A hot and windy day. A day so dry you want to reach for water every hour. Ice cubes melt hastily as if their constitutions are are insult to the elements. Yes, it's definitely the weather that one might call bushfire weather, though I don't want to say it too loudly. Touching wood, I note the latest notification alert popping up on my phone. Nothing close, nothing pressing, yet.

The State of NSW is beset by blazes as any number of maps will demonstrate. The Blue Mountains is a favourite spot for fire, its towns snaking along ridge-lines and spilling into valleys, making it almost uniquely vulnerable. There is no getting away from backyards that sit square into bushland, whole streets set up like nine pins. Its a fact of life, though when push comes to shove, it seems more like a truth buried deep at the back of the mind, only retrieved when days like this come along.

Yes, things could get ugly, fast. A change of wind is due this evening which will cool the air, though maybe at the expense of containing fires. As I write a fire truck roars down the street. Wither?

"No, you cannot come here
this is no time for a tryst,
Ash is falling from the sky
and birds don't sing
I have packed my wedding dress
and my mother's candle sticks

Don't you watch the news?
The State's on fire,
The highway's cut every second day.
We're sitting here
Writing wills and lists
and memoirs that might be our last."

from Bushfire, by Kate Llewellyn


Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I should have further added, since it is of enduring importance, that today is Armistice Day. That dreadful conflict in Europe was a precursor to the next awful conflict in Europe, the latter being even more world-wide. That war led in turn to the post-war outcomes that ushered in the Cold War. And on it goes.

The Great War was perhaps the worst of all though, fought largely in trenches, conditions that destroyed the souls of men and brutalised the world thereafter. By any standard, it was incomprehensible.



Lest We Forget.

You would have to have been hiding in a log, or maybe practising asceticism, to have not heard or seen that we are well and truly in bushfire season. The drought, warmer than average temperatures and strong winds have combined to make November one of the worst opening periods in a long while, with potentially greater hazard ahead.

You never know really just when or where or even how a fire might suddenly threaten you - they can appear out of no-where and travel at great speed. They create their own micro-climate as they go, making predictions often impossible.

Tomorrow is gazetted as a catastrophic alert for fire in Sydney, the Hunter and the Central Tablelands. A catastrophe exceeds an extreme episode, apparently, and creates circumstances in which property and life are at a great risk. Hazelbrook and the Blue Mountains are within this triangle of death and neighbouring Woodford had a foretaste of what might soon come only a few days ago.

There is no point in dwelling on these matters. Fire is a part of the Australian landscape and has been so for thousands of years. Living in this national park is a risk, as it is a joy. NSW has already taken a battering as the following photo from a mid-north coast town of Harrington shows. Dante, had he seen it, might have written such a ghastly image into his great work, The Divine Comedy, as prose.



Addendum:

The photo below was taken on Friday in Woodford. The actual spot is a mere 900 metres from my house in Hazelbrook, but the wind was blowing from the west, so there was no risk to us. My point is this - you can never know where fire might strike, nor the exact circumstances of its path and progress. A wind from the east would have completely changed the outcome. My heartfelt thanks to this brave RFS volunteer.

big November sky
blue, but for a tea-stained cloud-
bushfire!

summer's baying wind
cannot shake the creases
from his beige jacket

The pursuit of happiness is not a modern phenomenon. But its present-day iteration has become almost pathological, with any number of attractions, distractions and lifestyles promoted as happiness-inducing. Alas, such happiness that is derived is often fleeting, followed, often as not, by boredom, dissatisfaction and a search for the next hit.

This comes about in part from a misunderstanding of how happiness arises or even what it is. A modern motion is that happiness is a goal in itself, to be sought after as often as possible. This is a fundamentally flawed view, for it is rare that such a goal can be achieved (happiness being an abstraction) and it sets folks up for one failure after another.

Simply put, happiness for the most part is a bi-product of pursuing meaningful goals in life. It arises as we engage with pursuits that give us purpose and a worthwhile sense of self. Sometimes it almost creeps up on us, slipping ghost-like into our bodies as we go about our day.

The current Dalai Lama noted, “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” That is wise advice. I would add that those "actions" are considered actions, ones that engage an individual intentionally with the world.

I have said before that consumer capitalism is a poison and a significant part of the problem. Any system that tells you that happiness is derived from spending, then more spending, in order to acquire more and more stuff, is morally corrupt, because it is consciously propagating a lie.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul famously said that "the love of money is the root of all evil" It is a problem for all ages but especially the present, where money and its allies are very nearly an obsession. The deeper the obsession, the greater the dissatisfaction.

I cannot fathom the paradox.

A question that pops up from time to time on sites like Quora goes like this. Humans went to the moon and back in the late 1960's and repeatedly into the 1970's, so why did we not go to Mars? Or back to the Moon? The simplest answer is usually the best and it runs - because the money dried up! NASA had a decent chunk of the American GDP through the Apollo program and once the Soviets had been bested, the funding was seriously pared back. No more lunar missions and certainly, no Martian adventures, for the meantime.

There were other reasons too. The technology that took men to the Moon was simply not up to a Martian trip. Take your mobile phone out of your pocket and look at it. Congratulations, your processing power is vastly superior to that available aboard these missions. The Moon is a three day journey each way. Mars, at best, will be a 21 month round trip! That is a massive difference in scale and difficulty and much else besides.

So now we are in a new space race, one in which Mars is a strong candidate for human exploration. There is a lot of anticipation and hype. Sure, technology has come a long way since those early days. There is talk of a manned mission before 2030, a mere 11 years away. A lot of work is being done but there are huge problems to overcome. The main one is simply this - how do humans survive in space over long periods of time? Zero gravity and radiation alone present serious long-term obstacles. The cocoon of the Earth protects and sustains us. Space really just wants to kill us.

A remote exploration of the Red planet still seems to be the best bet for now. Maybe we need a few more decades of innovation before we dare send people on such a dangerous mission. Robots can build living environments and perhaps even begin terraforming the surface, if that is possible. There is no point in sending folks to their certain deaths just for the sake of planting a flag. Or leaving a footprint.

"No, no, no - back to earth!"

Finally, Uluru is closed for climbing. No more the frantic race to beat the last chance, yesterday. I hear that the ascent was on many folk's "bucket-lists" ( I have a bone to pick with such lists!) and I also read today that people knew it was disrespectful to climb the monolith but cheerfully did so anyway. Ah, such jocular self-condemnation!

I suspect that if a group of people regularly attempted to climb St Peter's dome, or abseil Westminster Cathedral, there would be a big media to-do and lines of police ready to make arrests. That is the one important difference. Respect is an aspect of power and the dominant cultural group usually holds most of it.

But something positive has come about, even if it is decades late in arriving.

the bee drinks-
never mind the Spring gale,
the churning pool

Yesterday Ann added to her list of recent achievements by gaining her NSW Driver's License. In doing so, she leapfrogged the whole provisional license stage, largely because she already held a Thai license. I can also report with considerable pride that she passed both written and practical tests with a 100% correct record, something of a rarity I am told.

She is a very goal-centred person and works very determinedly on tasks until they are achieved. This is one of the key differences between people raised in Asian cultures (specifically, East and South East Asian) and the increasingly sorry state of how Westerners approach education and much else besides. I won't go on.

Well done honey.

