end was in plain sight.

plumb blossom moon
chasing a thin slice of sky,
luminous as ice

When I first went to Europe in 1979 I met up in Dijon with a Canadian man called Ted. It was one of those chance encounters at a Youth Hostel, which started with a shared meal and ended with a couple of weeks of traveling together. Amongst the many things we talked about was American politics, for in such arcane matters were we both schooled. At that time the Carter Presidency was ending and Mr Reagan was in the ascendancy, whilst across the Atlantic(or The Channel, from our perspective), Mrs Thatcher was delivering a Franciscan homily before her onslaught against the welfare state. Heady days!

My point, which has been entirely lost in this verbiage, was that Ted was impressed that I knew anything about US politics at all. I am not sure how many Australians he had met, but he was adamant that I knew a great deal more than all the Americans he had encountered. Not exactly a high bar, but I took the compliment anyway.

Which brings me to Donald Trump. The Republican challenger has surprised many by his stubborn continuance at the top of all the polls. By any calculus he should have peaked and been on his way out by now. He is rude, ignorant, narcissistic and lacking the temperament required of a President. His bombast and offensiveness would, under normal circumstances, have been punished by voters. But on the other hand, his finger to the establishment (of which he is a member) is hitting a sweet spot with people disaffected by politics and the complexity of the world. Straight-talking and simple solutions have an appeal to people tired of hearing how difficult the world is. Trump, or the iteration of him that we are seeing in this campaign, is a cynical opportunist who uses bigotry as a tool to gain and hold attention.

I will be surprised, though not shocked, if Trump gets to the first primary in early 2016. Defying the political gravity is something that he does rather well. For now.

a chin of moon
drifts in a cold acrylic sky
old winter's reprise

This month is the 10th anniversary of this blog, Tatami Twist. If I think back to the first few entries and that time a decade ago, it is hard to not to wonder at how life can so change and in such unexpected ways.

Ten years ago Nadia was just falling pregnant with our son Tom, and we were planning our wedding in November. In addition, we were in between teaching years in Japan - we had no idea at the time that the next tour of duty would be our last - so we found ourselves helping to run Yes School from Australia. I was still singing with Crowd Around Choir and my circle of friends was very much local, in the Mid-Mountains.

Jump forward 578 blog entries and there are differences. I am divorced now though dating a lovely Thai woman name Arunee. I am back at my old house, have just finished 4 years of volunteer work with Anglicare. I am a member of a new choir, Moo Choir, and have quite a few new friends from further afield. Tom spends half his time with me and the other half with his mum.

Funnily enough, life is change from the moment we draw our first breath. We seek to paper over the obvious cracks in our seamless narratives if only to protect ourselves from madness.

I would like to keep writing up this blog for another ten years if I can, though for reasons I am not really able to explain.

I suppose we all need to validate our existence in some way.

I deplore the level of discourse in Australian politics so much that I tend to turn to other countries for my political fix. I am living out my antipodean needs by proxy, and that proxy is the United States.

The US is a deeply flawed democracy. At the national level, the Congress and the President tend not to work well together, making sound public policy a fraught area. The Supreme Court has been sometimes left in the position of having to rule on matters that probably should be legislated in Congress, if only the latter could get its act together. Joined-up-government it is not, though perhaps the framers of the Constitution wanted it that way. Nobody gets the Crown all to themselves and if they ever do, there are others to snatch it from their head.

I was going to say that the Westminster System tends to work better but then I look at Australia and the level of mediocrity at the top and wonder-maybe not. Yes, there is a lot of policy framing and legislative action most of the time, but the level of debate is so infantile and predictable as to denigrate the process. Reasonably, people switch off.

At the moment, The Republican Party is entering the period of debating that pressages the primaries. It is an interesting time for the politically minded even if the rhetoric is tired and deeply conservative. I watched the opening debates and was impressed by the quality of the candidates, even though I agreed with little that they said.

Last week I tendered my resignation to Anglicare after four years of work as a Emergency Relief volunteer worker. There are few times in my life when I felt that a job - even one that does not pay - has fitted my temperament and experience so well. It is rare to be lost so deeply in work that the sense of self disappears and what is real is the moment of engagement itself. This wasn't always the case of course - that perfect world just doesn't exist - but it often came close and when it did is was profoundly satisfying.

Cafe de Warehouse - Anglicare's Friday morning cafe in support of sustainable living - was also a great pleasure. I enjoyed being a musician - developing and practising a repertoire - and the challenge of doing so was just what I needed at a time when my marriage was breaking apart. I have always wanted to be a cafe singer and thanks to the encouragement of my cafe buddies Penny and Hazel, I could. It was a blessing.

Departing is sad but I cannot change the tide of forces that entrench injustices. I prefer to focus on how good the ride was and how surprising the view is from the top of the hill.

My April 25th post showed Memory Park in Hazelbrook as it was around the time of the Great War or a little after. The park used to accommodate a commemorative war memorial - hence the name of the park - but the latter was moved to Gloria Park in the 1990's because of the proposed widening of the Great Western Highway. The park fell into a very poor state until its recent dramatic redesign in 2014.

Just how different Memory Park is can be seen in the following photo which I took a few days ago. I am guessing that I have taken it from a similar vantage point to those posted earlier, but such are the changes wrought over the past 90 years (the park is much smaller and narrower due to ever-encroaching roadworks) that it was a tough judgement call. Also noteworthy is the relatively new pedestrian bridge to Hazelbrook Station which took the place of a zebra crossing and the more recent traffic lights.

Memory Park has taken a battering over the course of the 20th century and it's current iteration may well do it for another century. Maybe we will reach another high water-mark of civic pride such as was evident a hundred years ago, though I am doubtful. That generation and the one following had a different way of expressing the notion of the common good and the concomitant duties that flowed from that understanding. I fancy that we shall not see the like again. I'm happy to proven wrong though.

We live in an era of noise. Beginning with the first industrial revolution, and moving with a ceaseless trajectory since, noise has become an omnipresent bedfellow for all who live in or near cities. Cities are great gathering-sites of sound. They do not discriminate but proclaim the clamour within. In every house, devices hum and buzz. Fridges whir and mine occasionally shudders as if shaking off the cold. When reversing my car I get an emphatic beep.

This morning I went shopping at a large supermarket in Katoomba. Whilst waiting in the queue, I tried tuning in and out to the different layers of noise that surrounded all of us there. Stratas of white sound - refrigerators and air-conditioning were a soup of loud hushing - formed an almost benign background to the chirrup of cash registers, exclamations of customers and clatter of trolleys. It was impossible to imagine a place beneath all this racket where there might be a kind of silence.

