Australians, for all their larrikin pedigree, are pretty compliant when it comes to authority. They may whinge about government and complain about the so-called "nanny state", but for the most part, they do as they are told.

So the regulations and restrictions imposed as a result of the Coronavirus have largely been followed to the letter, with only a tiny minority opting for opposition. Even such opposition that there is has been at best rag-tag, poorly-thought-through and incoherent, with no genuine intellectual base. There is a case for personal responsibility within the framework of liberty(in the broadest sense), but it has not been made.

We are left with images of people refusing to wear masks for reasons which they cannot articulate, unevidenced statements and a general irritability at being asked to do something that is mildly inconvenient. Truly, even as an asthmatic myself, it is not hard to wear a mask. It is not that difficult to remain home during lockdowns, even if it is boring. It is pretty easy really not to organise social gatherings either. It requires, at best, a mere skerrick of willpower.

Maybe affluence dilutes character for some people or selfishness is so ingrained that it cannot be overcome. Liberty is important, but not so important that my liberty causes the suffering of others.

And it is truly great to see the champion sumo wrestler, Hakuho, back in the dohyo at the Grand Sumo Tournament in Nagoya. Plagued by injuries to his feet and knees, it seemed to many that he would never step on the clay again.

But there he is, at 3-0, looking masterful. I hope that he can last the 15 days.

Alas, we have another week of Coronavirus lockdown imposed on top of the existing two weeks! It affects me very little in truth, except for the cancellation of volunteer jobs. I do miss friends dropping by, but I have a family around me so loneliness is not a big problem. And I have the inside of my head, which is labyrinthine.

But I am sure that isolation is a huge problem for some people - those who live by themselves, for example. It is not the same kind of isolation that would have been experienced before mobile phones and the internet came along, something which would have been more of a social blackout, save for the radio and television. Then again, community and neighbourly contacts were more tightly knit back then and far fewer people lived by themselves. I am not sure how to properly balance this equation.

Putting things further in perspective, our closest neighbour, Indonesia, is currently deep into the pandemic, with predictions of potentially 100,000 reported infections each day in the near future. Hospitals are full. Compare that with today's total in NSW of 26. I hope that Australia acts with speed and tact in offering assistance of whatever kind the Indonesians require. It is not about self-interest, though I know that there are those in Canberra with just such a calculation in their heads, but about our common humanity.

Further to my previous post, I was rifling through some old school books in my library and found a list of albums handwritten on a torn out piece of paper. It was lying in the back of a Year 8 novel (I don't know how I still have it!) and was in my hand. So the year is 1972 most likely, or early the following year.

I looked over the list and many of the albums were not in my own collection, and wondering at a clue as to its provenance, noticed a faded J and two quavers in the top right corner. I puzzled over this slight mystery for a day or two. I went for short walks and listened to tracks from the albums. At Leon Russell's "Roll Away the Stone" the penny dropped.

This was a list of my brother John's albums, ones that I had obviously been influenced by, on the occasions he came down from Queensland and stayed for (invariably) short periods. When only us boys were home, he would play them loudly, as I faintly recall, impossible for anyone to miss. Many of his selections I obviously liked and it broadened my taste in pop.

The artists included Yes, The Cream, The Who, Leon Russell, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Masters Apprentices, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Cat Stevens, The Beatles, The Moody Blues, David Bowie and many others. I have John to thank for setting me on the road to a broader knowledge of (admittedly mainsteam) musicians, one that I filled out myself as I grew older.

Those teen years are so critical to how we develop. To balance pop and rock, I had a plentiful supply of classical (I use this term broadly) as well as my mothers love of the crooners, jazz and latin music. There is much now to be thankful for. This list and many other artefacts from the time are like mnemonics for me, crucial in the task of remembering, bit by bit.

I do quite a lot of work to try to recover more of my memory from those times when it has become, in recent years, somewhat blurred. Apart from family members and friends (who I can subtly ply with questions without giving away the game) I have artefacts (albums, diaries etc) and other resources, such as Wikipedia and music streaming services. Folks who don the rose-tinted glasses as they wax on about the good old days on social media are also helpful, though they wouldn't know it.

So over the last few days I have plunged, via a music streaming app, into the back catalogue of David Bowie. Music really helps me reconnect with memory and Bowie was, of course, massive when I was a teenager. His remaking of self was one of those hot topics of the time and a symptom of a restless, creative talent bent on success. My favourite album, "Let's Dance" came much later (1983) when my powers of recall seem unimpaired. Playing it over is to invite a flood of recollection.