I have started to settle in to the presenter's role at 2RPH, having now produced programs for The Australian, The Newcastle Herald and Features Forum. Each program has slightly different criteria and the computer needs to be individualised for each program. My role is to establish the running order on the monitor before the program goes to air. After that we are live and anything can happen, though I am required to mitigate any glitches or disasters. That's the theory.

Even though I have spent many hours on microphones and spoken in front of audiences, I still get very nervous in those opening minutes. This is the time when a lot of things happen in a particular sequence (such as program intros and time calls) and it falls to the announcer to get it right. I enjoy the thrill of it and generally I have been getting most things right. Now, I just need to sound a little less flustered on mike in those first five minutes!

My view.

The View

The view is fine from fifty,
Experienced climbers say;
So, overweight and shifty,
I turn to face the way
That led me to this day.

Instead of fields and snowcaps
And flowered lanes that twist,
The track breaks at my toe-caps
And drops away in mist.
The view does not exist.

Where has it gone, the lifetime?
Search me. What’s left is drear.
Unchilded and unwifed, I’m
Able to view that clear:
So final. And so near.

Philip Larkin

It may be that Mr Larkin was experiencing a mid-life crisis. It may be that his choices in life ("Unchilded and unwifed") left him with regrets about falling short or being unfulfilled in some way. But I think really that, given what he has written elsewhere (see Dockery and Son) Larkin just wanted a good jumping-off point for a poem. Anniversaries are often worthy places to be more reflective and the higher the number, the greater the introspection. I don't think that this is law of any sort. Ninety-year olds may have reached a place of wisdom where regrets dissipate, like the years. Middle age reflection is more prone to sadness - "Where has it gone, the lifetime?"

I find myself somewhere in between these positions, not really having regrets, but seeing the time ahead as growing shorter. At 61 the view really does exist, but it is not a landscape full of flowers. Rather, one of mildly sunny uplands, diminishing in brightness, perhaps a little greyer than greener, hoving into view, though slightly out-of-focus. That will do really.

the moon lounges
in the crook of a grey gum,
momentary lodger

The debate over immigration to Australia has grown increasingly acrimonious over the past two decades. Ever since the Tampa Incident, which I viewed from Japan with disgust, the broader focus has shifted to so-called boat people. These are the poor folk who venture forth in run-down and often dangerous boats with the intention of seeking a better life in Australia. They represent a very small proportion of people who seek asylum in Australia, yet they exercise mountains of newsprint and worse, are grist to every conservative politicians mill.

A recent article from The Guardian (8/10/19) highlighted this fact. Over the past five years, 95,000 people who came by plane requested asylum. Last year, over 24,000 sought refuge, though something like 84% were refused. Many are probably deemed to be economic refugees, which is just another way of saying people who want to work and get ahead and see Australia as a good place to do it. Many may be exploited while they wait assessment and legal challenges to rulings.

All countries want to have control of their borders but the manner in which this has been politicised and subsequently mishandled is appalling. Too many feeble-minded politicians and others with no moral fibre to speak of, together with their lackeys in the media, will beat any drum that furthers their ambitions. I am guessing that refugees with air-tickets will be the next big scare, with a conga-line of indignant toads lining up to say something tough, or just plain nasty.

The Enlightenment Project seems to have sputtered to a halt. It took a beating in the 20th Century with the advent of fascism, communism and the atom bomb. Post-Modernism dissected and dismissed it. Trumps ascendancy mocks it. Populists everywhere are reading the last rites. Yet still I hope.

Not fit to purpose.

Those of you who read this blog (surely no-one!-ed.) will know that my wife and I have been in a visa process for over two and a half years now. Ann's initial PR application was submitted in February of 2017, a temporary visa was granted in March 2018, her daughter's (dependants) visa shortly followed that and yesterday, both were granted permanent residency in Australia.

This is a cause for much rejoicing. The process is long and difficult and expensive, though more onerous yet is the sheer difficulty of proving genuine love and commitment to sceptical strangers. It is the job of immigration officers to test the bona fides of applicants and that is perfectly fair. It is not unreasonable for them to demand a high standard of evidence. What is hard is the finding of that evidence where there is only flesh and blood, words and actions, beseeching thoughts that cannot be translated onto a neatly typed page or rendered as a legal document.

But here we are and I am grateful for the impartiality and fairness of Australian immigration officers. Congratulations to my wife Ann and her daughter JJ. A new dawn today.

A few days ago I was watching the evening news with my usual one eye when a familiar face popped up in the midst of a rally in the CBD. It was the very visage of my friend Martin Wolterding, who was in the process of being dragged by the police from his location in the middle of the road to another place, off camera. Martin and many others were involved in a climate change rally which was disrupting traffic in the Broadway area, sufficient to provoke the cops into needlessly aggressive action. It doesn't take much to get the police riled up and Martin ended up with a swollen arm and a nasty bruise to his side.

You might think that this is the lot of protesters - they will bounce back and be ready for a rally the following day! But Martin is a 75 year old academic who just happens to be passionate about climate change and there were many others of a similar age present too. This is an issue that crosses barriers of this kind and understandably so - survival is something deep within all creatures. Do we really want a planet that becomes increasingly uninhabitable over a relatively short space of time?

The sacrifices are not so great that they cannot be achieved. Still, I have my doubts. My reading of human history and psychology suggests that we will fall short, sufficient to bring disaster upon us. Happy to be proved wrong though!

Exhibit A

spring rain--
in the thicket
a discarded letter blows

Issa

Listening to podcasts occupies a lot of my walking for exercise and commuting time. The list of interesting topics is pretty much endless and I have alluded in previous posts to some of my favourites. Things come in and out of fashion and so does my capacity to listen for extended periods to any one genre. After splurging somewhat on political and historical material for a few years, I have recently turned to science podcasts. Lately I have also been listening to this kind of content on Youtube channels. A big shout-out is due to Isaac Arthur and John Michael Godier for the excellent work they do on their respective channels.

Specifically, I like those that find a kind of comfortable intersection between cosmology and the hypothetical, things that are within the realm of real science but also explore more exotic fields, places more liminal, if you like. I have in mind topics like the Fermi Paradox, Kardashev Civilisations, Dyson Spheres, Boltzmann Brains and so forth. While some of these cross over the boundary into science fiction, all have genuine roots in actual science, meaning that they have the potential to be possible, never mind the odds.

I confess that they can be difficult to understand. Most of the creators of this material are very, very smart people and while they target a general audience, being on one's best thinking behaviour is de riguer. There is no room for switching off. It is hard not to take a mental nap now and then because the material discussed can be difficult to process and retain. Even when I do understand it there is the problem of remembering. I have read at least a dozen times about the theory of Boltzmann Brains but I could not give you a coherent and detailed account of them now.

It is exciting to push yourself to the outer edge of your mental capacity. The pursuit of knowledge is a worthy goal in itself; it requires no justification, only the desire to know more before the lights eventually go out.

Yesterday Ann told me that she had had computer problems. Her PC was stuck on a white screen when booted up, with an endlessly spinning ball the only sign of a pulse within. I hadn't heard of the white screen problem before but upon investigation, found that it was amongst those that had a deadly classification. I mean, it was one of those that carried the moniker, screen of death. There are, apparently, white and blue screens of death and perhaps even a black one, though there does not appear to be a hierarchy of death-dealing amongst them.