Back home, cockatoos swooped loudly on some bread I put outside. I suspect their shrieks could shatter glass under the right conditions. I don't know of a noisier bird, and en masse they might even wake the dead.

One day the universe will end in silent darkness, but for now, we have an interminable light and sound show.

We have had a genuine cold snap in recent days, reminding me of the time I first moved to Hazelbrook. On Thursday night, the Upper Mountains had its biggest fall of snow since the 1980's, an event that caused some havoc on the roads and railways. We are not set up for moderate falls of snow, though in a few months time, we will be better prepared for bushfires. We do droughts and floods quite well too. Snow, well...

Consequently there has been a torrent of media and social media reportage and I won't bore you with the details of snowmen, whooping kids or blithe yuletide scenery, except to say, that there were massive drifts of it. Having lived though four Japanese winters (and while I love the sensation of waking to a white frosting of silence) I am less-than-sanguine about it all. But pleased nevertheless.

Yesterday Tom's nana, Elaine, took him to the icy reaches of Katoomba where he played happily for an hour or two. Elaine took a few photos and I hope to have better resolved ones, soon.




waking to bleached silence
snow-fall an unvoiced conspiracy-
blankets tighten

a jets backside
plumbs low the dusk sky-
my train judders

The crisis in Europe over Greece - an ongoing saga dating back some five years now - has tended to polarize views. On the one hand, there is much commentary on how the Greeks got into this mess through poor governance and over-borrowing. Let them shape up or ship out, the same view contends. Opposing this is the idea that Europe is being run by the Germans for the Germans and that Germany should do its best to forgive Greek debt. After all, the Wehrmacht was camped in Athens and surrounds 70 years ago and reparations are surely due.

Most likely, a middle way will prevail. Greece will eventually get the loan extensions and additions, be required to reform itself further, with the understanding and guarantee that permanent debt relief will be delivered shortly thereafter. There seems little point in administering medicine that will kill the patient, but this seems to have been the unwitting result of the past five years.

In my view, the European Project needs that country, the one that was the very well-spring and cradle of Western thought, to stay inside. It is never a cost-free exercise, but what, realistically, is the alternative?

Tom sometimes falls asleep on my grandmother's sofa. It's getting harder to carry him as he grows longer and heavier, but carry him I must so he can sleep in his own bed. Waking up amongst his toys, lego creations and all that happy familiarity is always better than the other options and sofas are bad for the back anyway. One day I won't be able to carry him, so for me, this is still a special time. Though, sshhhh! I would never tell him that.

It's cold today.....

bird-bending winter wind,
charge of grit and eye-blind breath,
coughing from within

Last night I journeyed to Leichardt to see the new movie, Love and Mercy at the Palace Cinema in Norton St. Ostensibly a biopic about the life of The Beach Boys Brian Wilson, the film cleverly navigates two crucial periods in Wilson's life - the time during the gestation and creation of Pet Sounds, and a later time when the middle-aged Wilson was under the care of a radical (and possibly, criminal) therapist.

Insights are offered into the Wilsonian creative process and we see an innovator and enabler of extraordinary talent. In trying to break with the more formulaic earlier (yet highly successful) BB material, Wilson inevitably creates friction within the band and within himself.The ubiquitous cocktail of drugs and excess are simply too much for the sensitive and seemingly misunderstood soul of the younger Brian, who lapses into increasing mental ill-health.

During the course of Love and Mercy, my thoughts often flew to my departed friend, Robert Mumford. Robert was a huge fan of The Beach Boys and as the film progressed, I was reminded of conversations we had had two decades earlier. Somehow the minutiae of those rambling Mumford monologues have stayed with me to this day. It occurs to me now that Robert probably saw a lot of Brian Wilson in himself and his own circumstances in life.

So as the opening credits of the movie rolled, I resolved to watch this fine movie for both of us.

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was putting up a new shed, replacing the old and dilapidated garage that has been on the site since the early 1960's. The latter was rarely useful, having a rusty leaking roof and dangerously crumbling fibro walls. Renovating it would have been a waste of money and perhaps even hazardous.

Today the new shed arrived in prefabricated pieces (see below) although we can't do anything about erecting it until the slab is laid, hopefully next week. This is the first new structure I have ever built on this property, and even though it's a just a metal box (20 square metres), it will be mighty handy. The main house is small and I need a space for my library and maybe even a location for Tom to use for crafts and table tennis.

The nastiness of the debate over asylum seekers is a national disgrace and an international embarrassment. It is hard to find a time in the modern era when the level of discourse has been so wretched, irrational and selfish. That both major parties contrive in some way to pay lip service to policies that are both draconian and an affront to Australia's international obligations is appalling. Voices of dissent are generally mute, because the backlash against a politician not seeming to be tough on "people smugglers" (which is essentially a way of re-positioning the actual debate about displaced people) is real and intimidatory.

And at the head of it all is a hired thug in the Prime Minister, a man so unfit to lead a nation that others must wonder at the seeming lack of talent available to fill the job. If I could apply somewhere else for citizenship I would give it a serious thought.

The Pope's most recent encyclical (Laudato Si) excoriating Man's treatment of the planet, together with his withering attack on consumer capitalism, is a long overdue riposte from the oldest Christian Church. But it is, nevertheless, most welcome. At a time when such concerns are deliberately marginalized by the very interests they critique, a still powerful and widely influential voice like the Pope's is much needed to add balance.

Since the public space is so often hijacked nowadays by the trivial and the acutely temporary (iPhones, Kardashians blah blah blah), or is subject to the extremes of the oft-mentioned omnipresent newscycle, we truly need a place where serious things can be said by people who will be taken seriously. And we need to talk about them over an extended period of time.

I sway between an optimistic and a pessimistic position for the most part. I am happy to be an activist even if the odds are heavily stacked against me, but I despair of the ignorance and willful stupidity that seems so much a part of the human condition.

But Pope Francis offers hope, and that is good.

It's coming up to four years since I started working as a volunteer at Anglicare in Emergency Relief, and about three and a half years since I first played a song in the cafe. There is rarely a day when I don't look forward to going to work and even though it doesn't pay an income, it pays out grandly in other ways. It can be very humbling to work with people whose struggles are so great that their very presence in my office is a miracle in itself. It is uplifting to be a small part of a solution to whatever problem is being presented. And often as not, clients have many problems on many levels.

