The passing of Les Murray robs Australia of its most talented and prolific poet. Murray produced some 30 volumes of poetry, most recently, Waiting for the Past, in 2015. Considering how little poetry is read nowadays, his output and (relative) fame is remarkable. Poet of Australia, poet of the bush, poet of the little man, poet of man immured in the natural world, Murray had a vast and original vocabulary and the capacity to write verse in a striking vernacular.

No bells and whistles, no pretensions nor any lahdee-dah about him, Murray was unconventional to a tee, shunning celebrity (though he did like to read publicly) and taking a more right-wing position politically, unusual in a modern writer. More than anything he was against the big town elites who looked down upon the bush. His way with words was uncanny.

Murray first hove into my literary awareness in 1980 at my initial teaching practicum. My supervising teacher had chosen him for HSC class study, and I heard his poems read with passion and respect. When I taught Murray myself a few years later, I remembered best the joy of reading him aloud, the encounter between me and my class of urban faux-sophisticates, and the engagement with Australian history, landscape and environment. There was nothing parochial about versifying the local, because Murray's humanity was universal and his voice was authentic.

From Widower in the Country

"Coming on dark, I’ll go home, light the lamp
And eat my corned-beef supper, sitting there
At the head of the table. Then I’ll go to bed.
Last night I thought I dreamt – but when I woke
The screaming was only a possum skiing down
The iron roof on little moonlit claws."


Vale Les Murray

I have been stretching my legs quite prodigiously over the last few days. I do quite a lot of walking anyway but the weekend past gave me a chance to hit new targets. I don't set out to break any personal best, but my choice of activities tends to dictate the mileage.

So, on Saturday I finally decided it was time to do the Nepean Riverwalk, which is a paperclip-loop involving two bridges and the slow flowing Nepean River. Many times on the train I have passed the new pedestrian bridge(which was recently completed at the northern end), a structure which emerged slowly like a metallic spiral from a vast shed on the eastern bank. I parked the car and meandered along the western side, then emerged to join the M4 motorway bridge at the other end. And so back again in mirror image.

Yesterday I went to Wat Buddharangsee at Annandale, this being the first time by myself. I inadvertently picked a day when most of the resident monks were missing and a special kind of liturgy was under way, so I was thrown somewhat. Afterwards I walked along Parramatta Rd, past many shuttered shopfronts. This was once a thriving area of restaurants, shops and a cinema, but cars and the lack of parking have pushed many businesses to the wall.

On the train home, I read that Australia has the highest percentage of casual workers per capita in the OECD. Within this group, many do not have permanent hours and so are at the mercy of supervisors or managers. This is the way of the modern economy, I am told, but what future does it offer coming generations. What chance of a full-time job and the certainty that this brings for raising a family, buying a home and so forth? If you add in the positive psychological effects of a real job with real benefits, then you might be forgiven for imagining a less-rosy future for many people. A great reckoning awaits, methinks.

autumn wears her slippers-
pumps of orange, gold, brown
and oh! vermillion

melching through leaves
the Sun's seeming late dog-day sting,
a solitary fly

Quite a few photographs have emerged in the wake of the Notre Dame fire which show the extent of the destruction, but also the real capacity for rebuilding. There is much to be said for renewing or repairing historic structures, particularly where that structure has a purpose beyond the material, where is has become a part of the living fabric of the city. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is one such building, its 850 year history surviving war, plague, revolution and foreign occupation. Most great cities can boast at least one such structure, some can boast more. Here I am thinking of Kyoto.

A couple of photos in particular are worthy of mention. Both show the burnt-out interior of the cathedral, all wooden structures fallen, blackened or charred, the stone pillars and walls remaining stoically upright. At the high altar end, the gold cross illuminates the darkness. Below the cross, a pieta remains undisturbed. For many, including myself, this is a deep moment for spiritual reflection, for finding hope where once there there were only tears.




"A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies." (PL)

I awoke quite early this morning to news that the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was burning. I had to rub my eyes before taking a second look at the news feed on my phone, supposing that it might be a joke or some lesser Notre Dame that was immolating. After all, churches called Our Lady are many in the Catholic faith.