What was even more interesting was her solution. Dusting. She claims that a Thai language site she went to suggested dusting parts of the computer and to this end she removed some screws and commenced cleaning inside. I am guessing from her description that this meant removing the battery pack and perhaps the lid of the RAM storage unit, but in any event, whatever she did worked and her PC was restored to rude good health. I can find no such advice at any English language site, where the preferred solution is no less terrifying, to wit, booting up in safe mode and carrying out all manner of complex operations. I have done things like this before, but I have always felt like a man with no medical qualifications operating on a hapless patient.

I was never one for tinkering under the bonnet, though once a friend and I pulled parts from the motor of a wrecked Ford Cortina. I remember wondering at the time how we might put them back again if we had to. The car was going for scrap, so we never did. My friend became a mechanic, I became an English teacher. Together, we could probably just about have read the repair manual.

The failure of humans to move collectively and decisively to curb greenhouse emissions in an attempt to moderate global warming is astonishing. The science is in and it continues to come in, a mass of data that points in one direction. There are no serious challenges to it, notwithstanding the nonsense from some politicians (who should know better) and a small but vocal group of deniers. The consequences of inaction are deadly serious, ranging from a massive disruption to economies and lifestyles to a complete collapse of civilisation as we know it.

Yet these same nay-sayers are happy to use all the fruits of applied science with nary a quibble. They drive cars, use mobile phones, watch TV, use the internet, turn on a light switch, cool things in refrigerators - you get the picture - every aspect of modernity is somehow mediated by the application of science, which comes from the efforts of scientists. This is an extreme and dangerous form of cherry-picking. It is double-think, or not thinking at all. That a 16 year old girl needed to stand in front of a room of world leaders and tell them the unvarnished truth is sufficient to ring alarm bells. Greta Thunberg pointed out the bleeding obvious to folks who are supposed to be leading the planet to a better future.

One theory about potentially advanced civilisations in the cosmos is that they must pass through 'great filters' in order to survive. The splitting of the atom would almost certainly qualify as one such filter, one that is still unresolved on our planet. Despoiling the environment, changing the environment in fundamental ways, may be other filters that we are now coming up against. I hope that we can take on these challenges honestly and diligently, but the problem of knuckleheads remains. Is there a critical mass of the stupid and the stubborn beyond which action becomes almost impossible?

One brave soul.

The autumn basho of the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo has finished with a very unorthodox run to the line. The final tie-breaking bout was between two sekiwake rikishi, Mitakeumi and Takakeisho. Both have won the title before and unimpeded through the absence of the two yokuzuna, found themselves at 11-3 before proceeedings began yesterday. At the tie-break (12-3 apiece) Mitakeumi overcame the wrecking-ball that is his opponent's tachiai to force him from the ring soon after the bout began.

It was a very interesting tourney all round. There were some curious decisions by the gyoji, a lot of false starts (matta) and excellent performances from some rank and filers, notably Okinoumi and Tsurugisho. Sadly, Georgian Tochinoshin has been demoted to sekiwake, where he will need ten wins in the next meet to regain his ozeki status.

Can't wait. I really enjoy sumo. An acquired taste yes, but once acquired, then one is smitten.

Tom's English class are studying a poetry unit at the moment. It happens to be a rather difficult unit, comprising sonnets and odes and the like. Readers of this blog (surely just you!-ed.) will know that I love poetry but I think its early introduction at this level may leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth for many students. Tom confesses to hating it already, which is a blow indeed.

The whole of Year 8 have an assessment in which they must visually present a poem in the style of those being studied. Knowing that Tom was unlikely to rise to the challenge of finding a poem, I composed a sonnet yesterday. I had been wandering up from Thai Town on Tuesday in the rain when I noticed more and more broken umbrellas in bins and in the gutter. The rain had brought them out and the wind and had done them in. This is my first sonnet so I hope you will excuse its amateur faults.

Sonnet

When icy rains come after sunny skies,
Then brollies of all kinds are in the air.
But when in whipping winds the pennants fly,
A thousand shattered frames lie in despair.
They cluster in the bins along the street,
They fall from grace in gushing gutters there
And whether eye or foot or hand they meet,
The message is ‘we are beyond repair!’

Yet once they snuggled gladly in the hand,
Or found a place in bag or case or tray.
They were the dripping leaders of the band,
Fond spindly masters of a liquid day.
Now like discarded skeletons they lie,
Closer to the grave than to the sky.

The autumn tourney of the Grand Sumo has reached the half-way mark in Tokyo with a number of surprises already. The basho began without ozeki Takazasu and yokozuna Hakuho withdrew with an injury shortly after the commencement. Georgian ozeki Tochinoshin is clearly carrying an injury and seems uncompetitive at the moment. If he fails to win 8 out of 15 matches, he will face demotion to sekiwake, again. (And in late-breaking news just in from Tokyo, the remaining yokozuna Kakuryu has just withdrawn from the rest of the tournament. He had suffered three defeats in a row, so something was up with his body, evidently.)

Size obviously matters to a large extent in sumo, but two much smaller rikishi are challenging this notion, at least at the present. Both Enho and Ishiura are giving away dozens of kilos to their opponents every match and yet they both have winning records at the time of writing. Speed, skill and cunning seem to be their stocks-in-trade and audiences delight in their victories. If you stand Enho at 98kg up against the heaviest rikishi, Ichinojo, at a (slimmed down) 224kg, you have some idea of what the little people are up against. Yet compete they do.

Yesterday one of the bouts ended dramatically with the gyoji (referee) nowhere to be seen. The poor fellow had taken a tumble at a critical moment, falling from the dohyo into the first row of the audience. He emerged somewhat dishevelled, the bout having ended. Never mind, there is a reserve gyoji at the ready and at least five other judges(shimpan) at ringside! If the match is ever in dispute, they all emerge for a mono-ii (discussion), something which happens more often than you might imagine.

Enho and Ishiura

The baptism of fire that was promised me when I took the announcer's chair for the first time has proved to be a scorifying one. That, at least, is how I felt after I had done the first presentation of The Australian at 2RPH. Mistakes are easy to make, for there are crucial timing issues at the beginning and end of the program. I did my third shift yesterday (though on a different newspaper) and it went passably well.

Announcers at 2RPH are also program producers, so manipulating the studio board and computer are combined with choosing news articles for the readers, keeping an eye on the clock and making sure the whole thing is coming together as planned. I guess I will get used to it but it will take time. And frankly, it is a little scary. I probably need more of these kinds of challenges.

Massive and unseasonable winds continued through the night, worse in many places nearer the coast where thousands are now without power. There are lots of fallen trees about too, including a large branch from a callistemon by the side of our house. It had been looking somewhat precarious for a while, but the wild gales overnight provided the final push. The rest of the tree is healthy and should survive the weather, I hope.

Wind has a habit of driving many creatures to distraction. I remember as a teacher when windy days often meant that kids in my classes would be mildly unhinged, much harder to settle. Today it's the turn of the neighbourhood birds, who are frantically bombing each other, swooping rapidly from branch to bush to roof, as if drunk on the sheer energy of each gust. Of course, it being spring, they may have other motives. Meanwhile, on the washing line, the clothes are performing a kind of Danse Macabre.


Afternoon On A Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!