I have been trialing a few new songs at cafe though my capacity to add to the repertoire is slowing. There are probably about 30 or 40 songs that get regular play, with a few dropping in and out of favour depending on my mood and how the gig feels. The latter is a fuzzy concept, but I seem to know at least when not to do one. Now and then I get a request and sometimes I can find the song and learn it by the following week. I am constrained by my limited guitar-playing ability, so many songs I would love to sing and are quite within my range are out of the question.

I don't know how long I will remain where I am. Some decisions are in my hands and some are not. The next few weeks will determine how great my agency to act is. Unrelated events can conspire to create watersheds in our lives and how we respond holds the key to much more besides.

Last Sunday Tom and I and a group of friends went cycling down at the Penrith Regatta Centre. Built for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Rowing and allied events, the centre now operates as a public park and recreation space, when it is not being used for sports events.

A single lap of the rowing course is 5kms and we rode twice around the man-made lake, taking a leisurely hour or so. It was perhaps the greatest distance Tom has ever cycled. 10kms is not bad for a 9 year old. The winter weather was mild, the sky full of a blueness that only chilled air and warm afternoon sun can produce. Water birds danced and chattered noisily in the shallows. We will do this again, soon.

"We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity."

So wrote Junichiro Tanizaki in his poetic essay, In Praise of Shadows, eight decades ago. Tanizaki was bemoaning aspects of the Westernisation of Japan and the excesses that this sometimes entailed. The Japanese tradition (perhaps state of mind) of Wabi Sabi, which privileged the natural and the simple (including ideas such as impermanence, humility, imperfection and asymmetry) stands fairly obviously in opposition to a sizeable chunk of modernity. The author explores the idea of shadow (on a simple level, the absence of bright artificial light) and the manner in which Japanese traditionally learnt to live with darkness or dimness before the advent of electricity.

My experience of Japan in the modern era has borne out the author's thesis. In spades. Japanese love lighting and especially fluorescent lighting. Sometimes shopping precincts will have discreet lighting and often classic-design plastic or paper lanterns, especially where there are bars, restaurants or noodle stalls. There is a subdued effect which is very pretty and speaks to a sense of place and mind. But most Japanese homes have a large central fluorescent light in each room and many shops are so bright that you almost blink upon entry. Cue Yodobashi Camera.

That doesn't mean you can't have both worlds living side by side and I suspect many Japanese do just that.

moon through thin blinds
slat-light screed of cool candescence,
my son's breathing

oh! cold-morning shoulders,
sun's rays dumb to deep shadow,
ice-grass crunching

My iPhone 4s returned from the repairers yesterday, though curiously its hard drive capacity had doubled to 32GB. I guess that means, in the absence of anything genuinely mysterious, that my phone has been replaced. Will it last more than 30 days? Watch this space!

My new garage project moves forward slowly and more expensively (see photo). Tree roots (and what to do about the tree), the need for an excavator and a concrete pump and sundry other items have meant that something that seemed relatively straightforward has become more complicated.

Complication and uncertainty. Not my favourite bedfellows on the whole, but ones that I need to live better with. Why not ease and certainty, my mind inquires, and why not now? Truthfully, things, stuff, going smoothly, is probably rare.

My backyard, which only minutes ago was bathed in the golden light of an obliging afternoon sun, has fallen into shadow. It is now growing cooler. Soon I will take Tom to soccer training. As the kids train in the artificial light, I will walk the perimeter of the field listening to podcasts. Again and again.

Sunday morning. The grass was still wet late yesterday afternoon after a day of late-autumn sunshine. This morning there are new threads of fresh dew, pulsing with reflected light as the breeze discomposes each blade. Now and then a miniature rainbow breaks forth from a solitary tremulous bead, reminding me, if not the birds, that our experience of light is highly subjective.

I was reading last night that the incidence of depression has increased ten-fold from that experienced by people in the first half of the 20th Century. The author posits that 'learned helplessness' is probably responsible for this astonishing change and a results, partly, from our losing a sense of control in our lives. Put another way, the way we think about ourselves and our environment, the way we perceive and internalize what happens daily - how we process change, setbacks and the occasional loss of agency - forms a vital part of the feedback loop that regulates self-esteem and the drive to act meaningfully in the world.

Our grandparents and great grandparents endured two major wars, an economic depression and far tougher living conditions than we do. Yet they suffered depression much less.

Food for thought.

The aforementioned elderly Samsung has sprung back into life following the failure of my refurbished iPhone 4s. The latter is on its way to a repairer, I hope. I might have expected two years from the new phone, but all I got was 30 days.

This is what happens when you get too pleased about tech. It lets you down, not unlike people, though generally in a more spectacular way. The pulsing white Apple logo was symptomatic of a deeper problem - the anaemic heart of a digitalized love-toy. This phone was never really attached to my hand in the manner that is often pilloried in cartoons and commentary, but it beat, nevertheless, beneath the plastic flip-cover that protected it. And it offered up its pallid heart in response to critical failure.

Don't get into bed with tech.

It's May and I am quietly happy. I have begun another study program online (The Great Courses), am preparing to build a new garage, am enjoying the turning and falling of the leaves and a new relationship has been gently blossoming. Never mind that the previous sentence should have been perhaps two sentences ( I will leave this chore to my editor), for this half-glass-full period is well and truly upon me. When will the winds turn?

Winter is barely a month away but I invariably enjoy its onset. It is not until August that I start to wonder when I might wear shorts again and be unencumbered by coats and layers. My house is not well-suited to cold weather, or hot weather, for that matter. That is a bit like me, for spring is always a happy uncladding and autumn, more a prolonged end to a feast whose beginning I have long forgotten.

Now, it is dark and really quite mild outside. Tom is at a drumming workshop of the touring African Children's Choir. Later this week my own choir will support these brilliant Ugandans at a concert in Penrith. Wisely foregoing any African songs we might know, we will sing mostly Western pop and folk arrangements. Just as we should, given the competition!

benign rend of sky
baring tender nebules of star,
vast unthinning of dusk

my tiny temple bell shakes
me from thoughts of dark clouds
catapulting autumn sky

Today is Anzac Day and I will shortly take Tom to a memorial service in Springwood. While I have the highest regard for sacrifice, especially where it touches the lives of family, friends and country, I also have some misgivings. With each passing year, the sense of sentimentality grows and a media-driven storm of commentary, frequently platitudinous, whips up something approaching a mild hysteria.