Unfortunately, the most famous Notre Dame on the lle de la Cite on the Seine was indeed ablaze and likely to be severely damaged if not entirely destroyed. Turning to the BBC on the television, I watched with rising sadness as the conflagration took hold. Yet, it does seem that the church towers and the stone walls will remain intact and that the Cathedral can be rebuilt, so there is hope amid the gloom.

Another hope resides in the human spirit and its capacity to turn misfortune into a shining moment. As Notre Dame burned, large numbers of Parisians gathered in a nearby park to sing hymns. They sang as the spire tottered and the roof fell in. They sang as firefighters worked hard to douse the flames. They sang as the media gathered and the French President spoke. Those moments are minor miracles, started amongst a few and spreading outwards and inwards like invisible coils. They rescue us in the moment.

The last time I was at Notre Dame was almost twenty years ago. If I go to Paris, it's one of the first places I want to visit. It is dark inside, filled usually by banks of small votive candles in trays spilling over onto already extinguished candles. There is a constant replenishing of these, for our prayers are endless and the candles, whose collective light spills onto walls and statuary and ancient carvings, sum up materially our unvoiced yearnings.

In Church Going, the poet, though himself claiming to have no interest in Christianity, stands in an old church,


Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was
built This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;



It often pleases me too. For those mourning the loss of much of Notre Dame, take heart, it will rise again. And even if that proves too difficult, there is still the memory of standing in silence there amid the centuries of voices and prayers.

Hot on the heels of my gallery visit last week, I decided to attend the Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art exhibition at the AGNSW on Friday. Fresh from reading the Newcastle Herald on air at 2RPH in the morning, I made my way uptown through the traffic-choked streets of the CBD to the magnificent classic pile that sits in solitary splendour adjacent the Domain, the Art Gallery of NSW.

Readers of this blog (surely none! -ed.) will know that I am a student of Chinese history, so you will not be surprised that I found this exhibition remarkable on many levels. Firstly, my astonishment at the antiquity of some of the items, notably a Shang-era bronze tripod dating from at least 1000BC. Secondly, the range of paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, bronzes and jades on display, each demanding time spent for appreciation, made this a pure feast for the senses. Beyond the merely intellectual realm one is challenged by the philosophical idea of tian ren he yi, the harmonious coexistence of nature and humans with the cosmos. This is apparent in the works on display, though their understanding requires attention. Passing by each glass case too carelessly, one might appreciate the beauty and workmanship, but miss a world of deeper meanings and symbols.

Perhaps I look too much for meaning in the world, but it strikes me that seeking out explanation beyond the mere physicality of an object has much merit. It can help us understand ourselves in the modern world too and is a corrective to the hubris of our time.

Below, a detail from 'Along the river during the Qingming Festival’

Qing dynasty, Shen Yuan (1736–95) handscroll, ink and colour on paper,

The PRB or Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were a group of inspired art rebels who challenged the conventions of the Victorian art establishment in the mid-19th century. In many ways, they were lucky not to perish in obscurity very early in their existence, for the reception of their earliest work was vitriolic in tone and they were mercilessly lampooned. Art critic John Ruskin saved their bacon when he wrote glowingly of their art in a review that made them both famous and fashionable, with queues of hundreds of yards to get in to see their work.

Today I got a chance to see some their most noteworthy paintings at the National Gallery in Canberra. I’d spent some time beforehand reading up on the group, their individual members and the way in which they changed British art. There is much to like in their use of bold colours, composition and attention to detail. Their doctrine of being true to nature also meant they often painted en plein air, whilst their contemporaries worked from sketches or sometimes photographs in studios. Further their subject matter had a propensity to offend. This was, after all, a period characterised by concerns for public morality and decorum, at least on the surface, so the portrayal of prostitutes or fallen women was always going to excite the prudish. Religious themed works sometimes scandalised as their subjects were portrayed prosaically, stripped of many of the symbols that were stock-in-trade.

Many of these paintings stay with you long after you have moved on, such as Rossetti’s The Beloved, which is hard to unsee once in fact you have seen it.