Edna St. Vincent Millay

The wind is up today and along the highway, bright red signs proscribe the lighting of any fires. Living in a national park on the driest continent in the world is a little like residing on top of the biggest tinder box known to, em, collectors of tinder boxes. But it would a mighty tinder box indeed. My point is, bushfires are a constant menace and have wreaked havoc in the Blue Mountains many times. Strong winds and higher temperatures are two of the most obvious ingredients for a conflagration to occur. Each town has its own fire-fighting service (RFS), but in the worst possible scenario, everything could go up in flames. Still, we are in better shape than those poor souls who live at the edge of an event horizon near a black hole.

On a less bleak note, my darling wife Ann passed her DKT (Driver Knowledge Test) for the state of NSW this morning with an 100% correct score. If you take a minute to think about the fact that she studied for the test in English (from a data base of 900 questions!) and sat the test in English, then you can imagine how proud of her I am. The next step is the actual driving test, planned for a few weeks from now. She has a Thai Drivers License but it can only be used in Australia for a finite period.

Most of the plums are now in bloom and the jasmine is not far behind. The air is full of birds clamouring for insects and bees are blindly intense amongst the tossing florets. Soon enough these whipping gusts will strip these fruit trees of their flowers, leaving little for the rosellas.


"I saw the sap stir in the wood,
The fire put out its leaves of flame;
Brilliant as summer flashed and fell
The rose intolerant, the flower.
The darkness stirred like dust on air,"


Rosemary Dobson, from The Fire.

"For He knows how we were made, He remembers that we are dust." Ps. 103:14

The idea of being nothing more than dust does not appeal to the modern mind. Are we not the crown of all creation, the most successful and advanced species the planet has ever known? Have we not become the very masters of nature, capable of not only explaining complex phenomena in the universe, but also having the capacity to leave our home world? Yes, and yes, and yes again, but...

The memory of the dust from which we have come - call it star dust if you wish - is essential to the balance we need to strike between our success as humans, such as it is, and our mortal frame. The entrances and exits from life are there for all to see, and while we have a preference for birth over the other, neither are options. From the first cry to the last breath is really a short interlude.

We are dust indeed and that's the wonder of it. What better retort to the growing hubris and narcissism of the times, what better grounding in the face of so much pointless clamour, than to know our true pedigree? And if God knows that too, remembers it, then that is a comfort beyond measure.

'Let you not say of me when I am old,
In pretty worship of my withered hands
Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
Of such a life as mine run red and gold
Even to the ultimate sifting dust,'

from Sonnet IX, St. Vincent Millay

If my body was a motor vehicle, then it would have been traded in some time ago. There are very few cars on the road that are of a 60 year vintage and those that are have usually been lovingly restored. For worn-out brakes, gammy suspension and a smoking engine, not to mention all manner of dings, read sore joints, clapped-out shoulders, a bad back and so on and so forth. The truth is, such a trade-in would soon be on the way to the wreckers yard.

But my mind is as nimble as ever and perhaps more adaptive and malleable than at any time in the past. Sure I forget things and I have more of those annoying tip-of-the-tongue moments, but my capacity for learning and critical thinking remains intact. This being Father's Day in Australia, I think I can take this one short bow at least.

It is also the first day of spring and the weather has turned, on cue, to warm and sunny, as if by Divine fiat. I did my walk this morning in a t-shirt for the first time in months, which is an energising feeling. Unencumbered, one wants to walk faster, if only the knees are willing! It is a glorious day for anything outside though. I cannot put it better than e.e. cummings.


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

On Friday I attended a lunch for 2RPH volunteers at the Glebe Town Hall. The latter is a magnificent pile dating from 1880, beautifully restored in 2018. The event itself was delightful, mostly in that I could mingle with people I had not had a chance to meet at the station yet. My shifts on alternate Thursdays and Fridays do not afford much of a chance to meet anyone other than my own team (who are just great!) and sometimes folks from the preceding and following shifts. Of course, I am not there to socialise, but to work, but it's always possible to do both at the same time. Well, usually, anyway.

2RPH has been short of announcers and has recently been trying to promote the idea amongst its somewhat reluctant "reading" cohort. It is understandable really, for the announcer, who is also the producer, needs to master the technical side of running a program (computer, board, timing, crosses, announcing etc) and also allocate reading material to the readers. Those who read only have to read the material they have been given and do not need to worry about how the program is going.

So it was with some trepidation that I put my hand up for training as an announcer. The board and computer are not that difficult, but the combination of other elements make it a challenge for the beginner. I will do a practice session by myself in a week or two and then a real live shift the week following. I think that keep calm and carry on will be the mantra for that program and all that follow.

Friday's luncheon.

sunlit curtains,
bees in shadow puppet play
with dark blossoms

In China, the Communist Party is trying to impose culturally normative values on the population through the proscription of 'bad personal behaviour." Doubtless this has something to do with China's rapid rise as an economic power and the change in circumstances, for the better, of millions of people. While it may well be 'glorious to grow rich' as Deng so aptly put it 30 years ago, the act of growing wealthy and chasing the filthy dollar, or yuan, can detach people from their roots. It can also change attitudes and behaviours for the worse, for affluence has its own price.

In China this is a double whammy, for not only does 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' have to deal with the contradiction of having swallowed capitalism almost wholly, but a society steeped in centuries of Confucian ideology must deal with the most rapid changes it has faced in hundreds of years. I doubt that President Xi would be interested in a Cultural Revolution 2.0, which wreaked disaster on China the last time, though he may be interested in reinventing Mao as a kind of wise ancestor.

Most of the proscriptions on behaviour are perfectly understandable, with no spitting, shouting and general anti-social behaviour apparent. But there are a few curious examples too, such as "No square dancing that disturbs others". Perhaps an innocent square dance is just one step away from an insurrection in the minds of the authorities. Strangely enough, there are no injunctions against the mass display of umbrellas, wet weather or not.

only the moonlight,
my eyes dark though the glass
blossoms suspending

Sometimes I feel like I have been washed up on a familiar shoreline, on a beach whose low breakers gently push me onto the sand. I feel this way sometimes when I have spent time with my library, the vast majority of which is in my garage. It used to be a much bigger collection but moving back to a smaller house and having a larger family to accommodate made its relocation and culling essential. The core of the library remains, with a lot of plays, novels, poetry and history books apparent, amongst a motley selection from Christianity, Buddhism, Psychology and Cultural Theory.

I love to pick up and dip into a book I haven't read in 30 or 40 years, finding a kind of peace and also an abiding joy in unfolding the dry pages of memory. Little gems spring out too - a train ticket, a receipt for a chocolate bar from a now defunct confectioner, a political advertisement that I cannot remember cutting from a newspaper, all re-purposed as bookmarks.

It is not really nostalgia and I cannot give it a name. I mean, the feeling I get, like sunshine in winter through a solitary pane of glass, a warm, unsought after spot that unclutters the mind and offers solace. I don't get that same feeling from my kindle, for though it holds many wonderful books, it does not array them in all their dusty, page-worn, lop-sided glory. Books knock up along-side each other like students in an old school photo.

Oh, I do so hope that books and bookshops make a comeback one day, when the gimmickry of technology begins to bore, when people seek a more tactile immersive experience.

Some years ago when I was teaching in Japan, I had what you might call my favourite classes. I didn't play favourites of course. It was just that some classes were more fun or more pleasant to teach than others, which is only to be expected.