It is well documented that returning soldiers of all stripes and nations wanted to forget the war they had just fought. They did not want to talk about it. They had lost comrades and seen first hand the abysmal logic of trench warfare. My Uncle Tony was so disgusted that he threw away his medals.

So that is my one note of caution. Below are two picture of crowds gathering in Memory Park Hazelbrook to welcome home soldiers, sometime during the latter part of WW1 or just after.

On another sad note, my Uncle Ralph passed away this week. I met and stayed with Ralph on visits to the UK in 1980 and in 1990 and also when he came to Australia for a holiday. He was 90 years of age and served with the RAF in WW2. I know that my mum is very sad, as is her remaining sibling, Sam. I will look for some photos to post here as a tribute.

My elderly Samsung mobile has been retired. I took a gamble on a refurbished iPhone4s, essentially the same age as the Samsung, but vastly more capable. So far it works just a like a new phone and even looks rather like one.

I am particularly taken by Siri, the electronic personal assistant who replies to my many inane questions. Last night I asked her for the age of the universe (which she got right) and was pleasantly surprised by her adding a salient quotation by Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I promise not to talk about tech again.

Whilst on the subject of recollections and the power of music to revive them, I found this photo of a JR 112 series train at rest at Fukuchiyama Station. As alluded to in the last post, this was the train that took me through to my teaching job in Kaibara. They were phased out in 2012, a few years after our departure. A second photo shows the superficially remodelled 113 which plied the same route.

The final photo is as perfect a comparison as I can make. At Sasayama-guchi, the train from Sanda on the left sits as the one on the right prepares for the change of passengers for Fukuchiyama. I did this little two-step on many occasions.

Most days I go walking I take an ipod and listen to podcasts. Today I took my old G2 ipod, one of the larger white monsters with a directional wheel on the front. I bought it over 10 years ago at Yodobashi Camera in Umeda, Osaka, when owning such a device was still quite an exotic thing. It has over 700 songs on it, a small proportion of what the hard drive can hold, and all of them date from that period or earlier.

So it is kind of like time-travelling for me. If I play my older device these days I get that strange moment of recognition, a shiver of recollection, for a time when that song denoted a very particular moment and place for me. It might be a pathway through a housing estate, a wide expanse of park, a shopping centre, even a stairwell. The melody plays, a fleeting image from Japan intrudes, with all its associations and memories. I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette's Doth I Protest Too Much again, for example, without being transported to the interior of a JR train pulling out from Sanda station as I headed up-country for work in Kaibara.

Yodobashi Camera (pictured below) is an experience in itself. Next to a Pachinko Parlour, it is one of the noisiest environments I have encountered, with media of all sorts spruiking for your attention.

Another towering political figure has passed away. Only months within the passing of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, he who usurped power in an extraordinary political coup in November 1975, has gone.

The Fraser Government - a lightning rod for all my youthful discontent - began in controversial circumstances. Not everyone would describe the events of that time as a coup, though some elements, such as the dismissal of a government by an unelected official, the secrecy, rumour and odd coincidences do add grist to that mill.

It seems likely now that Fraser was as surprised as Whitlam by the turn of events, and, nothwithstanding the Opposition's blocking of the supply bills in the Senate which precipitated the crisis, we may be able to view events more soberly.

In fact, the rehabilitation of Fraser since leaving power has been remarkable. His humanitarian efforts and apparent lurch to the left on most issues have made him a kind of darling of progressives, this underlined by his resignation from the Liberal Party.

So goodbye Malcolm Fraser, 22nd Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. In the photo below, three Prime Ministers, with Fraser on the left.

Advice To My 16 Year Old Self

You don't have to be liked by everyone. Sure, it's nice to be liked and there is nothing wrong with seeking good relations wherever you go. But wanting to be liked by all means having to please everyone. And you can't please everyone, even if it was desirable.

Some people will not like you. Some will respond to generosity and warmth with coldness, indifference or cynicism. But that is not your fault. The problem is entirely of their own making.

So don't seek approval everywhere you go. By all means be yourself and be kind and generous. But you can never expect back what you give, so let that gift go without ever seeking a return. And you may discover, a kind of freedom and happiness, that cannot be thwarted.

Death comes to us all, and Leonard Nimoy sadly, passed away today. He was a goodly age, as they say, and full of philosophical thoughts until the very end. "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" he tweeted only hours before his death.

As Mr Spock in the original Star Trek, he loomed large in my childhood. A Vulcan complicated by his half-human failings, he stood astride the middle ground between James T. Kirk and the emotional Dr McCoy. He was for logic and reason and struggled with and against the emotions that held his fellow crew members in thrall. This element was critical to the dramatic tension of what otherwise might have been just a science fiction adventure.

Live Long and Prosper, cited in the tweet above, was a Vulcan motto that Spock often espoused. It has now passed into the lexicon and for all I know, is flying at light speed past the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond into deep space. In fact, it has passed into other star systems, many light-years away. Thence, it has boldly gone.

Rest in Peace, Leonard Nimoy.

Tom is back at school and seems quite happy this year. Hazelbrook PS have a policy of composite classing. Students are formed into classes around educational stages, not strictly by their age. So this year Tom is in a 4/3 class, with an equal mix of kids from grades 3 and 4. It seems to work well on the academic level, though I harbor some misgivings over social development.

I am still with Anglicare ER on Wednesdays and enjoy it as much as ever. I think that I was built to help and I get a huge amount of pleasure from doing it. I said once that being an ER caseworker is the closest match to a perfect fit for me. There is no greater satisfaction than seeing a client leave an interview with their life less fractured and their prospects heightened. It is all about change and though these changes may be small, they offer the opportunity for continued improvement.

On Fridays I am still toting my guitar and amps downstairs to our cafe, set up specifically for our clients. The free coffee and food, live music and friendly conversation are great but incidental to the fact that people get to leave their houses and social isolation and mix it up a little.

I have been coming to the cafe for 3 years now and it has truly been a blessing. I don't know how much longer the dance will last as wheels of sorts are in motion and I don't know where or how they will end up. Who does?

I am reminded by recent events that we seem to living in interesting times. By which I mean, there is a greater uncertainty about a lot of what we once took for granted.

In politics, decades-old business-as-usual has been turned on its head, with two state governments being thrown out in their first terms. We have had multiple Prime Ministers and leadership challenges are more commonplace, with sometimes remarkably little regard for precedent.The recent backbench revolt against Tony Abbott only underscored the turbulence of the present era, contrasting as it does with the usual elitist nature of political assassinations.