But earlier material is probably more important in my present circumstances. Playing again "Golden Years" or "Fame" or even "Young Americans" gives me a glimpse, which I hope bears some relation to truth, of my senior years at school, fooling around with the lyrics and wondering at the "death" of Ziggy Stardust. You know that one shard of memory can lead onto another or might open up a whole narrative, as if by chance. 

It's not an easy process for me. But I try, I try.

Greater Sydney, which unfortunately, seems to encompass the Blue Mountains, is in its second lockdown following a blowout in the Covid Delta strain in recent weeks. Given what has happened in Melbourne and elsewhere, it was inevitable that sometime, somewhere, we would get hit again. And that's that. An inconvenience for most of us, a peril for those who are infected.

This does not go anywhere near to explaining the kinds of panic that seems to possess some folks when the word lockdown is applied. A lockdown is not a curfew. Even if it was, that is not reason to rush about in supermarkets as if the sky is falling - Australia produces its own food and when I last checked, Warragamba was nearly full. There seems to be a thing about toilet paper too - the mass buying of it - I mean. Tinned food - maybe that has a rational side to its purchase - but loo paper? Something deeper is going on.

I do feel sorry for all the workers and businesses that will have to close or vastly reduce their services in the next two weeks. For many casual employees, each paycheque goes on rent and food and utilities. They will have to dig deep, go into debt or fall back on the family. Far worse then anything in this lucky country are the kinds of suffering that are happening in many developing nations, whose economies have collapsed as trade and orders tailed off last year. Really, it behooves all wealthy nations to step up and support countries for whom globalisation was promised as a panacea for poverty. There are no excuses for inaction.

Suma is a town about half-way between Central Kobe and the Akashi bridge and has its own station on the JR Kobe line. It looks out into Osaka Bay and was once, likely, a peaceful fishing spot and sleepy rural town with a beautiful shoreline. Now it is part of a long conurbation that stretches to Himeji and beyond. You can't blame people for building along the coastal strip. That happens everywhere.

Arai Yoshimune's masterful woodblock print "Suma Beach at Night", created about a hundred years ago, evokes an entirely different perspective. A landscape, two human figures, a tree and the moon point to a changed relationship between man and nature, for even though the Japanese lionize tradition, the coastline and the rivers are often found compromised by concrete and oddly intrusive development. The balance of looking out at the sea becomes something more complicated and inward and our gaze is inverted to human structures.

The few times I took the JR Kobe line, I was on the way to Himeji Castle, usually with guests from back home. Suma Beach did not stand out then in the same way that the following Yoshimune image does now.

There is a lot of complaint about on the internet - inordinate amounts of whining and moaning about often very trivial issues. I'm sure that I'm guilty of this now and then, though I do try to dress things up as critique, rather than just belly-aching. 

Before everything went online, moaning was generally restricted to pubs, backyard fences and letters to the editor. Even then a certain degree of restraint was needed because gripes delivered face-to-face were delivered with personal responsibility attached. There was none of the sine nomine that characterises so much of the poisonous commentary abounding on social media.

This may account for the manner in which people are so easily attacked for such minor offences. If you say something that gives offence then you are accountable and should expect a response - a measured, reasonable response. What happens usually is a personal attack in which matters are globalised and revenge is meted out on the spot.

I was reading an essay by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and came across the following paragraph on this very topic, though in her case it concerned a specific incident. There is no way I could have put it better.

"There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness.....people whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature - the messy stories of our humanity - but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy."

Amen sister.

whales, tail to tail,

float like doves,

like snow

Another View From A Train

From the train
Mild light through gums
Spokes against the glass,
The mellow sway across the plain,
Then, through serious stones,
A figure, bending by cut grass,
Tiny pots of flowers arrayed,
Colours massed near epitaphs.
Just a blur, the long
Straight lines -
A hall of tiles and grid
And hemmed-in creeks,
The very roofs and sky combine
Into a dreamy nothingness,
A place to be, for amid
The utter ceaselessness,
Is found,

Crippled and uncurling,

Though unwittingly bound,
Something like peace.

"Alone and with an oil-paper umbrella in hand,
I hesitate up and down a long, long
and solitary rainy lane,
hoping to meet
a girl like a lilac
budding with autumn complaints"

So wrote symbolist poet Dai Wangshu in his masterful "A Rainy Lane" in 1928. Dai was in love with a younger woman who had spurned his advances and perhaps this induced the melancholia that suffuses the poem. For even as he wishes to meet her, "her colour is lost" and "fragrance gone" in the "sad song of the rain." By the end, he merely hopes to see her "floating past" as if she is an apparition.