On Wednesday afternoons one such group of kids rocked in the door about 4pm, their bicycles forming a line outside the front gate. They were three grade 5 elementary school boys from Sanda Shogakko, who had belted up the hill after the final bell, full of enthusiasm and ready to study. Imagine such a scene in Australia! Sorry, but I can't.

One of the boys, Junpei Yamaguchi, was the son of one of our Japanese friends, Shuko. We had first met Shu in the playground of the school during a special school athletics event. She had sauntered over, introduced herself and then asked us to write the lyrics to a song she had composed the music to. We did, but I digress!

Last week the grown-up Junpei came for a short trip to Sydney and I met up with him for lunch and a touch of sight-seeing. Junpei is now in his twenties, has a job with a a firm named Takeda in Hiroshima, and is planning to get married next year. His English is pretty good, for which I must take at least a little credit.

Spending the afternoon with him not only jogged my forgotten Japanese from its hiding place, but reminded me of one of the happiest times of my life.

Thanks buddy!

"Now listen, you who say,'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, car and make money on business.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 4:13-14)

I was reflecting on these New Testament verses last night, how deep and almost nihilistic they seem (though James does go on to urge us to put our full trust in God) and also somewhat stoic in tone. Epictetus would have probably agreed and then added,

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."

Together, these two positions mock at the contemporary vogue (though it is ageless) for having control of one's life, of being the captain of one's destiny. The thrust of modern education, of business school ideology, of media commentary, is that you do have control of your personal circumstances, even if the world around seems impervious to those efforts to manipulate. Thus an illusion of control is established, where we are led to believe that our reach is far beyond what it really is. You can see the consequences for this kind of thinking - anxiety, frustration, anger and depression - over not being able to rule over the opinions and behaviour of others, nor of coming to terms with chance events, the laws of nature and just plain bad luck.

So we ask 'why did this happen to me?' when the furniture of lives is abruptly upended. It can happen to anyone at anytime, as James reminds us. How we respond to calamity is strangely within our power, however. Our thinking is the key; all else follows, for better or worse.

Alas, when a light dusting of snow falls in the Upper Blue Mountains, a percentage of Sydneysiders lose their collective minds. I encountered a large number of these folks as I was driving back from Penrith, the roads clogged for kilometres by their over-sized vehicles. I knew full-well that most of the snow this side of Blackheath would likely have melted by early afternoon, the sun now becoming warmer as we prepare for Spring, a sure hazard to the thinning layer of snowflakes. But I wish them well and happy hunting.

Snow brings on deep thoughts and I think that a melancholy might result from gazing too long into its omnipresent whiteness. It can erase the detail and colour from a landscape as much as add to it. I think living in snowy climes might have the effect of inducing withdrawal from the world and going deeper into the self. I remember feeling as much during the cold Japanese winters, a hot sake an adjunct to the process of ongoing reflection. Mr Frost may have felt so too.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

On a lighter note than my previous posts, my family have had a few outings recently. By family, I mean the new and improved version, which now includes Ann's daughter JJ. I think its important that we do things together, all of us, sometimes, notwithstanding my son Tom's desire to cloister himself with computer and mobile phone.

So we have been to my friend Wayne's 60th Birthday Bash on the Central Coast and my Mum's stupendous 90th Birthday Luncheon at Dee Why. Here are two pics that show the two gangs on their respective occasions.

In recent months I have been reading a lot of short fiction, stories that are sometimes no longer than a few pages. Most recently I have read Bernard Malamud's The Jewbird and yesterday I finished the last paragraph of James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues. Set in the same city (New York) and at a similar time, they could not be more different. The former might well be called magical fiction, for a talking bird of the Hebrew faith is the central character. Sonny's Blues is far removed from this world, located in the tough realism of being black in Harlem, though told with an often beautiful poetic, intense language.

All this is leading me to another short story, Updike's A & P, which I was halfway through when news came on the TV that another gun massacre had occurred at a Walmart in El Paso. I stopped to watch (not in disbelief given the frequency of these events in that country), but really out of a desire to try to understand why someone would do such a thing. We have much tighter gun laws in Australia, thank goodness, or else people with mental issues and /or irrational points of view might well be doing the same here.

Looking at the images that came out of El Paso, it struck me that the America of Updike's short fiction was a very different place to that inhabited by the innocent folks of that unfortunate border town, who were going about their own very mundane business, only to struck down by the delusions of another. That someone was heavily armed, not because it makes any sense to be so equipped, but because of another delusion that equates owning guns with liberty.

The A & P is really an innocent tale of male rights of passage perched on the cusp of the revolutions that were about to engulf the West in the 1960's. It pits the dawn of the new with the mores of the old. I am not saying that either is right or wrong, for only time will tell in that respect. Suffice to say that humans have a way of throwing out the baby with the bathwater where revolutions are concerned. May Aristotle's Golden Mean be a guiding principle.

I first came across Okra Smugglers in an online post, purportedly claiming that the painting was of Renaissance origin and demonstrated the lewdness of that era. I am not an art expert but even my amateur eye could tell that this work was not from the Renaissance (though I can see where one might be deceived by its looking not unlike a Bruegel) and was clearly a recent work. In fact, it is a painting by the contemporary Polish/American artist Henryk Fantazos, a fitting name for a producer of such fantastical works.

In fact, it is the curious intersection of the surreal with the real that leaps out of Fantazos's paintings, a dreamworld rooted in the unnervingly familiar. It has been described as an allegorical realism. Okra Smugglers is one of the oddest of such works - firstly, the idea that okra need to be smuggled is strange, secondly, the means of smuggling - in the leggings of the gentleman in the accordion outfit, and most alarmingly, the pants of the young woman gazing out at us - is positively bizarre. Methinks that they will be stopped at the first customs outpost, the contraband spilling from their bodies.

Oh, and another giveaway - the man on the left is wearing a sun-dial wristwatch, locating him firmly in the modern era. "We are running out of time," he seems to be saying as he taps the watch cover. Yet his fellow still has a way to go with bucket of okra.

In an interview, Fantazos said that he wants to paint the images that come to him without censorship, unmediated by other considerations. He also said that "the grotesque is the proper language for depicting our times." As such he is an interesting painter and I encourage you to look for his other works.

My mother turns 90 tomorrow, a ripe old age even by modern standards. In some ways its remarkable that she has made it so far given the many health challenges she has faced over the 10 years. I know that looming large in her thoughts was the fact that her mother, my grandmother, died quite young at 60. Strokes tended to kill in those days and had modern medicine been available, she may well have lived a much longer life. Her loss was a great blow to my mum, for it left her alone and far from her land of birth. It is a testimony to her fortitude that she stuck with it and raised five boys. So tomorrow is an anniversary of many sorts.

I cannot shake from my own thoughts (though it is only tangentially related to the previous paragraph) that humans are not long for this world. It might be just a feeling, a part of my occasional melancholic reflection on the state of things, but is is informed by much wider reading over many years. It is therefore not just a feeling, but an educated guess, which stays with me.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.

Frost had apples in his sight and thoughts of the apple harvest, but I suspect at some deeper level, we are alike in our feelings about the modern world. Are there enough thoughtful and energised people to stop the rot? I don't know.

I came across Schizotypal Personality Disorder when I was studying for a counselling diploma some years ago. It was not a condition that was within the remit of your common or garden counselling therapist, being something that probably required a referral to a more highly qualified practitioner.