Partly this is due to the (previously alluded to) 24/7 media scramble that we exist in, where news is both process and product, or neither. Partly it is the bland bullet-point political discourse that sucks any authenticity and vitality from what should be a genuine contestation of ideas.

Strangely enough, the times may well be suited to the rise of straight-talking nationalists with an authoritarian streak, not unlike that odious group who emerged in the 1920's and 1930's. It may not be fascism per se, but it will have democratic values and pluralism in its sights.

Listening to the Slate Political Podcast this morning, I was bailed up by a line of John Dickerson's in reference to a serious mistake made by the subject of discussion. He said that it was his belief that "The worst thing about you becomes the most true thing about you." It got me to thinking about and mulling over (redundancy!-ed.) the veracity, or otherwise of Dickerson's assertion.

With public figures, this is almost always the case these days. Celebrities who have offended against children are often as not defined by that fact, no matter what changes they make to their lives or how much time passes. The Gillard Prime Ministership seemingly lost legitimacy as a result of the " no carbon pricing" backflip, which Gillard wore herself as a badge of dishonour in the eyes of many electors. In our own lives, people who commit serious breaches of trust in one way or another do tend to get stigmatized and thus redefined by the nature of their offences. But is this "most true thing about them?"

The 24/7 hyper-environnment makes matters worse, for reasons that are obvious. No-body can be let alone or allowed to atone for whatever misdeed or misjudgment occurred in their past. Even when the offence is false or unproven, the mud sticks and the truism may still apply. No-body ever said life was fair, nor should they.

Just finished Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927. As usual, very entertaining. Bryson has a knack of organising his subject material in a way that makes you smile even as you are informed of something you didn't know. Which is a lot, in my case. Anyway, enough of sentence fragments!

As strongly hinted at in the title, One Summer explores events and people in a year that Bryson contends is a kind of seminal one for the emergence of the United States as a cultural and technological power. We already know that the US emerged from the Great War as a political and economic heavyweight, factors which necessarily background the book. Here Bryson weaves the stories of famous Americans (such as Lindbergh, Coolidge, Capone and Babe Ruth) with a sense of what was in vogue or newsworthy or downright scandalous at the time. The skill is not only in creating engaging vignettes and coherent stories, but in bringing the whole together over the "summer" of 1927. The stories are governed by the timeline - not being entities in themselves, but rather interwoven with each other. For some readers who prefer stories to stand as independent through-narratives, this may be a challenge. But I found that the wait was almost always worth it.

Some forty years ago a best friend and I used to troop regularly to the old Sydney Sports Ground to watch the Socceroos play home games. The Australian team at the time comprised a collection of mostly journeyman footballers from the UK, with some notable home-grown players in the mix. They were part-timers in what were then largely ethnic-dominated Australian leagues. The team played a largely defensive game, with a lot of players behind the ball.

How different today, with a strong national A-League, and a Socceroos side full of native-born footballers who play a decidedly attacking game. The win over an excellent South Korean team last night to claim the Asian Cup presents another milestone for the Socceroos. Qualification for World Cups (starting with Rale Rasic's trail-blazing 1974 side) has been achieved 3 times now. The Asian Cup puts the first major trophy on the shelf. The game can only develop from here. In one direction, methinks.



The 1974 team vs West Germany. Muller scores.



Contemporary legend Tim Cahill bicycle-kicks vs China in a modern iteration of the Socceroos. Asian Cup Quarter Finals 2015

To put my last post into a broader historical context, Japan was but one of many imperialist powers over the last 200 years. It's just that they came in somewhat late. European powers had been colonizing and plundering African, American and Asian peoples for centuries in a process that came to a head in the 19th century. China's current posture of not tolerating any encroachment on its perceived territory harks back to the poor treatment meted out to it by foreign powers during the last century of the Qing Dynasty. Japan was one of the last to jump on that bandwagon and consequently has suffered the greatest criticism from Beijing.

Japan's problem lies not only in how recent its wayward behaviour is, but how it has managed to mix up the messages. An apparent heartfelt apology is followed by a Prime Ministerial visit to Yasukuni. Regret at the outrages of the Imperial Army are followed by obfuscations about the nature of the atrocity (eg: Nanjing) or the extent, such as in the debate over "comfort women." It is a Yes, but... approach that casts doubt over the sincerity of any regret. Cue Shinzo Abe.

When I taught in Japan, the subject of the Great Pacific War, as it is called there, sometimes came up with adult students. I never raised the issue myself, but was happy to tread carefully and politely in any debate that followed. Certain patterns emerged in such discussions, usually starting with the tricky question, "Were the atomic bombings justified?" Leaving aside that thorny moral dilemma, the line of argument that followed was that Japan had been starved of resources and initiated a justifiable conflict with the United States. Putting to one side again the fact that Japan had already racked up 50 years of conquest and aggression against its Asian neighbours, the argument continued with the conspiratorial riposte that President Roosevelt had known about the attack on Pearl Harbor for some time and had allowed the attack to continue in order to get the US into the war.

I miss those class chats a lot, never mind the disagreement. You had to keep your wits about you and the disputes were always amiable.

With the 70th anniversary of the end of W.W.2 approaching this year, Shinzo Abe has weighed, with the subtlety of a brick through a window, into the debate. He is quoted today as saying that it has never been established that Japan fought a war of aggression. Perhaps in 1945 it was not deemed necessary to lay out with clarity the fact that Japan had acted aggressively, since the evidence for such a claim was everywhere to be found. Wherever one looked.

Japan seized Taiwan from China after a brief war in 1894/95, then annexed Korea in 1910. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, then provoked another conflict with China in 1937. The latter invasion was still in full swing when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, before waltzing through South-East Asia on a war of, ahem, liberation and friendship.

As you can see, the evidence for Japanese aggression is very thin indeed and perhaps we should revise our textbooks in line with Mr Abe's critique.



I give you a new peace in our time!

Tom's first day of 4th Grade began today at Hazelbrook PS. Reluctant as he seemed to be to go to school, he looked relaxed when I picked him up from the Moosh this afternoon and he buzzed with chatter for a solid 45 minutes thereafter. Modern kids have a menu of ambit claims that need to be met when it comes to their new class - that it has to contain at least one significant friend, that the teacher is fun and slightly flexible in the enactment of The Rules and so forth.

As best I remember, my cohort just turned up, were allocated a teacher and classroom and got on with it. I didn't discuss preferences with my parents. But then again, I was in streamed classes until 6th grade, when a radical sixties experiment descended upon us. Mixed ability classes. From that day onward until the end of the year, my world of relative pronouns was turned upside down. And for who, whom, whose, which and that the bell tolls!