Yesterday Ann sent me photos from her day-trip to Mt Fuji, which is but one part of her 10 day holiday with JJ in Japan. It was a sunny, clear day for them, so the mountain looked majestic, fringes of snow still clinging to its peak. I had been sending her weather reports from the area for days now, as she had been fretting that cloud, rain or fog would obscure the view. I had told her about my experience back in 2002, when, after a short break in Tokyo, I tried to in vain to get close to the mountain on the way back to Sanda. Here is what I wrote at the time -

"The next morning we trekked back to the station (Minami-Senju in Tokyo), then headed south again. We were keen on seeing Mt Fuji, and our guide books (who shall remain nameless) insisted that a good view might be had from the Hakone National Park. Perfect, since it was on our way home.

Essentially, this meant catching a JR Rapid to Odawara, then changing to a local line into the Hakone National Park. The little single-gauge train led us through some beautiful scenery to Gora. We looked around. No Fuji-san! So we caught a bus to Owakudani, a place of sulphurous smells and springs. Still no Mt Fuji! Then we asked someone. 'Well' came the reply 'I think it should be over there.' Sadly, cloud and smoke obscured 'over there', so we headed down again, having missed the great mountain completely. This often happens, we were later told."

I am happy that Ann's day worked out so well for them both. Today she caught a train to Nikko. If only I could have stowed away in the luggage!

For another day perhaps.

The imbroglio that is Brexit (as horrible a compound word as you are likely to hear) continues and seems without an obvious solution. The central problem stems from this - a simple yes/no choice to a very complex question was offered up to the British public by politicians who did not think it had a chance of getting up. It got up, though narrowly. It got up with a sizeable proportion of the Yes vote being either ill-informed or uninformed.

I know that that seems like an elitist view. In fact, I have just heard a bearded fellow say so on UK Sky. Doubtless many Yes voters were informed and very motivated to see the UK leave the EU. The Tory Party has been at war over membership for decades and lots of people see this as a matter of national sovereignty and the reclaiming of ancient rights. That is not an unreasonable position.

What is unreasonable though is the folly of using referenda to do the job of the elected parliament. The latter is the place where difficult and sometimes labyrinthine matters are examined, discussed and evaluated as a precursor to developing legislation. This is not a case of determining whether a single issue should be shopped to the public, but where a deep and consequential matter to do with the economic life of the the UK, the peace in Northern Ireland and the very makeup of the UK is vitally at stake.

So there you are. The polity, with the exception of a section of the Tory Party, wants to stay in Europe and knows why this is a good thing for Britain. They have been handed a poisoned chalice and are trying by diverse means to dilute the contents or hide it behind a convenient arras.

It is a very sorry sight indeed.

Yesterday I saw Ann off at Mascot. We have not spent a night away from each other for over three years now, so I know we both felt quite sad last night. On the way home from the airport, which was an extended trip due to problems with rock slippage on the Blue Mountains line, I amused myself by following Ann's plane (TG476) on an app called FlightRadar 24. I didn't know that I could track the whole journey to Bangkok, but indeed I could, so, every so often I checked in to see where she was. The same app supplied the airplane's ground speed, altitude and distance travelled, together with an ETA. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the in-flight menu! You can see how bored and tired I was from this pointless occupation.

Worse, I took some screen shots of various spots in the journey with the specific idea of publishing a few of them here. I hope that you can forgive this nerdish indulgence. Hers is the reddish-orange plane. The first is situated at Sydney International Airport just prior to takeoff.

leaf-fall on my head
ah! autumn's unerring dart-
now, a vast descending

I have been uncharacteristically busy recently with room painting and home-making activities. Ann goes to Thailand on Tuesday and will not be back for six weeks, so she wanted to make sure that everything was ship-shape in her absence. Indeed it is, now.

I have received some criticism for publishing more personal posts over the past few months but I stand my ground - blogs are not unlike diaries or can in fact be just the same, depending upon the intention of the author. Diaries are a place for both public and private thinking, this tradition being strong in the West though less so elsewhere. So be it but I stand my ground.

Painting, on the other hand, is something I get around to every decade or so and it takes me a while to get up to speed. Little tricks I learnt are forgotten and have to be re-learnt at some cost, each time, to the finished product and the pocket. But the old house is starting to get a lift from our efforts and will be a good home for JJ when she arrives. This year will likely be a watershed of sorts, for the better I hope. Lacking a crystal ball, I cannot foretell an outcome, though my road ahead is paved with good intentions.