I had to dust off one of my journals the other day because I kept encountering individuals on websites who seemed to exhibit some of the characteristics of a STPD profile. These symptoms include strange beliefs or magical thinking, abnormal perceptual experiences, strange thinking and behaviour, paranoia, to name but a few. I am talking specifically here about folks who think that the Moon Landings were a hoax - that they were actually filmed events created in a studio on Earth.

In considering how anyone could possibly ignore the overwhelming evidence for the legitimacy of the Apollo project, I had to take into account that some of these people are just trolls. But there were too many of them, some armed with the most preposterous hypothesis's, to suggest that trolling was the sole cause.

NASA and many other qualified people have taken great pains to answer the often ludicrous and childish questions that have emerged, principally about photos taken on the Moon. All exhibit a painfully low level of science education and perhaps even less common sense. For example, the oft asked question, "Why are there no stars in the photos from the Moon?" is one that your average Year 7 student could answer. One wonders how wilfully stupid anyone could be, unless they have a mental disorder. Cue STPD.

I don't wish to be mean, but these people are stomping on the dreams and memories of many others who derived great joy and inspiration from the Apollo project, a project which set out to put a man on the Moon, and achieved that goal in 1969. You can quibble over whether that goal justified the great cost, that's fine. But to deny it ever happened is the worst kind of self-deception. It's also just plain nasty.

Real man, real moon.

If you are a national newspaper and you are covering an event of such import that your choice of words, what is said and what is seen, is critically important, what are you likely to do? In the case of the New York Times and the day that Man landed on the Moon, the 21st July, 1969, they decided to employ a poet to express in verse what prose could not do. So, they turned to Archibald MacLeish, veteran poet, Pulitzer Prize winner and all round polymath, to find the words that would express the solemn and unprecedented nature of the event.

MacLeish had been previously engaged by the NYT when Apollo 8 had successfully entered lunar orbit. On that occasion he had indeed used prose, a heightened, erudite and resonant prose.

"To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers."

You can quibble with the masculine pronoun now, but it was the norm, then. Aside from the extraordinary Poppy Northcutt, who was working as an engineer for technical staff on that mission, it was very much a white male world. That doesn't lessen the achievement a whit, and much has changed nowadays for the better. But I digress.

Macleish actually penned a poem for the Times for the Apollo 11 landing and it appeared on the front page of the NYT. Here it is.


Voyage To The Moon.


Presence among us,
wanderer in the skies,

dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our
waters silver,

O

silver evasion in our farthest thought–
“the visiting moon” . . . “the glimpses of the moon” . . .

and we have touched you!

From the first of time,
before the first of time, before the
first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us…

Now

our hands have touched you in your depth of night.

Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars, climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed that other down, encountered
cold, faced death–unfathomable emptiness . . .

Then, the fourth day evening, we descended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between our fingers your cold sand.

We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence . . .

and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us . . .

O, a meaning!

over us on these silent beaches the bright earth,

presence among us.




Finally, on this day when this writer reflects upon the significance of something that happened five decades ago, and who feels as inspired as ever, I reprint the classic photo of Buzz Aldrin, on the lunar surface. What brave men these!

Fifty years ago today Apollo 11 was launched, its 8 day mission, to go to the Moon, to land and to come back safely. It was the culmination of a crazy race between the two superpowers, each keen on demonstrating its ideological and economic superiority. After the calamity of Apollo 1 in 1967, the capacity of NASA to get Armstrong and his crew to the lunar surface and back only two years later was remarkable, though probably foolhardy by today's standards. But it was an inspiration and in my estimation, the most significant feat in human history.

Everyone who watched the subsequent landing on the Moon remembers where they were that day. As a fifth grader, I sat with my classmates as grainy black and white images played on the school's TV, the full significance a little lost on us. As an adult I can better understand the enormity of what occurred and just how brave those astronauts were.

The launch

Japan's space agency JAXA's successful probe landing on the asteroid Ryugu is another worthy milestone in the human exploration of our cosmic backyard. Touching down on fast moving rock is nothing like landing an aircraft or parking a car. It takes great precision and skill and clearly the agency and Hayabusa-2 were up to the task. Ryugu is only a few hundred metres across and orbits the Sun at a maximum of 211 million kilometres and its path sometimes crosses between the Earth and Mars.

Hayabusa-2 blasted the asteroid with a copper plate and a box of explosives in April this year in order to loosen rocks and expose material under the surface, before its successful landing on Ryugu three days ago to gather up the rock and soil debris. Here is an image captured just 4 seconds after landing:



Remarkable, don't you think? Man's exploration of space may be our only shot at some kind of immortality, written robotically, though sometimes with human footprints, in the planets, asteroids, moons and empty spaces around us.

The wind last night was the loudest and strangest I have ever heard outside of a typhoon. The latter was a frequent visitor when I lived in Japan, but houses there are set up with shutters which, even though they bang and rattle, give a semblance of safety when the storm is in full swing. Not so here, my paper-thin walls and old aluminium windows a seeming invitation to chaos and the gathering Lords of Misrule.

The sound of the gale last night was both intense and melancholic, as if an angry depressive was trying to batter down the door. Moreover, it stayed at the same volume throughout and the morning, though sunny, seemed like the scene of a minor disaster area. A tree was across the road around the corner and everywhere, the desiccated remains of leaves and branches were scattered like shrapnel. And always I am reminded of Ted Hughes.

....The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.


from Wind

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.

Lately there has been a lot of fence-building in my neighbourhood. I haven't initiated any of it, my neighbours have made requests, and I have complied. Just around the corner, another neighbour once-removed is creating a dry-stone wall from rocks in her garden. This wall is much closer to the one Frost and his neighbour repair annually and ritually in Mending Wall.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:

Yes, Amy's wall is just such an agglomeration of shapes and sizes, all made to balance through skill and the application of a little mortar. The fences that border my garden are far less romantic, comprising pine-slats on one side and colour-bond on the other. Nor do they run the full length of either boundary, which are 60 metres and so quite expensive. Instead, they appear like two Maginot lines running into a Belgium here and a Belgium there. There is a strategy but it's all rather ramshackle.

Here's hoping the Panzers can't get through the gaps.

I am not often astonished by many things these days, at least not in the human realm, but watching a few Youtube videos yesterday, I was astounded as if for the first time. At first I thought that I was watching a hoax channel, or maybe even very poor satire, but delving further I found the material presented was in fact, deadly serious in intent. You see, there really are people who believe that the Earth is flat.

I am not sure what happened to these poor folk at primary school, then later at high school, when earnest teachers tried their best to teach science to them. Maybe they didn't pay attention, or perhaps the insane root was consumed at a later time. But at some stage, reason was taken prisoner and a strange madness descended. It is no coincidence that some of these people do not believe in the moon landing, that it was a hoax, perpetrated for what reason, no-one can fathom. Similarly NASA, who is characterised in the most machiavellian terms by these radical sceptics, is responsible for maintaining the illusion that the Earth is a globe.

Sure this is a very small band of lunatics who operate in an evidence-free environment. But the few can become the many, such are the dynamics of modern communication. That is the very material for building a new dark age, in which the truth is an entirely subjective matter. Heaven help us if the ignorant are holding the matches.

Seems plausible.