Schools are nicer places for kids to be these days. Freed from much of the pomposity, caning and petty vindictiveness of a plurality of former educators, there is much to like about modern schools. The downside is a new regime of testing and an overloaded curriculum, one that does not bode well of creating lifelong learners.

I love to learn and yearn

"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

According to the best predictions, the universe may be teeming with life of one sort or another. Modelling suggests that evolutionary processes should have produced intelligent life from this happy crop, even within our own little cosmic backyard. Over 50 years ago, The SETI project pioneered the scientific search for intelligent extra-terrestrials, though there has been a curious and abiding silence over that time. Most recently folks working in this field have started to wonder where all the aliens are, given the apparent plethora of potentially habitable solar systems.

Amongst the many theories that abound over the causes of this grave cosmic silence, one in particular caught my attention. Creatures evolve over a long period of time and as best we know, in competition with each other. One species may become dominant (as in humans on Earth) and develop to a point where they achieve genuine technological significance (cue humans again). At some stage though, the technology becomes advanced to the point where the civilization destroys itself. And there is us again, maybe.

The trick is getting through this technological ceiling and surviving, which suggest a significant element of ethical and moral growth and perhaps some good luck. There are lots of reasons why I don't think our species will survive the journey past the age we are at this moment transitioning, though I do hope, for all the children and their children, and beyond, that we do.

For a much fuller and more lucid discussion of Where are all the aliens? go to this excellent article:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

I like a good affirmation. And on the whole, I like positive people, by which I mean, those who adopt a sunnier outlook on life when conditions seem to warrant a more downcast demeanour. People who have a more sanguine take on experience are often kinder and more tolerant, and tend to be better company too, though not always. Positive thinking has a proper role in psychology and in life in general, if only we can remember the wise words we read the night before.

But I am not especially in favour of the snake-oil version of positivity that dominates much social media, especially Facebook. Some of this is in the magical thinking category, whilst other contributions are so obvious or platitudinous as to make anyone with any self-respect weep. There is a lot of inspiring material in the world, but the sample below is not.


It is bollocks parading itself as wisdom.

Reading Qin Xiaolong's Years of Red Dust, a series of short stories based upon the lives of the people of an old street in Shanghai over the course of some 60 years, was a palliative to all the drier histories of that period. Qin's skill involves not only drawing vividly the individual vignettes of lives in rapid change and adaptation, without overt political comment, but also in backgrounding these very personal stories within their historical context. He does this by the simple device of beginning each chapter with a blackboard analysis of the year's political events (the same blackboard is used by characters in the lane as an ersatz CCP teaching device), then allowing his characters to fill the space beyond with their lives. In this sense the book operates like a script, the stage directions establishing conditions for the characters to exist within. The first of these finds us back in 1949, with the CCP triumphant.

This wordy paragraph (my apologies) should really just have said that I liked the book and can recommend the author, who incidentally, also writes fiction and translates Tang Dynasty poetry. On the basis of a fragment of Tang poetry quoted in one of the stories in Years Of Red Dust, I bought an anthology of poetry from this period for my kindle. The translations into English may be a little dated now but nevertheless it is a delightful read.

Religion, for the most part, promotes various forms of rigid thinking. Obvious, right? You get, with belief, a bunch of rules or conventions that come in the instruction manual. I have experienced this first-hand, having become a Christian at 20, and a fairly zealous one at that. The zeal can wear off as the rules and boundaries become increasingly onerous or contradictory. I had another try two years ago but found (despite the many blessings) that the vision was too narrow. I like faith but I want one that is more inclusive. That is no slight on God (in whom I believe), but rather a critique of the flawed human end of divine engineering.

Of courses, all organisational structures engender rigid thinking. It seems to be a necessary part of the human condition that rules are needed to create socially workable situations. The looser the structure (such as in alternate-lifestyle communes), the more the inclination towards chaos and decline. Open marriages (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are doomed by the very fact of their rule abandonment.

Which makes the times we live in, centuries after The Enlightenment, all the more interesting. Attempts at trans-national unity (as in the EU) find themselves increasingly bogged down in a minutiae of bureaucracy. Extremist Islamic fighters ( I should say, terrorists) blend a medieval black and white world view with a concomitant punishment mentality. Rule breakers are everywhere and they must be eliminated.

One might have hoped that with the fall of communism (another monumentally rule-driven ideology) last century we might have respite now. At least for a decade or two. But no, it is with us to stay.

The shape of things to come, in the cosmos, always adds perspective to life on earth. Our time here, when measured against the unimaginable eons of the universe, seems like straws in the wind.

Today there was another terror attack in Paris and I suspect that, in addition to the sadness of loved-ones, freedom of one kind or another is the loser. More security and surveillance means a loss of anonymity and the freedom to express, without being monitored. Self-censorship becomes a factor - 'what can I say and how can I say it?'

So in looking forward to a time beyond humanity, one can find solace in the sheer length of the perspectives, far beyond the end of life on earth, of the earth itself, of this period of stellar illumination and the looming creative darkness beyond that.

The original of the chart below is found at : http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140105-timeline-of-the-far-future

New Year's Eve was surprisingly pleasant. Because Nadia had Tom for an extra night away camping, I was released to attend a very-late-notice party. With a decent view out across the Nepean Plain towards Sydney, a group of smart, nothing-to-prove people and some fine champagne, the evening went like an arrow towards the forfended hour.

When it came (and I surprised myself by actually being awake!), tiny florets of light appeared on the distant horizon. The large flat screen behind us mimicked this miniature performance with vast megapixels of cascading light and sound. A surreal contrast, to be sure.

NYE may be a foolish and irrelevant celebration, but it is nice to spend it in the company of pleasant people.

I was chatting to a friend this morning who was bemoaning the fact that his family were going to a party in the city for New Year's Eve tonight. It wasn't that he didn't like parties, he does, but rather the whole palaver of getting on and off trains, being squeezed by crowds, negotiating drunken fools and sundry idiots, and so forth and so on.

I have been through a similar process and found that, for whatever momentary joy one gets from beautiful fireworks, not to mention the frisson of communal love that comes from a glass of champagne, it is just not worth it. I was texting another friend this morning whose teenage son is grounded and who therefore can't go into the city with his mates for hours of pointless boredom. I remarked that New Years Eve in the West was really just the bastard child of Ground Hog Day and Waiting for Godot, minus the humour and insight - that is, hugely repetitive and entirely anti-climactic.