I am re-reading A Pilgrim's Progress and can attest that such intentions do not always end up in the infernal regions, contrary to popular belief. Sure, I understand that good intentions and the good works that may flow from them are not a means to salvation, but they beat hands down doing nothing or thinking malign thoughts.

Tom's new computer arrived today from a shop in Brisbane. His old laptop gave up the ghost two weeks ago after working like a dog for four years. The new unit is a CPU with some new-fangled video card and a whopping hard-drive. Straight out of the box I had problems, for the new "gaming monitor" used an old tech VGA cable, so off to the shops I went for an HDMI upgrade.

Then after booting up I was confronted with the BIOS screen rather than Windows. Hmm, where is the hard-drive, I wondered? On the phone, a kind technician talked me through opening the case and reconnecting the wires to the hard-drive. Alas, every time I put the unit back together, the pressure of the case dislodged the wires. Bios screen again! And again!

"I'd like you to re-site the hard-drive," my optimistic tech-fellow said.

"I beg your pardon?" was my astonished reply.


It turned out to be far less daunting than it sounded and 30 minutes later, the machine was humming along with a Windows screen. And while it is very small potatoes, I am feeling a little proud of myself.

Have a go, is the lesson I learnt from this episode. But only if the power is off!

One hard drive in a new home.

It was Ann's birthday yesterday so went into the city for a day of varied activity. It is a tradition for Thai's to go to their local temple on their birthdays, so off to Annandale we went to spend time at Wat Buddharangsee. Ann prepared a delicious spicy egg dish for the communal meal and it disappeared within minutes of being served. The service was as always, a chanted liturgy, followed by blessings from the resident monks. I find it both interesting and strangely calming.

As chance will have it, Ann had been given a couple of free tickets to attractions in Darling Harbour and so after lunch we headed thither. These are very touristy things and I gather most Sydneysiders would give them a wide berth, but they are genuinely entertaining.

I first went to Madame Tussaud's in London in 1979, so I had an idea of what to expect. These days the franchise is set up to be far more tactile and interactive for a clearly more demanding public and many opportunities are presented for photographs with the famous. There is a bias towards pop stars, sports heroes, actors and celebrities which is what you might expect, given the times we live in. But then again, would the crowds flock to see historical figures and notable scientists? Probably not.

Meanwhile, here are two shots from our time there.

We are living in an age of increasing anger. The invasion of the public space by social media and its allies has seen an instant rush to judgement in many circumstances not experienced before outside of revolutions and social upheaval. There is outrage at everything, the smallest infraction bringing a freight of invective, almost always poorly informed. But here we are anyway.

Lately in Australia we have had some high-profile criminal cases, and the mobs have been baying. I understand that if you have been a victim of crime (and many people have) then you have a emotional stake in a judicial outcome. That's only natural. But there are victims and there are victims, just as there are crimes and crimes. Not every victim of a crime gets over what has happened to them. Others seem to brush off the hurts inflicted and move rapidly into the stream of life, warier, no doubt, but moving on nevertheless. People are different.

Whereas once there was very little support for victims of crime, there is now an awful lot. I can tell you from personal experience that, no matter how empathetic and kind the supporter is, there is a very real risk of being sucked into a self-sustaining cycle of victim-hood, if the prevailing environment fosters it. What's needed is a balance of empathy and assistance, together with an active understanding that humans have a natural resiliency which needs to be encouraged and nurtured. The crimes against the self can be processed and faced head-on, but something has to come after. I have seen people in the past week on the the television demanding tougher justice because they have been in a state of victim-hood for forty years!

I spent a year in my own counselling practise and then five years in front-line welfare services and met many people who had been victims of crimes, some too awful to describe here. My colleagues and I always gave them a good hearing and tried to supply what we could to meet their needs. Over that time I saw people pick themselves up and get on with life, such as it was, and I continued to meet with others who seemed stuck in the past. I merely observe that the former were happier and engaged with living in a way that promoted healthy change. The latter, far less so.