Large institutions can move slowly, for by their nature, they are complex. When JJ came to Australia about six weeks ago, the documentation that accompanied her visa indicated that she could now become a school student and enrol in Medicare, the national health provider.

She was fairly quickly inducted into the NSW school system, but the health care card was far more elusive. One government department was not supplying the required information to another, we were told, and I could well believe it. We visited a medicare office at least five times, each time with different quantities of documentation, but alas, no cigar. The matter was finally upgraded, since it is a serious matter not having access to health care, and today JJ received an interim health card in the mail.

It pays to be persistent but sometimes it also depends on the person across the other side of the desk, whether they are willing to make the extra effort to find the cause of the impasse. It also pays to smile and be grateful, the latter being in rather short supply these days.

At last, some serious rain! We have had months of semi-drought in the Mountains and the only rain to speak of has been a light sprinkling. But right now it is steady and likely to be soaking in the ever-so-dry-earth. Outside the birds seem energised and aware that water gets the whole shebang moving.

I just finished a longer than usual walk, my shoes and orthotics soaked through from the slosh of puddles. But it was very nice, the colours everywhere much sharper, sounds of road, rail and bush track more pronounced. Rain is a restorative for a country like Australia; we need to learn how to catch every drop and value it for the treasure that it is. A part of the essence of life, yet something we are complacent about.

from Old Man Rain

Old Man Rain at the windowpane
Knocks and fumbles and knocks again:
His long-nailed fingers slip and strain:
Old Man Rain at the windowpane
Knocks all night but knocks in vain.
Old Man Rain.

Madison Cawein

Friendships can last a lifetime, even if they are disrupted by a decade or so of absences. Such is it with Wayne and me, the years not diminishing the alliance first established before the Moon Landings. Those formational childhood and teenage years stay with us, often defining the long lines of our later lives. I think Wayne and I must have worn grooves in the road in front of our respective houses (which neighboured each other) from daily kicking a ball to each other, and the divots in the grass at our local park from soccer, golf, rugby, cricket and forcings-back were testimony to our intense sports activity.

Sometime after high school we began to go our separate ways, my moving to Western Sydney for work, the romantic relationships we pursued, the nature of our jobs, creating divergences. Personally, I think my friend made the wiser choices. He seemed to know what he wanted in life sooner than me. It's not something I can account for.

Last night at his 60th birthday gig, there was no need for apologies over the gaps. It was as if they never existed at all.

Parting

"We bid each other farewell beside the hill,
As day meets dusk, I close the wooden gate.
Next year, in spring, there will be green grass again,
But will my honoured friend return?"

Wang Wei


Well, yes, I think that he will.

just a fingernail
of moon through the gums-
winter morning

Now, fast into winter we descend, the shortest day of the year having just passed, frost a constant visitor on the morning grass. The chilly plant that Rick gave us is struggling, even though we nightly cover it with mesh and an old t-shirt. Even so, it has produced two large green chillies and if we can keep it alive until the spring, who knows what a bounty might be realised. This is a household that goes through a lot of chillies; Thai's love them in vast numbers in their food. It would not surprise me to find a red chilly ice-cream on sale in Bangkok one day.

This old house with its thin fibro walls is poorly suited to the Mountain climate, so we tend to huddle in rooms, electric throws abounding. Even so it is still much colder outside, the mercury dropping to zero by early morning. This is where heavy doonas and electric blankets are handy. Tom seems snug enough in his van outside, stocked as it is with all manner of ways of keeping warm. Still, if I wander to the toilet in the middle of the night, I feel sad to see his van out the back, the night-light leaking through the thin curtains, a mist rising in the garden. Like I said a few posts ago, being a parent is a profession for worriers.

David Attenborough, the famous naturalist and presenter of so many wonderful nature programs, has opined that human beings are now so many and so rapacious that they (meaning we) are now a veritable plague on the Earth. It is a shocking statement, accustomed as we are to be seen as lords of this world, afforded a special place in the order of things. Human conceit is in overdrive in this matter and hubris invariably kicks in when comments like these surface. After all, have we not come a long way, baby?

An intelligent visitor from another world might beg to agree with Mr Attenborough. Having collected all the data, such a being would notice one species amongst the many who dominate the race for resources (many times over, really), who bespoil their planet with little regard for the future and who still engage in warfare with increasingly dangerous weapons. Of course they would also notice the many notable achievements of this dominant group, but with the caveat that they were too late to become aware of their own condition, and did too little about it.

Technology alone will not solve our problems.

Like individual human beings, the media latches onto premises and develops theories that are often viewed as being set in stone. It is not uncommon, for example, to hear that such and such a thing is indispensable, that life would be impossibly constrained without it. The case of mobile smart phones is the most instructive.

People somehow managed to get by, to lead even half-decent lives, for thousands of years before the advent of the smart phone. They had jobs, raised families, faced challenges - some even got an education - long before the words, I am on the train, needed to be spoken into a portable receiver. If you took away all smart phones today, some folks (particularly older ones) would not even blink, others would be inconvenienced, some would surely panic for a while, but eventually, it would all settle down again. The landline business would boom, public payphones would reappear. Newspapers would rustle on trains, books and magazines would be read, conversations would re-ignite.

I am sure that an economist would tell me the cost in GDP loss to the economy but that would not matter. There is always a work-around if you want one.

Since JJ arrived from Thailand about a month ago, we have been very busy with getting her set up for life in Australia. There is a lot more to it than you might imagine - beyond the form filling, waits at Centrelink, school enrolment, text books, uniforms and winter clothing - there is the locating of her within a new country. It is more than acclimatising and finding out how to use the public transport system; it's that whole world of a new country with vastly different social mores and customs, not to mention its alien faura and fauna.

As part of this process of finding out, we took JJ into the city last Sunday - to houses of worship quite different to a Thai Wat, on ferries across Sydney harbour to Manly, through historic precincts in the CBD. It was more of a meander than a planned event and we got home late and tired out. It was also, by coincidence, a day celebrating public transport in NSW, so many ancient buses were plying the streets, steam trains spat and gushed on platforms and a classic yellow taxi (an FC Holden, I believe) sat on the concourse at Central.

I think all parents, save those who might be sociopaths or narcissists, are great worriers. The act of creating something unutterably new occasions great joy, seen as it is through the unforgiving lens of modern child-rearing. But it augurs in a lifetime of worry. Initially, this as all about the welfare of the new-born, the health, growth and development of the young child.

Somewhere in the teen years this seguys alarmingly into an array of cares about the uncontrollable. Parenting becomes a kind of crisis management, worse for some than others, but often as not tilting towards looming icebergs. I guess most come through this, though a few unlucky ones go under. There is simply no way of telling how a child might turn out, and childhood being the extended phenomena that it now is, there is not always an obvious point at which one might say, 'the ship has sailed at last.' For the ship may return to port at any time, apparently.

It appears that we live in a more dangerous world, and though I have challenged this perception in previous posts, the obstacle course that is the passage to adulthood is far less predictable than it was when I was a kid. Things are much faster and yet more temporary, there is an air of the contingent about matters that might once have seemed more stable, more permanent. I know that change is all and is an underlying condition of reality, but the stripping bare of necessary illusions strikes me as an opening for mental illness or worse.

Glad to be proven wrong though.

May comes to a close with an o'erhasty snap of unseasonably cold weather. This follows a period of unusually warm weather, so all of nature is confused. This morning a magpie swooped at me, which is at least three months too early! I turned to face the wayward bird, my face quizzical as if to say, "That is right out of order mister!"