So, as platitudes roll from the tongues of media heads and a false sense of bonhomie washes across the multitudes, as folks discover yet again that the next day is pretty much like the last and that the chalice they hold is not only empty but largely illusory, I wish everyone a safe and meaningful New Year. May your resolutions be focused on making this a better world for all living things.

Tom had swimming lessons at Lawson Pool a few weeks ago. He has improved significantly under the aegis of Department of Education instructors - mostly elderly though very competent no-nonsense women. The once-a-day coaching over two weeks helps to ground the children in fundamental water and swimming skills, something entirely lacking when I was a kid.

So here is Tom about to commence one of his lessons on a day I thought it wise to turn up, if only to fly the flag.

Driving to Westmead Station yesterday, I gave up resistance and began listening to a ten-part history of tea on The China History Podcast. I had been putting this off for some time since I wasn't sure if this topic was going to be, ahem, my cup of tea.

Wrong again. Laszlo has a way of making the most arcane information interesting - maybe it's his unbridled enthusiasm - and so the first two parts of this ancient story passed the time nicely. Having attended tea ceremonies in Japan and been initiated into many of the practices in that country through friends and other immersions, I realized that I still had considerable ignorance and a deficit that needed to be made up. After all, I drink a few cups of tea a day and can't imagine waking up to anything other than a pot of tea.

I was especially taken by a famous poem by the Tang dynasty poet Lu T'ung, who, upon receiving a particularly auspicious present of tea from the Imperial estates, wrote a song of praise. Here is an extract from The Song of Tea, as it has become known. With each bowl, the poet moves closer to something like heaven on earth, an epiphany of the soul.

The first bowl moistens my lips and throat.
The second bowl banishes my loneliness and melancholy.
The third bowl penetrates my withered entrails,
finding nothing except a literary core of five thousand scrolls.
The fourth bowl raises a light perspiration,
casting life’s inequities out through my pores.
The fifth bowl purifies my flesh and bones.
The sixth bowl makes me one with the immortal, feathered spirits.
The seventh bowl I need not drink,
feeling only a pure wind rushing beneath my wings.

Anyone who loves tea will understand at least some of the heightened sentiments of Lu T'ung, who sat gently sipping in in his mountain hermitage on Mt Sung, in deep reflection, 1200 years ago.



Above. Detail from a hanging scroll from the 13th Century showing Lu T'ung brewing tea.

"Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”

My acquaintance with The Taming of the Shrew (popular with Shakespeare Competition Drama students) was renewed yesterday when a wasp stung me on the upper arm. Although the above passage did not come immediately to mind, as I was reeling in mild agony from this unreasonable and unprovoked assault, it did with the passage of time.

A wasp sting is particularly nasty. I have been stung by assorted bees in the past (an insect that has the decency to expire after the offensive), but wasps can sting many times and survive to sting again. Six hours after the attack, my arm was still aching. I realize that bees and wasps have different lives and purposes - the former's being more noble in my estimation.

An upside of this affair was that the wasp's lair was discovered inside my wooden venetian blinds and that the threat has been neutralised. I too am a gentleman Petruchio, and this tale of waspish skulduggery is told.

Another Christmas has passed like so many others. This year part of my family (the NSW part) had lunch at my brother Michael's flat in Collaroy. Tom came with me this year and was indulged by his uncle's. Ancient PS1 video games played in the background while the lunch was prepared, the table was set, and a little part of England descended upon the northern beaches. Leg ham, roasted vegetables, pork and puddings were high on the list and cracker-pulling explosively rounded off the afternoon.

This has been ever so. My mother, being English, has always insisted on a traditional English Christmas dinner, no matter what the weather. And we have always been happy to eat it, regardless of the sauna-like conditions. I remember other families in our street having seafood lunches or cold salads and meats. Somehow this seemed very unChristmas-like, as if antipodean barbarians had somehow crashed a tea party. Maybe it was just common sense.

Below - my brother Peter and son Tom chat with the expanse of the Pacific in the background.

Tom and I and another family did a short walk to a nearby bush cliff-face the other day. At the base of the cliff, which was not high, the boys began crushing the soft sandstone into a pale yellow powder. The repeated gesture of rubbing the rocks into sand sent my thoughts flying to my youth.

Fifth grade. Killarney Heights Public School. The man named Armstrong had not yet set foot on the moon. Our school playground extended beyond the bounds of the asphalt into a small ragged portion of bushland adjacent a neighbouring house. An army of small boys emerged every recess and lunchtime to dig into the clay banks of the bush (this became a game involving small plastic figurines called Crater Critters, see below). When we tired of this, a production line of short-panted proletarians began grinding down sandstone rock into a powder that would be funneled into discarded empty beer bottles. This went on for some time as I recall, at least until teachers cottoned on to the industrial nature of our play. At some time during Fifth grade, the area became out of bounds. End of an era.

I also recall this as a time when I chatted avidly to my erstwhile best friend, Michael Chapman, about pop music. He was hugely enarmoured of the Australian star Russell Morris (he of The Real Thing fame). We would clamber over rocks and wander the long stretches of concrete and grass discussing the smallest details in the life of his pop idol and flicking through Go Set magazine. It was a different time to now. Cassette players and tapes were the current biggest thing. Families had one Hi-Fi system in their house if they were lucky. In most respects, we were beholden to what was played on the radio and that was the Top 40. Or rather, a dozen or so songs played over and over all day.



A young Russell Morris as I knew him in the late sixties.

flowers in martin place

slow the forests grow,
hard grief-bed of unasked giving,
long, stem-lines of shadow.

Today, terrible news from a school in Pakistan where many children and teachers have been murdered by Taliban violence. I am not sure what god these people claim to be representing in their mad dash to a virgin-saturated heaven, but the monstrous, vengeful and blood-seeking deity that they appear to worship cannot be real.

There is no reasoning with this kind of person. They are zealously and exclusively right in their own addled psychopathic way and to stay for a chat would invite certain death. They are not the only ones to represent a dead-end in human development, but they are clearly the most visible at present.

It is sad whenever life is lost pointlessly. Sometimes this happens in the everyday run of life - the mundane trip to the shops in a car comes to mind. Other times it happens as a result of wider conflict, such as civilian fatalities in war. Things happen according to laws of nature and fallible beings, as we are, operate within these realms.

The Lindt Cafe siege and shootings in Sydney fall somewhere between these fields. Malign human agency, as happens in wartime (and finds an equivalency in political extremism) meets the sheer possibility of chance; just being at a cafe for a cup of coffee.