Who hasn't felt this way sometime?

It behooves me, after a period of some two months, to give a progress report on my new bike. You may recall that just prior to last Easter, and on the advice of a physio, I bought a Himo C20, an electric-assisted bicycle. 

My initial impressions were glowing. It seemed like a well-built, competently-designed bike that performed pretty much up to spec, save that the 80 kilometre capacity of the battery was a tad sanguine. I haven't tested the distance, it being better for the battery life, apparently, if I recharge after a partial discharge of the battery, rather than let it run down to zero. But I am guessing that 60 kilometres would be very doable, perhaps a little more.

For those wondering whether an e-bike is for them I can only offer this. If you live in a hilly area such as I do, then the electric-assist makes a huge difference, something akin to that first experience of breezing along the road as a kid. You can still pedal hell-for-leather and reduce the amount of assistance, thus getting greater exercise and prolonging the charge. You can also coast along just using the throttle. Up to you entirely.

Petty dislikes include the weight of the bike and the lack of suspension, but these are more than compensated for in other ways. Of course, if you pay more money you can get a lighter bike, one with more bells and whistles. But I was on a budget. 

So in summary, thus far, a good bike. No problems with the electrics nor any with the mechanicals. It handles well and brakes well. The layout of the handlebar is logical. It also garners quite a few admiring looks with its fairly hip design. I am fitter and happier for riding it.

I have cited Yosa Buson's haiku in the past. Alongside Issa and Basho, he is one of the three greats of the Edo period. He was also an artist who worked in ink and wash painting. The other day a sumo fan posted a Buson artwork featuring two sumo wrestlers. There is also a haiku rendered in calligraphy.

It seems to me that the picture captures the real core of a sumo bout, the sense of action and energy, speed and power that is characteristic of the sport. Top-knots, mawashi and technique are all apparent in this little sketch, together with the keen attention of the gyoji.

Unfortunately, I can't find a translation of the haiku, though I'm sure that one will turn up.

Officially winter begins tomorrow, though it feels very wintery already. The nights are dropping close to zero and each morning sees a layer of shining frost on the grass. Lately, the wind has had an Antarctic chill to it, piercing even the thickest coats. Curiously, I have seen people, mostly young ones, wearing t-shirts and shorts, as if to make a statement of their seeming invincibility. People with tattoos also seem to wear a minimum of clothing, appearances stealing a march on comfort, apparently.

Tom is home sick today with a head cold and the nation is beset again with news about Covid-19. There is very little respite from this subject which is covered from every angle, over and over again. I think that a collective tiredness to the mere mention of the topic is becoming apparent and this may account for some of the vaccination complacency that has been reported. Of course, there are some people who genuinely fear potential side-effects, even if these, at their worst, are far less severe than the virus itself. Then there is a small group of libertarians, conspiracy folk and plain knuckleheads who object to any program that might impede their freedom or belief systems. I don't really want to expend the energy needed rebutting ludicrous assertions.

I am happy, though, that my volunteer job at 2RPH is becoming normalised after 12 months of restrictions. We can now sit in the same studio together and my second job as a reader on the Newcastle Herald is restarting soon. Of course, this could all be thrown into chaos should Sydney succumb to the blasted pestilence in a similar way to Melbourne. I am learning, slowly, to accept that stuff happens and that there is nothing I can do about it.

Totality

Coatless I gaze

In sullen cold,

A lingering Scorpion

Above my head, a

Wide moon in the fold,

And the every-angled heavens,

Ablaze,

A night to be bold, sure,

Though few could tell,

How solid ground conspired,

To throw terrestrial shade -

The inching darkness,

First a fingernail,

Now a thumbprint

Made,

The ancient glimmering dust,

A reddening pale,

That hangs and floats and howls

To be itself again -

A catcher of dreams

And ark of night.

Beyond the trail

Of stars and dust

The shrouding rust

Declines and fades,

Leaving the porcelain face

Unchanged.

Small mercies, perhaps,

Thinking of how things must go,

Though a billion years of light

Remains.

The Grand Sumo Summer Tournament in Tokyo is now finished. Terunofuji, the remarkable comeback kid has now won back-to-back tourneys, defeating fellow ozeki Takakeisho on the final day. I have written about Terunofuji before - the man who thought he was washed up and wanted to retire - but is is worth repeating. His achievement is extraordinary and doubtless he is celebrated in his homeland, Mongolia.

The continued absence of Hakuho after knee surgery continues to cast a cloud over the championship. We are all hoping that he has another basho in him before the inevitable retirement announcement. I remember seeing him as a very young wrestler back in 2006. Even then, there was a quality about him that presaged great things - yokozuna the following year, and 44 titles (yusho) to follow. What an amazing champion he is.