Family-wise, Ann's daughter JJ has started to settle in, today being only her second day at an Australian high school. She will have a six month stint of intensive English before transferring to her local school at Springwood. I am less worried about her capacity to learn in this new environment than the culture shock that may ensue. You know already my thoughts on the decadence of what passes for popular culture nowadays, so I fret that she might find it all too much. But then again, Thai's seem to be fairly easy going.

But the family feels fuller now and Ann is happier. Tom and JJ, both being teens, take polite steps around each other, careful not to engage too much. I hope that they can become friends one day. Cross-cultural friendship has much to recommend it.

nightly the moon
is less and less itself,
more the leafless plum

like dry bones parting
the pear sheds its essence,
honing for winter

As is my wont, when political disappointment (it might be fairer to say, disappointment in my country) occurs, I retreat into literature or other such distractions. Today I present a poem (Chinese, naturally) from the Song Dynasty, by Lu Yu. Like his contemporaries, he was a scholar gentleman, serving in the government of the day, and was noteworthy for his great interest in tea drinking. He wrote The Classic of Tea, no doubt a seminal work in its time. He also discovered that the quality of the water affected the quality of the tea made from it.

I love this poem, Rain on the River, and often return to it. The translation is by Ken Rexroth with some minor alterations to punctuation by me.

In the fog we drift hither
and yon over the dark waters.
At last our little boat finds
shelter under a willow bank.
At midnight I am awake,
heavy with wine. The smoky
lamp is still burning. The rain
is still sighing in the bamboo
thatch of the cabin of the boat.

Progressive politics have always been difficult in Australia and the election yesterday just made them harder than ever. Government will not likely be won anymore by a candid discussion of modest reforms, but by shutting up and telling the punters what they want to hear.

Nobody should complain about that.

There are times of great political moment and there are others best described as business as usual. In Australia one such moment was the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972. Another was the election of the Hawke Government in 1983. Today might be another, depending on the outcome and the capacity of a new government to effectively govern. Australia's recent past has seen a lot of political instability because of the ascent of minor parties in the Senate.

I note also with sadness the passing of R.J. Hawke, who was Prime Minister of a Labor Government from 1983 to 1991. While not as radical as the Labor Administration that preceded it, it proved to be highly competent and capable of necessary reform. In between times and beyond we have had doses of conservative governments, whose blathering rhetoric is matched by an underwhelming performance.

Today I took Ann and JJ up to the local primary school so they could witness their first Australian election together from the perspective of the voting public. We bought a tray of scout-made cakes and they viewed with amusement the democracy sausage, a necessary element in an egalitarian rite such as an election, surely. There is always a bit of a carnival atmosphere too and a good-natured banter amongst the party spruikers, for the most part.

Let us hope for a fair outcome tonight for our fair land.

I have been happily watching videos on simulation theory recently, a speculative exercise that tweaks both the imagination and the mind. In case you are wondering what I mean by simulation theory, it is the idea that our lives and this universe are a simulation in the computer of a vastly superior race of beings. A simulation imitates the appearance of the real and in this particular case, the simulation is so real that we have consciousness, autonomy and agency within our lives. The game, or perhaps I should say, program, is seamless.

This kind of thing understandably excites quite a few people and I noted a number of respondents to articles and videos who were absolutely convinced that we are living in a simulation. That a simulation on this scale is possible has many adherents but that does not make it likely. Firstly, simulation theory is unfalsifiable - it cannot be proven or disproven - hence my earlier reference to it being speculative. Secondly, it relies on a super-race of beings having evolved, having survived all the potential disasters that might have knocked it out. Just look at our own example, humanity poised at a critical juncture between going further into an increasingly technological future, or biting the dust pretty soon. Climate change alone might saddle up all four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Ah, critics might reply, if this is a simulation then it is only one of many millions that might be run, each with its own set of rules (natural laws, initial conditions etc). So you can't base your speculations upon this one experiment. We end up, dear reader, in a hall of mirrors which stretches in all directions. It's a jolly place for a chat and a laugh, but life will go on, simulation or not.

A step in the right direction?

Wandering the streets of Sydney, particularly the CBD precincts in Sydney and Parramatta, one is struck by the numbers of smokers loitering on street corners, on pavements or in dark bin-filled alleys. The impression one gets is of outcasts, people thrust from their workplace, rain or shine. I understand very well that secondary smoking can be very harmful, but the wowserism that is stalking the land bothers me.

In Japan, hermetically-separate smoking rooms are set up in many shopping centres and doubtless many business premises to accommodate these poor addicts. I remember walking into smoke-filled staff rooms when I first started teaching and how my eyes began to water within minutes. Freshly laundered clothes soon took on the odour of stale tobacco.

Still, there must be a better way to go about this. Today as I walked by the river in Parramatta, then up through the business district, these lonely souls has an especially avian presence.


strange birds
perched darkly in wintry lanes
furtively ashing

I am a fan of The Great Courses, a company that develops and supplies university-style lectures attached to all manner of subjects, from philosophy to history to science and so on. One would be hard pressed not to find something that tweaks an interest or scratches an intellectual itch. The lecturers are all experts in their field and I have yet to come across one who does not have a passion for their work. Sure there are no assignments, tutorials or deadlines, but that is pretty much what I want nowadays.

At the moment I am listening to Masterpieces of Short Fiction, lectures on short stories selected by the course designer, Professor Michael Krasny. There is some work to do, of course, since one should actually read the stories before sitting in Prof. Krasny's class, just in case he asks a difficult question. I jest. But truly you should read the stories because they are very good and often only a few pages long. Today was Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, a story of home-spun folks in New England who have a dark secret. The ending is a kicker.

I found a student card from Jackson's University of Rochester days. She never finished her degree but managed to still be listed amongst the Class of 1938. She wrote The Lottery 20 years later and it behoves anyone reading it to wonder just where it might have come from.

through river gums-
flash deluge of silver light,
baptisms of ducks

Ann has been away a few weeks in Thailand, helping her daughter prepare for her journey to Australia. I have missed her greatly and look forward muchly to her return in week or two. Yesterday she sent a couple of pics on Line from Phetchabun, her home town. They reminded me almost immediately of the Great Thai Coffee Saga of 2017, in which I tried mightily to get a well-made cappuccino outside of Bangkok.

People may roll their eyes, yes, and they may even poke fun at me. Ann though was very patient as I weighed up the chances of a good cup of coffee at each and every cafe. It wasn't the equipment, as grinders and machines gleamed, beans were freshly dispensed, barista technique seemed competent enough. I think that the problem was the order. Most foreigners seemed to be having flat white, Thais were ordering iced coffee and very few people in the sticks had made a cappuccino before. The latter frequently turned out far too strong or bitter and Thai milk has a slightly different consistency too, so in the end I resigned myself to being disappointed.

One day near the end of our trip Ann took me to a small cafe in Phetchabun called Piccolo. It had a very Western vibe and it was also abundantly clear that the owner was as obsessed with coffee as I was. Jars of exotic beans lined the counter. Maps and diagrams showed coffee growing regions and the different tastes that might be derived from different beans and roasting techniques. The coffee he made me was very good. His attempt at a kind of cool java minimalism was a success.

Ann and beverages at Piccolo.