I missed most of the media hyperbole yesterday but the little I did hear was sufficient to show that reason had been abandoned to a hyper-reality and a sadly predictable political cant of the worst kind. If anyone with ill-intent and a desire for saturating publicity was watching, then they will know what to do.

I was pleased though at the desire of many to show solidarity with others who might otherwise have felt threatened by the turn of events. The #I'llRideWithYou phenomenon shows that it possible to rise above prejudice and step out to help with change-making behaviours. In the end, little differences and changes can make a world of difference, if only we could see the long perspectives available to us in the moment.

I was talking to a friend last night. He told me that his children enjoyed playing Minecraft but he was worried about the potential from strangers entering the Minecraft world. So as a good parent might, he gathered a supportive group of parents and set up a private Minecraft world on a designated server. There were 12 player licenses so good school-friends of his children filled these slots as players. For the first month all went well. Industrious Minecraft communities emerged and collaborated with each other. By the second month, however, trouble emerged. Worlds created by individual players found themselves subject to overnight attacks with pixelated TNT bombs. Hours of work was destroyed anonymously in seconds.

At the same time, other school friends who were not part of the private Minecraft world began picking on the select group. There were bullying and taunting incidents. By the third month, the parent closed down the server. The experiment was over. He described it as being like a re-run of "Lord of The Flies"

This experience would have made a great research thesis. It also highlights the problem of anonymity, the internet and social media. Everybody has heard of trolls - e-folks who join forums and the like with the sole purpose of offending. Faceless and nameless, they are free to indulge whatever dark fantasy or nasty inclination they like. They thrive on hurting and outraging. It is much harder to do this is the real world, for fear of social ostracism.

I could proffer any number of theories on the psychology of this kind of person, but I won't. Here is a Minecraft pixelate instead.

Summer has broken from the barrier and it is hot and steamy. Stifling days are later punctuated by often fierce electrical storms. Birds sit open-mouthed and splay their wings on the ground to get relief. There is a growing lassitude.

Having finished an online Certificate of Tesol recently, I have just begun the free add-on Certificate of Business English. I seems unlikely that any great joy can be derived from teaching course book BE ( have a look for yourself) but there is a lot to be gained from teaching a more general ESL with business characteristics, so to speak. This was my approach when Yes English landed a BE contract with a Kaibara-based engineering company (Everloy Nozzles) around 2005.

I took the class over about a year later and quickly jettisoned the awful course book that nobody in the class appeared to understand. In practical terms, these students, all engineers, did not need the grindingly dull terminology of business speak, but rather, a way to communicate in English with their Chinese peers. So this is what we did, adding little relevant asides that touched upon the kinds of technical terms that might arise from the work that they did.

I really enjoyed this class and was sad to leave them a year later. Sometimes my mind drifts to rural Kaibara and I wonder if those young engineers are still with the company, whether married or not, or if they still hang out at Panchinko Parlours, where the whirl of noise and smoke is their lot.

A couple of photos won't go astray here. In the first I am approaching the company on the way to a lesson. The second is a group shot of my final class, in the board room, no less.

Following the sad accidental death of cricketer Phillip Hughes in the Sheffield Shield this week, a simple tribute went via twitter - #putoutyourbats. Most Australian families have a cricket bat lying around somewhere and cricket in some form was a part of most boy's childhood. For me too, for some of the happiest memories I have are of cricket down at the park or up against the front garage door. I took a small cricket bat to Japan to show the kids an alternative to baseball.

The putoutyourbats is such a simple and beautiful tribute to Phil Hughes. It captures a mood of sadness at its essence and requires no words. Here's what Macksville Public School did today.

Rest in Peace Phillip Hughes.

Periodically, the poor and disadvantaged are singled out for special treatment. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves in receipt of tough medicine. Sometimes they starve to death, such as peasant farmers have done on numerous occasions in China. Others, through want of food resort to petty theft and are variously executed or transported vast distances to penal settlements, there to linger at the pleasure of a monarch. Many of the poor are located in dangerous or vulnerable circumstances and are often the first to suffer when war or natural disasters strike. So it isn't a lot of fun being poor. You tend to die younger and lead a much meaner existence than those better off.

Having got all this learnt though a copious historical recording, it is a wonder that the modern poor should continue to come in for unsolicited attention from politicians. The little that they do get in welfare payments (should they be unemployed) is made to feel like a lot. In fact, it is too much, according to this line of thinking, for it stifles the will to succeed and kills the will to independently thrive. Every so often a malingering exception is found (such as someone unfairly claiming multiple benefits) and this sets aflame the passionate fire of conservative thriftiness. It is a thriftiness who sibling is a punishing zealot.

I see the poorest of the poor in my work and I have yet to meet a person who didn't want to get out of their circumstances and do better. Often humble, even timid, they are usually just looking for a way to make ends meet - a difficult task indeed when their rents alone total a substantial part of their income. So I have little time for the cigar-smoking, self-congratulatory, full-bellied politicians and their erstwhile pundits in the media. They have no notion of going without, or having to make the choice between feeding their children, paying the power bill or keeping a roof over their head. The poor may always be with us but there seems to be no good reason to punish them over and over again.

I am coming to the conclusion that moaning about 'the youth of today' is universal. It crosses cultures and periods in time. At the moment I am reading China Witness by Xinran, a brilliant book about the fast diminishing and largely silent voices of the generation of Chinese who witnessed the major events of the 20th Century. Their lives are characterised by a lack of. A lack of food, decent shelter, proper sleep, security, choice, education and so forth. They have a surfeit though, of meaning, through a heightened sense of duty, commitment to a cause, the camaraderie of adversity, the idea of something greater than themselves and a huge work ethic. These kinds of stories are very apparent in the interviews that Xinran conducted in China Witness.

But even these kind, humble and resilient people fall for the 'the youth of today' syndrome. It is clear that, while they are often proud of the achievements of their own children, they nevertheless feel misunderstood and undervalued. If they told their stories to their children they would be ridiculed, they often report. Their kids are too busy getting a life and making money. Self, self, self.

More commonly in the West these days, the language is couched in terms of generational differences. Gen X are this and Gen Y, or Millenials are that. There follows a screed of faults that might be described as the 'usual suspects', with laziness, incompetence and selfishness heading up any list. Most reports are anecdotal, meaning that generalizations should not be drawn, though they are anyway. It has been ever so.

not-yet-summer heat
insouciant pen, jet stream
plying unstarred skies