Day 15 of the most recent basho did not pass without some high drama. Terunofuji may have won the crown at the last, but he suffered a defeat by Takakeisho in his regular match. This triggered the play-off (both wrestlers being at 12-3) and his subsequent victory. The two shots below tell the story of two different outcomes on the same day, only a few minutes apart.

Yesterday Ann and I went to Home Affairs in Parramatta so she could undertake her Australian Citizenship test. She had been studying hard for weeks, reading and revising pages of the sometimes arcane information that comprised the various sections of the examination. I read through it myself and confess that there were a few things I didn't know or had forgotten. I suspect that many Australians would likely fail the test.

But she passed with 100% and I am very proud of her. In a few months she will receive her official documents and will be an Australian citizen. JJ will become one too by dint of her being under 18 years of age. Hopefully my myriad and complex dealings with Home Affairs have now come to an end.

On the way back I spotted this plaque and spent some time in its midst, considering the great man. The like of him will not come again.

When I first started teaching in Sydney's west a colleague in the English Department gave me a small blank notebook, the kind that has a smart faux-leather cover. I must have told her that I liked to write poetry because I remember it had an inscription to that effect. I filled it fairly quickly with old poems that I had collected on scraps of paper - juvenilia really - lines that I would blush at reading today.

Shortly after I bought a much weightier tome, one that might accommodate a couple of hundred poems. From then on until about mid-nineties, I'm guessing, I wrote all the final drafts poems by hand into this book. They were close enough to the finished product, though some would need reworking at a later date. Writing is always an endless process of editing, is it not? In any event, I hoped that one day I might publish a slim volume of the best of this collection- say 30 out of the 200 odd that I had written. This was not a delusion - I had received encouragement to do so from a number of learned quarters.

Alas, somewhere in between house moves in the late 90's, this volume went missing and has never since been found. I suspect it somehow got put into one of the book recycle boxes that were destined for a charity shop. I was so devastated - this was, after all, my magnum opus - that I could not write another long-form poem until a year or two ago. Twenty years had passed. By that time I was feeling that the haiku form that I was using was just too restrictive. So, for better or worse, I have begun writing again.

These days we have copies of copies. It is hard to lose anything for good. I guess if I had bought my first PC a little earlier, those 200 poems might have found their way onto a floppy disk.

The Turning

The tree by the gate is turning,

Last of the brood, green leaves

Now burning in the sun-

Brittle cast on bones

That grieve for the loss-

Brethren pause and dawdle 

And toss about at any stir,

Their veins dry as shale.

‘Leaf-litter’, I heard said,

Odd, that artefacts of life,

Should seem so stale, 

Confused with human junk,

Missing the point instead.

It’s the yearning, now pale,

Unredeemable, yet returning

To that venerable place

Where once it happily bled.

 

There is a much about the journey of life that involves some kind of suffering. Even if you are born in a safe, prosperous country, of able body and mind, in a reasonable, ordinary family, then adversity of one sort or another will come your way. It is an ancient grievance, a topic and study for philosophers and theologians.

The modern remedy is usually to seek out happiness in whatever way one can. The pursuit of happiness is a given these days - the spin doctors will tell you that it usually resides in owning things, in superficial alteration, on keeping up with others. There is much work to do on the self, goes the mantra. Of course, this advice often has the opposite effect, creating lonely, competitive people who don't understand why the medicine doesn't work, or why it only takes effect for a short time.

There are a zillion books on the subject and I suppose most of them have some merit. Reaching a modicum of happiness is not an unreasonable goal, though, as I have written about before, it should largely come as a by-product of pursuing other goals, such as the immersion in the moment that can come through a much-loved activity or job. We can't get enough of those moments but there is no such things as a continuum. They are discreet and proscribed by time and space.

So it was interesting when reading a Schopenhauer essay on suffering a night or two ago when I came across the great philosopher's thoughts on happiness. Striving for it is in vain - that way lies anxiety, depression and disappointment. Rather he notes, one should try to reduce the amount of suffering in one's life. Only by identifying and defusing those things can cause us to suffer can we begin to approach something like a state of happiness, though we may not recognise it as such. 

Not all suffering can be eliminated, of course, though how we think about what causes us to suffer is as much the problem as the solution. That's what CBT is all about. The Stoics had a crack at that too. But just reimagining the whole shebang that is 'the getting of happiness' is worthwhile, a project more doable then striving for something that is largely intangible.