Jesus, who had good reason to be angry about his rough handling and murder, said in Matthew 7.1, "Do not judge or you too will be judged." Moreover leaving judgement to God alone absolves one of any need for vengeance. Not everyone can believe these things, I know, but it helps at a fundamental level in the healing process.

Yesterday, whilst reading a letter from a correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald, I came across a particularly amusing offering. It is a good thing perhaps that I had time to pre-read the missive before committing it live to air, because I had to suppress a laugh, rather unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

I should have kept the letter, but it was committed to the recycling without thought at the time. However, it being short, I have a reasonable recall of its contents and style, so here goes.

"My grand daughter has now completed Year 12 at a good school and as far as I can see, has not read any literature. There is no teaching of Shakespeare and precious little else in the way of novels, plays and poems.

I asked her recently what she thought about Keats and she replied, "What is a Keat?"

And so she will go on to do a "Bachelor of Protestation" or something like it, blissfully unaware of the literary jewels of her native tongue."

Of course, the writer is surely exaggerating to make a perfectly valid point - the quality of texts suffers when English becomes a more tertiary-style communications-based subject with the objective of unearthing supposed 'deeper meanings.' I don't doubt that many of the texts (by men) I have read and loved were written by patriarchs or misogynists or colonialists or even outright bastards, but I would prefer that the art spoke for itself, without the heavy hand of dogma interposing.

Perhaps such a reading though is impossible. Our interactions with the world, our perceptions, the structure of language means that getting at any text in a "real way" is fraught with difficulty and contradiction. Still, I'd like to think that we can.

Keats




Keets

The sparkie came this morning to install an outside power point to supply electricity to the recently bought caravan. It means that whoever is lucky enough to be our guest will have a double bed and considerable privacy, with the chatter of magpies and hissing of possums as an extra bonus. Tom is eager to sleep in the van too and I might relent and let him have a few nights a week. If I was 13, I think it would have been a dream to have my own little place outside the main house so I understand his desire for a little bolthole.

We don't have a problem fitting everyone into the house, though its tight. The caravan gives us more options, including additional storage space. But both Ann and I feel that we will have to find a bigger house in the near future, one in which we can start afresh, somewhere where there are no prior relationship associations, if you get my drift. So we are making plans to that end.

After we bought the van in late January, the gentleman we bought it from kindly delivered it to us at home, refusing any payment. Here we are together, with Mick, on that day.

I have been an admirer of the Desert Fathers for about twenty years now. If you don't know about this famous yet most obscure group of people, then it's time that you did. Back at the very beginning of Christianity, before it had become the powerful, state-sanctioned faith that it emerged as in the late Roman Empire, groups of men and women retreated to the deserts of Asia Minor and Palestine and Northern Egypt, there to lead ascetic lives. Many lived as hermits while others formed lose associations, others still chose monasteries, such as Scetis. Life was hard but that was the point, because a life lived austerely was seen as making a pathway to God more accessible.

Anyway, one of my favourite stories from the Fathers confronts the idea of judgement head-on. I speak of human judgement of course, the way we are quick to find fault in our brother and swift to condemn our sister. It is tied in with knowledge of self, that we are the worst of sinners, which is what the ascetics in the desert thought.

'A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which brother Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it.

Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you".

So he got up and went. He took a sack, filled it with sand and cut a small hole at the bottom and carried it on his shoulders.

The others came out to meet him and said, "What is this, father?"

The Abba said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another."

When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.'


Ruins of Scetis in the Nitrian desert. Harsh, exacting, unfashionable, yet necessary.

Ann and I have spent the better part of the last 12 months making preparations for her permanent residency, together with further preparation for the coming of her daughter JJ. As I have explained before, these are processes that are long and quite difficult. I suspect that some have fallen by the wayside, but we have been both lucky and persistent and not a little diligent too. Ann will leave her housekeeping job next month to focus on bringing JJ to Australia following which she will immerse herself in English-language study at TAFE. So, this year promises to be a challenge on many levels and I pray that we can reach Christmas unscathed.

We took the rare opportunity of a work-free day today to hike-out on the Narrow Neck Peninsula at Katoomba. You really can go on for miles and miles if you desire, descending to valley floor or keeping to the ridge. We did the latter, not having more than a few hours to spare. Here we are inside the first gate, with some way to go.